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Woo!

Re-cap!

Jesus said if someone strikes your RIGHT cheek, turn to him the other also. This was not the pacifist statement we’ve all taken it to be, but a call to stand up for yourself – non-violently. Confusing, eh? So how do we stand up to those who mock us, who put us down, who treat us like dirt – without doing anything unscriptural or outwardly violent?

The first step is to remember this handy verse: “Vengeance is mine, says the Lord.” That one’s in there a few times, starting in Deuteronomy chapter 32, verse 35. So we’re not meant to take out our own revenge, but leave it to God. He set up the court system (I don’t know if it was the first of the kind, but for the Israelites at least, that was his idea) to deal with matters of justice, and if a person slips through the justice system in this life I’m sure they won’t miss out in the next life.

So what DO we do? If we’re not taking out our revenge, what are we doing? Sitting and doing nothing sucks! But if we flip over to Romans 12:21, we see what God wants us to do:

Do not overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Romans 12 also point to chapter 25 in Proverbs, where verses 21-22 say:

If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.

(Sound brutal? Fair enough, but perhaps it’s suggesting less Hell-fire, more a sense of the conscience burning within the person, which can cause them to turn away from their wickedness and seek righteousness – as we see in so many movies where the good guy helps the bad guy and the bad guy realises what goodness really is).

Finally, we go back to Matthew 5:44 and read,

Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.

If all this sounds too hard and you’re thinking that enemies don’t deserve to be treated with goodness and kindness, remember that two wrongs don’t make a right, but love conquers all. And look out for my next post, about forgiveness!

‘You have heard it was said, “Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.” But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.’

Matthew 5:38, 39

A little while ago I went to Surrender’s “Night of Soul” where Shane Claiborne was meant to be speaking, but didn’t show. Instead, we had a guy named Darren share some thoughts with us. What he had to say bordered on revolutionary – for me, at least. Which is impressive after doing Year in the Son last year. I thought the shock factor was all worn out! Instead, a few weeks later, I’m back to thinking about what he told us. For all my faithful readers who weren’t there, this is it.

The first thing he did was to call a volunteer up on stage. He proceeded to take a jar of vegemite, dip his finger in, then smear some across the left palm of the volunteer. If anyone hasn’t guessed yet, this was meant to look like poo. Before toilet paper, there was hands. As a result, many customs in paper-less nations have been borne of the need to keep the poo hand separate from everything else.

Once such custom regards the slapping of cheeks. You wouldn’t slap someone with the poo hand, so you’ve only got two options left: front hand or back hand. We all know that a back-handed slap is more than just a reprimand – it’s a sign of disrespect, and back in the day would usually be dealt by a master to his slave.

So what would this look like? Imagine yourself facing a person who’s about to be betch-slapped. If you’re using your right hand, then the palm of your hand will fall on their left cheek. If you’re going back hand, then you’re going to get their right cheek. Left is for equals, right is for lessers. Now let’s go back to our verse!

If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.

Woah! If someone strikes you as a lesser, turn to him the other cheek to strike you as an equal. Sure, it’s non-violent, but suddenly Jesus doesn’t sound like such a pacifist. Far from telling us not to do anything when we’re being beat up, he’s saying to stand up for ourselves! How do we do that? Stay tuned for the next post, “How to turn the other cheek.” I might have some semblance of an answer for you!

He stayed in the bathroom for the week, and I brought Rambo in (partly to keep Frankie company, partly because I hadn’t cleaned her cage yet as it was raining all the time). Today, Saturday, I set up the cage anew, moving it onto a fresh patch of grass and filling the hutch with fresh straw. I went and got Rambo first, put her in the cage. She seemed quite happy to be back home.

After that I collected Affagato from the bathroom. He seemed nervous about the change. This wasn’t helped by the dogs being over-excited and trying to get a closer look, yipping and squealing and running around the place. However, I managed to get him settled – with some help from Rambo – and he made his way safely into the hutch.

