Take a moment… to make a choice

Peter Neilson December 15, 2017 0 0

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Exodus 23: 9-11

9 ‘Do not oppress a foreigner; you yourselves know how it feels to be foreigners, because you were foreigners in Egypt.

10 ‘For six years you are to sow your fields and harvest the crops, 11 but during the seventh year let the land lie unploughed and unused. Then the poor among your people may get food from it, and the wild animals may eat what is left. Do the same with your vineyard and your olive grove.

Once again displaced people fill our screens – as the Rohingya peoples of Myanmar flee to Bangladesh and the people of Yemen are caught in the cross fire between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Economic reports remind us yet again that the gap between rich and poor in our country is widening – more children in poverty, more pensioners on benefits caught in the gaps of a changing welfare system.

Jesus told us to “love our neighbour as ourselves”. How do I love myself – not psychologically, but practically? I love myself with food, with heat, and physical comfort; by supporting my family, by ensuring a good education for them; with books and clothes…

Choose one way that you “love yourself” and decide to make that option available to somebody who does not have it. You could support a homeless charity, send educational books overseas, invite a lonely neighbour for a meal, ask “do I need this extra…?” Or it may be a choice to avoid using plastics, or save the price of a cup of coffee for a month and send it to Christian Aid. You choose…

Lord, forgive my blind eye

My deaf ear

And my silent voice.

I want to learn to

Love my neighbour 

As I love myself.

I know this will be hard

But I am ready to have my life

Reshaped by your Spirit

Head and heart

Hands and feet

Credit card and purse.

So, Lord, I take a moment to make my choice…