IF THINE ENEMY HUNGER

Lake County Mail, Issue 4, 18 June 1947, Page 3

IF THINE ENEMY HUNGER

With the organisation of clothes drives, food collections and money collections, we have been brought face to face with the fact that there are millions of people in the world starving, and dying of cold. We can scarcely pick up a newspaper these days without reading about a shortage of one commodity or another in one of the countries of the world. We are asked to give, and give till it hurts. Why should we? Why not let us sit at home and count our many blessings. Thank God for the plenty in which we live, and leave it at that? One day our Lord Jesus Christ was talking to a man learned in God’s law. This man questioned Him as to the means of attaining perfection. Our Lord made him answer from his own experience and his own knowledge that the most important law was the love of God, followed by the next and hardly less important law of loving one’s neighbour. The lawyer seemed to have the idea that because the love of God came first, the love of neighbour could be fulfilled in thinking what a nice sort of person his neighbour was, by not doing him any harm. So our Lord by means of one of His marvellous teaching stories —the Good Samaritan —dragged out of the lawyer the admission that his hated enemy could be his neighbour whom he was to love by actively and positively helping him.

We are not told to like our neighbour, which is something to do with the emotions, but to love him, a matter of the will. The more we show kindness, the more we try to help him and understand him, the greater will be our love. God knows, it is difficult to think well of the Nazis for example, who caused much of the present distress, but if we do not help them what will happen? There, in the centre of Europe, is a race of disillusioned and starving people. We may ignore them, punish them, despise them, and starve them, but what will their reaction be to this imneighbourly action? Why, they can only come to hate their oppressors, their wretched conditions, and their lack of the necessities of life. Memory a will bring back to them the days of Hitler, when, at least they had sufficient to eat, and the great majority of them had work —even if it was making armaments. Remembering the “ good old days ” they will wish them back again, and follow any of their fellows Avho promise to lead them back —and the result? War again. Hatred begets hatred and love begets love. What do we mean by love? Does it mean patting our erstwhile enemies on the back, and saying, “ Don’t be naughty children again, you were just a little mistaken, we will graciously forgive and forget? ” No, it does not! Docs it mean being sentimental, foolish and hypocritical about their behaviour? No, of course it does not. Loving our enenpes means doing good to them, it means actively willing their wellbeing. It means feeding them when they are hungry, clothing them when they arc cold and destitute. What, so that they can come again and fight ns again? No, so that they can take, their rightful place in the family of Nations —God’s family of nations. Yes, we must give until it hurts, and give from the right motive. Not for self-praise or self-glorification. Not so that we can be told what good people we are, but just because w r e love God and love our neighbour so much that wo will God’s will, we unite our wills with His. Their well-being as well as our’s is God’s will for the world. The siem of love is sacrifice, but the word '-a"rfee does not mean loss of life, but “ offering ”of life! All who played their art in the war, be it overseas •t a f home made a sacrifice, an offer big of their life, and their work for ‘he cause of peace. Now that fighting has ceased, we must carry on that work, and not leave the job half done. We must still make that sacrifice, that offering of onr lives for a true and lasting pea'M!. And we can only do ao by obeying God’s laws—love God,

love thy neighbour. “ Inasmuch as yc have done it unto om o +> the least of these my brethren, yc have done it unto Me.”

—Philip C. Williams,