This afternoon I had a cleaning job down the road for a few hours. Content that the guinea pigs were quite safe in their cage, I left, returning a few hours later.  I was on the phone to Sean, away in Belgrave, when  noticed something amiss. The side of the cage was ajar. Quickly I ended the call and went to investigate.

Two little bodies, licked all over and laid across the bottom of the hutch. The most shocking part was that Frankie’s head was completely missing, as was his left arm. The dogs aren’t usually violent – more prone to licking a small animal to death than actually causing it bodily harm. Yet I have since been unable to find his head. Gone.

I called Sean, I cried, I yelled, and my neighbour – a sweet girl of 17 – came over to provide hugs and assistance cleaning up and to offer her company as a friend. I may need to go over there in a while to hang out and maybe watch a movie. Anything to stop picturing the cruelly decapitated body, or my poor, darling little Rambo. Funny creature. I did so love her. And poor little Affagato – only a baby, barely bigger than a mouse. Such a spunky little thing.

Why did this have to happen?

Peter, her husband and co-owner of Wallies Lollies, was already waiting upstairs. At Michelle’s prompting, I took a seat at the desk. She picked up a stapled piece of paper – a payslip – and sat opposite me. Out of the pair, Michelle is the diplomatic one. The woman. Better to hear it from her than Peter.

They were very sorry, it’s just, well, they needed someone to run the shop who could take charge – they weren’t used to having someone so young – and they were going to have to let me go.

I bawled my eyes out. Mum came to pick me up, since my legs had turned to jelly and I could only move at a snail’s pace amidst the soul-crushing disappointment of being fired for a seemingly inadequate reason. I could not fathom how we could continue to save for the wedding if I wasn’t working; just this week the guy who found this job for me said he had 200 other clients who haven’t been so lucky.

While I waited for Mum to arrive, I remembered that I had meant to pick up a couple of Easter gifts after work, with my neat staff discount. I went back, dried my eyes for a few minutes, and put a smile on my tear-stained face. Michelle was working the shop, and I could tell that she genuinely felt bad for me. That’s at least a little encouraging. She must have liked me to some degree. Just not quite enough.

I don’t know how we’re going to make ends meet now, let alone save up a few thousand dollars for our wedding. Work is so very hard to find, and we’re still catching up on the rent. However, the day still had one fairly substantial positive – Mum managed to wrangle Strathcona into letting us use Tay Creggan as a ceremony venue for only $600, instead of the full rate of $1500.  The usual alumni rate is $1100. We’ve saved between $500-$900 whichever way you look at it!

I’m going to watch Everybody Loves Raymond and eat the roast veggies Mum’s preparing for dinner and accept the encouragement and sympathy of whoever wants to provide it. I’m devastated, but people assure me that this is not the end of the world. It’s just looking a little on the bleak side.

Funny, I thought it was going to be a good day.

I am counting down the days until the Easter rush is finally over, and I can go back to quietly sticking labels onto packets of lollies and packing them carefully into boxes. A couple of weeks ago I’d started to think that was boring! Now I fight to find five minutes to stick those lovely little labels on.

It wouldn’t be so bad, if only I had enough time to recover after each day. I get my 8-10 hours of sleep each night, sure enough, but these days I wake up feeling just as exhausted as I was when I went to sleep. Time to crack open the vitamin pills again.

Take this little post as a warning, my adoring fans – so fatigued am I that I have little energy or motivation to post on my blog, and, as you can see, I’m not writing anything particularly inspiring or mind-blowing. I’m not even writing anything controversial. So we can all hold our breaths and wait for the Easter rush to dissipate together, and I can go back to blogging and you can go back to occasionally perusing the more provocatively-titled posts I come out with.

Does this sound like a big fat advertisement for Wallies Lollies in Box Hill North? I guess you could say that. See, I run the shop most of the time (I’m pretty brilliant at it, too! lol) and nothing would please me more than to have people I know come buy stuff from my place of employment. Or just come visit me.

