No Man is an Island
Affecting the lives of others
No man is an island, entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main…
These words could apply to what this world is experiencing right now. Infection has spread across the globe at an alarming rate and just as we thought we were over the worst a second wave of disaster and contagion is starting to rear its ugly head.
Many of us may have gone on holiday thinking that we were relatively safe only have to scramble madly to get home before forced to quarantine.
I am not in the blame game but many suggestions have been made and publicly aired as to why things are getting bad again. Most seem to float around the idea of people infecting others. The actions of others can cause our lives to change in the blink of an eye.
It got me thinking that throughout the Bible we see the consequences of one persons actions affecting the life of another.
In the book of Samuel we discover a lady called Hannah, an unhappy wife longing to be a mother who has her marriage blighted by the cruel words of others; Eli, a priest who seems to have done an awful job as a father witnesses the unhappiness that his boys cause others. Samuel, a boy who grew up in a religious family who make the decisions for what he will do with his life and then we have Saul, a shy, handsome man who once crowned becomes a tyrannical king blighting the lives of his subjects.
All from totally different backgrounds and social classes but they all have one thing in common – they all make decisions that affect the lives of others.
So today as you read these words why not consider how your words, actions and decisions will affect the people around you. Maybe it will be in the way you respond to the current Covid-19 restrictions; maybe it will be a decision you make as an employer about the need to make redundancies and other cost cutting measures; or maybe it will simply be the way you choose to speak to your family.
Whatever situation you find yourself in I urge you to think about the words of Jesus when He recommends that we… “treat others in the way that we would like to be treated.”
I hope that as each of us act as one piece in this giant wheel of humanity that our influence will bless and encourage rather than cause harm.
