Helen Tyte

Sharing

Today in our Junior Church the children were thinking about sharing, and we talked about the ways in which we are able to share as a physical church. We share our resources, time and abilities in order to help others in our community. We have clothed children for school and restocked the freezer of a single mum who had lost everything in a power outage. Every week we support those in the parish who cannot afford to feed themselves properly, and each Christmas we put together food hampers that are delivered to those most in need. We give out Christmas cards to residents in the local care homes, and collect gifts for the patients at the local hospital. People donate fruit and a gentleman turns this into jam, raising an amazing amount of money for the stained glass window fund. It’s easy to see many ways in which we can share as a physical church, but what about as an online church? Members of Fab Church are fantastic at sharing their time and prayers. We also share our creativity in the form of stories, poems, pictures etc and offer each other support in more ways than we realise. Even sharing simple messages on the WhatsApp chat can be enough to brighten someone’s day and make a difference in their life.

Parents always encourage their children to share, although they don’t always find this easy! Before today’s service one young girl came up to me to tell me how she shared her ice cream with her sister, but the sister had to make it clear that SHE had shared HERS first! It reminded me of my mum trying to encourage my brother and I to share. Once she treated us to a scoop of ice cream each – a rare treat. As soon as the bowls were placed in front of us my brother complained that mine was bigger, so mum took a spoonful from mine and ate it. I promptly complained that now HIS was bigger, so she ate a spoonful of his. He complained again, and mum ate more of mine. It quickly dawned on me that the more we continued to argue the smaller both our portions of ice cream would be, so I quickly said ‘Yep, that looks equal’.

One mother told the story of her sons John and James who had argued ALL morning from the minute they opened their eyes. They didn’t want to share their toys, books, time or space. Their mum was making them pancakes and the boys soon began to argue over who would get the first one. Mum had had enough, and asked the boys “What would Jesus do?” The two boys stared back at her as she continued, ”If Jesus was sitting here, He would say, ‘Let my brother have the first pancake, I can wait,’” John immediately turned to his younger brother and said, James, you can be Jesus!”