Published in the Brechin Advertiser on 02 May 2013
Well a slightly less crazy week in the news. Not by much but
still a bit easier to understand. So what of relevance is going on in our
world? What thing just stands and cries out pay attention to this?
Not sure really. So will address relationships at some level.
Why? you ask, because it seems that is what is breaking down in our world.
Friends that don’t talk, families that don’t get along, neighbours that haven’t
spoken in years, communities that hate each other and even nations that want to
go to war over stuff that really doesn’t seem that important or that the
leaders feel bad because the rest of the world isn’t taking them seriously
enough. Or some such excuse.
Well most of those international situations I don’t have answers
for, and neither it appears do our beloved politicians as they jet around from
place to place trying to make up ground. So guess I will go to trying to help
families at some level. And if I can manage, will try to address this from a
few angles over the coming weeks...
I was in conversation with my brother and he was telling me
about having to pull vines from some trees in his garden. How over the years
they had grown up and just taken over. So much so that now they were choking
the very life out of some of his biggest trees.
It was a bit of a picture of how we live our lives and build our
relationships. We put a lot into them in the early days, we work hard to dig
the soil right to plant the tree, we water, fertilize, sometimes staking the
trees in the early years to keep the wind from blowing them over. We wrap the
trunks so the rabbits won’t come and chew the bark off and kill them before
they get a chance to get started. Then out of virtually nowhere a wee vine
starts to grow up, and as it grows it attaches itself to the tree and we see it
there but don’t do anything about it till suddenly we realise the years have
come and gone and the vine has gotten really big and is choking the life out of
that tree that we had once spent a lot of time and effort to get started.
And so it is in our relationships. We spend time together,
we say nice things to each other, we buy gifts small and sometimes not so small
just to show we care. Dinner out with friends are times to bridge gaps and
encourage each other. We go to events together and one day wake up to say: Man
that is my best friend in the whole wide world. Then like those vines growing
up from almost nothing to kill the tree, little things jump in and get to
niggling at our relationship. But you know it is such a little thing and they
are my best friend so it gets ignored, and sadly it continues to happen over
and over till it gets to be a big deal and suddenly the relationship is not as
healthy as it was...
Think about that for now and I’ll pick up with this next
week,
Rev. Jon Bergen
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