Our people

My Grandma told me once how she loved the people from her home community. No matter what they did she loved them. She told me of a neighbour who was a horse thief. Everyone in the area knew it. If your horse went missing, the first stop was always to his farm to see if he had it. Usually he did have the stolen horse. The community folk would go collect their horse and be on their way.

She laughed as she recalled this. Then she paused and looking at me with her beautiful pale blue eyes, she clasped her hands and leaned forward, as though to drive the point home. “You see, they are my people.”

We all need people. We need to love our people and walk with our people.

Have we lost this? Perhaps we lost it before the dreaded virus landed in our world.

Love is not a feeling or an instinct. Love is a job. A job with easy days and tough days. But a job nonetheless.

Together lets love our people.

1 Peter 4: 8 Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers
over a multitude of sins.

Keeping a record

My youngest often asks me to rate her and her siblings at various tasks. “Mom, who is the best at doing the dishes?” or “Mom, am I better at this than the other kids?” I think it’s her way of differentiating herself, of finding her own identity as the last in the family. There are things that she is good at doing and I don’t mind praising her when she does something well.

The other night she asked me one of these comparison questions and I replied, “I don’t want to keep score. I don’t want to be compiling a list of things that each of you do well and poorly. I just want to recognize when you do something well and that’s it.”

She understood what I was saying and figured it made sense.

Of course after we had the conversation a scripture came to mind, a small verse, but so on the mark that it rang in my mind.

I Corinthians 13: 5 It [love] does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking,
it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.