Hunny! 40 Days in the 100 Aker Wood – Day 13 – Wednesday after 2nd Sunday of Lent

To Read:

So they went outside. And Pooh looked at the knocker and the notice below it, and he looked at the bell-rope and the notice below it, and then he looked at the bell-rope, the more he felt that he had seen something like it, somewhere else, sometime before.

“I just came across it in the Forest. It was hanging over a bush, and I thought at first somebody lived there, so I rang it, and nothing happened, and then I rang it again very loudly, and it came off in my hand, and as nobody seemed to want it, I took it home, and —”

So with these words he unhooked it, and carried it back to Eeyore; and when Christopher Robin had nailed it on in its right place again, Eeyore frisked about the forest, waving his tail so happily that Winnie-the-Pooh came over all funny, and had to hurry home for a little snack of something to sustain him.

(Winnie the Pooh – In which Eeyore loses a Tail)

From the Scriptures:

Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, “Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor, and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.

(Luke 19v8)

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.

 (John 10v10)

To Reflect:

Theft by Finding, though not often prosecuted, remains a punishable crime in the United Kingdom and, occasionally, people have their fingers burnt.  It’s something that’s not easy to define (which is why prosecutions are rare) and, in a society that seems to be driven by personal gain rather than care for the community it can become a way of behaving that is taken for granted.  A sort of entitlement to take whatever I lay may hand on because no one has told me I could not.

Now I don’t know if Owl knew he had appropriated Eeyore’s tail for his own use but, knowing (and owls are apparently good at knowing things) he was near to where Eeyore lived he should have perhaps enquired about the origins of his new ‘bell rope’ before flying off with it.  Eeyore doesn’t seem to have immediately noticed that his tail had been pulled off (although we have learnt that he wasn’t feeling ‘very how’ lately) but his tail wasn’t lying around unattended and Owl really shouldn’t have pulled it off whatever it was attached to.  Perhaps Owl has a little Magpie DNA in him?

When we live in community, and most us live in one form of community or another, what to do with other people’s stuff is hard work.  In the early church everyone had, ‘All things in common’, but they are not together long before we meet Ananias and Sapphira who are trying to game other people’s generosity and soon after this we find that some of the widows are being neglected (Acts 6v1-6).  

This is not simply about physical items.  It is also about the times we meet, the language we use for worship, the hymns and songs we sing.  These are the possession of everyone just as much as any physical goods and it is a foolish leader who arbitrarily changes years of tradition.    If we fail in this task people will quite rightly feel they are the victims of theft (feeling of being ‘not very how’) and drift away from our fellowship to others who are more caring of where people ‘are’ rather dragging them to places where they are not yet ready to ‘be’.  Not that we should be held fast in the grip of history, occasionally tails do make very good bell-pulls, but everyone should know what is happening.

As the good book reminds us, when we ask we will receive (Matthew 7v8) but this promise does not give us permission to take without asking nor use someone else’s precious possessions as our playthings.

(Buddhist Prayer)