Love your Neighbour

He answered: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind; and, Love your neighbour as yourself”. St Luke ch. 10 vs. 27

I have been visiting Cathedrals again this week: our own in Guildford and Coventry. Both were in connection with my Mothers’ Union friends. One of the biggest joys in my life has been, and I know will continue to be, the friendships I have made with MU members and their families around the world. I always relish an opportunity to meet up with them even if only for a short time and worshipping together is a great joy. MU can certainly fill a cathedral and sing with gusto. This fellowship is important to us but it is not the most important thing we do.

The Mothers’ Union is a mission organisation, aiming to demonstrate the Christian faith in action by the transformation of communities worldwide through the nurture of family in its many forms. We have 3.6 million members, women and men, living in over 78 countries who believe in the importance of families. As well as encouraging and supporting families and marriage, members work to reach out as God’s family to those who are isolated, in trouble, or in need of help. Through fellowship, programmes, policy and prayer, Mothers’ Union members around the world change lives and bring Christ’s hope.

This is Christian Aid Week here in the UK. Much of the work that Christian Aid does is very similar. I have seen projects run by MU to help a village dig and maintain a well to provide water for a village, or providing chickens and information on how to keep other animals on small plots of land. I have helped to bring a herd of goats’ home at the end of the day along with a group of widows able to feed their children and send them to school because they were given a goat and taught to care for it properly. I have seen Nursery Schools, Clinics, Literacy and Numeracy Groups run by members to help a community devastated by the HIV/ aids virus. These and many other programmes and projects are also run by Christian Aid and sometimes the two charities come together in a community and are then able to provide an even better service. Christian Aid works in partnership with local people to help to bring wholeness to communities.

There are so many ways we can “love our neighbour” and this week each home in our parish will have an opportunity just to give a little so that the charity that is Christian Aid can give a lot in some part of the world where the needs are greater than here in Ashtead.

“Heavenly Father, help everyone to experience the joys of worship and fellowship. At the same time Lord, we pray that our hearts and minds will be opened to share what we have with those who have less. Amen “