Treating People as People
The literary among you, Dear Readers, may have come across Charles Kingsley’s “The Water Babies” - I did @ primary school. Those who did may remember the characters Mrs Doasyouwouldbedoneby & Mrs Bedonebyasyoudid, I know which Tom preferred, I know whom I’d prefer.
I came home yesterday to find H with a pretty young woman in the front room!
I went, put on the kettle & broke out the (Lidl substitute) Jaffa Cakes. Turned out she was doing a survey for the city council, going door to door. As there was a keen Nor’Wester yesterday she was, despite thick coat, fleece hat, gloves & fur-lined boots, ‘fair shrammed’. So H invited her in. Kindness, & enlightened self-interest really - he’d have gotten chilly doing an interview on the doorstep.
“Do as you would be done by.” Treating people as people, in the hope that they will treat you as people - rather than a nuisance or worse. We told her, if we were ever in her position we hoped that someone would similarly come up with a cup of tea for us.
Then there is the other thing - as Christians we are enjoined to ‘love one another’, to be kind to one another, & other people. There’s also the passage in Matthew 25 about the sheep & the goats. “I tell you, inasmuch as you did this for one of these, you did it to Me.” Not, I hasten to add, that we’re trying show you how ‘good’ we are - cos we know very well we aren’t. & are hereby giving you notice of same.
Nor are we trying to earn spiritual “Brownie points” (aka “Karma”). We are Saved because of what Christ did on the Cross - His death & resurrection, and by faith in Him. Henceforth we do good because He, the Spirit of all Good, is living in us & changing us to become more like Him.
She was a nice lady too! We had a very pleasant couple of hours answering her survey questions, sharing tea/coffee & jaffa cakes & the warmth of the gas fire, then sent her on her way revived.
Come to think of it - that’s why I support Tear Fund (www.tearfund.org). They treat people as people, wherever & whomever they are: - earthquake victims, refugees, subsistence farmers, urban poor, shanty-town dwellers, street kids, child & adult prostitutes, AIDS victims, MPs, MEPs, Westerners, rich, poor, et al.
Tear Fund provides links so that, when we hear about disasters like the Boxing Day Tsunami or the Kashmiri earthquake, or the Central American floods & landslides, we can send aid - & know that they are doing their best to see it gets to the people & places it’s needed. Guaranteed.
Then there’s the Development Work: - providing accessible sources of clean water; medical care; schools; business training; appropriate (to the climate & land) farming training . . . You know, all the things we take for granted & they should have but haven’t - mainly cos we can’t be bothered to insist that we want them to therefore our Government should be doing something constructive about it & their governments, often, don’t care, or can’t afford to.
To this end there is a lobbying campaign going on now to inform Alan Johnson, Secretary of State for Trade & Industry, that there is support in this country for Trade Justice - go surf the Tear Fund web for further explanations. It’s all part of the bigger “Make Poverty History” campaign.
The current lobbying is for the upcoming World Trade Organisation summit (13th Dec), little postcards can be obtained for you to sign yr name & post it by 10th Dec to show support. Apparently MPs reckon that for everyone who takes the trouble to sign a card & post it, or write on a specific subject, there are between 10 & 50 other people who hold the same views! So get a card & get lobbying - also available from yr local Oxfam shops.
*Yawn* Time to put the bins out for rubbish collection (there’s another group Tear Fund help - rubbish pickers) & get breakfast. Enjoy yr day.
Went round mopping up condesation on the windows, it's chilly this morning - "Et voila les nuages abricot et tres jolies!"