With
apologies to Mr Quiveringjavelin, I am inclined to entitle this piece in a
parody of one of his classic monologues.
Last night
when we were in bed I spent the longest of times admiring my lovely better half
as she slept. In fact that is the
inspiration for this piece. For you see
there was more to the time than a passive admiration of a sleeping beauty. There were also the thoughts that were going
through my mind, chief of which was a desire to reach out to her and draw her
to my side simply for the pleasure of a cuddle.
The problem
with this idea was that my lovely was sound asleep and there were a number of
no nos in waking her from a sleep like that but that was only part of the
issue, just the idea of pulling her close, without waking her, was not
something that was likely to be appreciated.
As I ruminated on these thoughts it occurred to me that what I was
thinking was like many of the stories Jesus told when He was giving the crowd a
lesson for the day.
In this
complex life that we live there are choices that must be made every day. Just as I had to decide whether to indulge my
love for my lovely, or to choose to respect her sleep: and those things that
would have spoilt the entire night for both of us. I rather feel that my decision was a higher
love than we usually practise in our relationships with others.
It was closer
to the way we are meant to love our enemies and pray for those who mean us
wrong. If you remember in Gethsemane
when Jesus was praying about getting an out from the Cross He sweat blood his
wish was so intense but the outcome was He said “never the less Your will be
done not Mine. Jesus in the events of
the Cross gave us an example for our dealings with other people. And it went
somewhat like this, our wants are subservient to those of other people, this is
not to say that we are to be a doormat to be trodden over, but we need to be
sensitive to the needs of people we deal with.
This mantra
is not just for evangelism, it is all about loving your neighbours as
yourself. For as we exercise this level
of love we also exercise evangelism to the folk who watch us. Just as Jesus went about loving others by
being sensitive to their needs so should we in our normal life.
We must walk
the walk even before we talk the talk.
It seems to me that the Master went about letting people “touch” Him and
He asked them then what they needed. It
was His sensitivity to others needs that drew most of His miracles. We may not be in the miracle business but
then again the biggest miracle of this time may be when we say “Joe Bloggs meet
Jesus the Christ He has all the answers you need and a live for you that is
beyond imagining if you are interested”.
Let us look
out for chances to serve wherever we are not just for the Master but also for
those around us
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