Andrea and Mark Hotchkin
November 2024
Love your neighbour as yourself
Dear Friends,
It has been good to see many of you as we travelled 2,241 miles around the UK recently during our month of Home Assignment visits. Those of you who heard us speak in the evenings will know that we started our talks with some thoughts about how we can often seem to be seeking to do God's will, but things don't work out as we expect. As we have continued our stay in the UK this has appeared to be the situation again. Mark is needing to have some further investigations for a heartbeat irregularity that has been detected. This may take over a month to organise so we are now thinking we need to stay in the UK until early January when there is another flight to Bardai. The words of Proverbs 3: 5 have again been helpful.
'Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not rely on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him and he will make straight your paths.'
As we spend time in the UK, we will be continuing our Tedaga learning which we began last year and had planned to do in Ndjamena before our return to Bardai. Fortunately we have plenty of materials with us including recordings, so we should be able to make some progress. It won't be the same without a teacher but we pray that the time will be fruitful.
As you know, after we left Bardai there were even more severe floods. We now know as we shared with many of you, that as well as the damage to homes and the hospital the church, despite being built on a rock 5m above the Wadi floor, was completely destroyed. We know that they have now set up a temporary building, pictured above, with roofing sheets as walls and are making plans to rebuild. The hospital is back to normal without any major damage, but the flooding has sadly also brought down land mines from the hills and we heard there was recently an accident near to Bardai, bringing more suffering on top of the clearing up and rebuilding needed. Two of our colleagues have recently arrived in Bardai and we hope to have more information soon about the situation, we do know they have been able to restore one of the pick-up trucks to working order with a lot of repairs.
As we have been speaking in churches, firstly in Bardai and then around the UK, we have been reflecting on what the Bible has to say about how we should respond to our neighbours. A chance conversation with a muslim medical colleague at the hospital a few months before leaving Bardai got me thinking. In brief, my colleague, who would much rather be in the capital rather than the desert, asked me, 'what is the real reason for you being in Bardai?' I replied that 'I was taught from a young age to love God with all my heart, soul, strength and mind and to love my neighbour as myself and that is what I try to do here in Bardai'. An answer inspired by Jesus' answer to an honest but potentially difficult question found in Mark 12 (29-31). Reflecting on the episode I looked more closely at what James calls the 'Royal command' and Paul 'the fulfilling of the law'; 'love your Neighbour as yourself'. James 2 (8), Romans 13 (9)
Jesus is quoting Leviticus 19(18) but the quote only applies to 'any of your people' that is Israelites. By the time of Jesus it seems that people had perverted this slogan to '…..love your neighbour, and hate your enemy' Matt 5 (43). Unfortunately this interpretation of the law still happens today both in the Tibesti, where there is often interethnic mistrust leading to violence and similarly elsewhere in the world. Reading further in the same chapter of Leviticus it is written '….you shall love the alien as yourself' Lev 19(33). In our Global community this should mean looking at our part in creating the climate disaster we spoke of above and seeing what we can do to reduce our carbon footprint, even if we are not directly affected. No doubt you can think of other examples.
Jesus clearly taught against the 'us and them' or 'insider/outsider' mentality when he told the story of the Good Samaritan. Who is the good neighbour to the badly injured Jew on the road? It is the despised Samaritan outsider who worships the God of Abraham in a different way. The radical love of Jesus is for everyone even his enemies. Love your neighbour as yourselves, no exceptions. Perhaps this is just foolishness, perhaps it is simply the Gospel of Jesus. As we wrestle with the implications may God be with us.
The last two weeks have been a time of rest and holiday with our children and a time to enjoy the colours of Autumn appearing as we were walking in the Lakeland Fells and the cliffs and moors around Lee Abbey in North Devon. It was a surprise to come across an unusual Chadian flag painted on some houses. We were challenged too by our time at Lee Abbey reflecting on the life of Moses and thinking about how he and the Israelites were called at times to take prophetic action but yet at others to stand firm and trust in God to act for them.
We give thanks for:
Our time visiting churches
Holidays and relaxation with family
We pray for:
The people of Bardai, coping with the aftermath of the floods
Mark's medical problem to be sorted quickly so that we can return to work
Our unplanned time in the UK that we can use it profitably in language and other studies
Finally, a prayer and a challenge to all of us:
May God help us to love our neighbour who doesn't
Look like us, think like us, love like us, speak like us, pray like us, vote like us
Love our neighbor,
No exceptions.
Mark and Andrea