Now that I’ve said that, I expect to see friends dropping round on a regular basis!

A while ago, when Sean first started YITS, he was talking about needing a new computer to take to school with him. He’s a bit a of a slow writer when he is doing it by hand, so it would help him get more out of the lectures. He also needed it for assignments (particularly when our PC at home broke down). However, our budget, particularly in light of needing to save for a wedding, was not geared towards buying new computers. While he worried and stressed over how we could buy a computer and do everything else, I told him quite simply, “something will turn up.” By this I meant, God will work something out for us.

First of all, a girl from his workplace offered to lend him a netbook for a while. He was able to start taking down notes properly from his second or third week of classes. He still felt the need to buy his own netbook, though, as he felt bad about keeping the borrowed one for so long.

The other day he got to school and was informed that there was a parcel waiting for him at the office. Intrigued, he went to investigate. There was a gift-wrapped box with an anonymous message written on it, explaining that someone from his class had been thinking and praying about him and had decided to get him something he needed. Opening the wrapping paper, he discovered a brand new netbook, his to keep.

You could say that some people are just nice, but I don’t believe that is the end of the story. We had a very specific need, and it was met by someone not even that close to Sean (he’s not 100% certain who it was, but he doesn’t feel that close to anyone in his class yet). Someone prayed about it, and felt compelled to help out.

Assistance can come in all kinds of weird and wonderful ways when you’re trusting God to meet your needs. Most importantly, it always comes just in the nick of time. And if it doesn’t, then that’s probably a sign that it’s something you can handle yourself. I’m not about to quit my job and expect God to pay our bills, but if we ever get ourselves in a spot of bother I know who to speak to.

These were the thoughts going through my head yesterday, and the conclusion was seeming rather bleak. I began to think that there was nothing that we could do to slow down the effects of pollution and greenhouse gases, because industries weren’t about to change their ways. Funny, though, how there’s such a big emphasis on households doing their bit – down to turning appliances off at the switch – when the industry giants are the ones doing the most damage.

Then it occurred to me – industries work for people who live in households. They manufacture goods that we demand. Suddenly there’s light at the end of the tunnel, a glimmer of hope. There is also a fresh motivation to reduce demand for consumer products. Why replace when we can repair? Do we really need all of those gadgets and fashionable things? Could we get by using more old-fashioned methods that use fewer resources?

Last year in YITS we looked at the difference producers and consumers. We realised that most Westerners are in fact consumers, and not producers at all. We don’t grow our own food, make our own clothes, harvest the timber to make our own homes. We rely on other people, usually less fortunate than ourselves, to supply all these things for us. One way to start reversing some of the negative systems of our world is to start changing our part in the world. How can we start to become more of a producer, less of a consumer? How can we begin to influence industry practices?

I’m a baby greenie, so I don’t have a whole lot of answers just yet. But there are people who do, and it’s time for me to start getting in contact with some of them to find out what I can do to make a real difference in the world I live in.

Then a previous housemate introduced me to the Earth Choice spray and wipe. I didn’t think much of it at first – it was different, so couldn’t be trusted. However, it is a fair bit cheaper than Ajax, or any other brand for that matter, so I decided to give it a go when I next went to buy cleaning products. It also worked with all the lessons on ethical shopping I was receiving from school at the time.

Soon enough I had switched to all Earth Choice products, with the exception of the floor cleaner which I’ve heard can be a bit sticky. The shower cleaner works like magic; the washing liquid smells wonderful; the spray and wipe works well. I even contacted the company to get further details on their manufacturing processes, and they seem to be a pretty good company ethics-wise. Their products are, for the most part, manufactured here in Melbourne. They even donate to an overseas aid organisation.

Cheap, earth-friendly and ethical. Earth Choice has my stamp of approval.