A Mouse looked through the crack in the wall to see the farmer and his wife opening a package. He wondered with great curiosity, “What food might this contain?” He was devastated to discover it was a mousetrap. Retreating to the farmyard, the mouse proclaimed the warning. “There is a mousetrap in the house; there is a mousetrap in the house!”
The chicken clucked and scratched, raised
her head and said “Mr. Mouse, I can tell this is a grave concern to you, but it
is of no consequence to me. I cannot be bothered by it.”
The mouse turned to the pig and told him,
“There is a mousetrap in the house!” The pig sympathized but said, “I am so
very sorry Mr. Mouse, but there is nothing I can do about it but pray. Be
assured that you are in my prayers.”
The mouse turned to the cow. She said,
“Wow, Mr. Mouse. I’m sorry for you. But it’s no skin off my nose.”
So the mouse returned to the house, head
down and dejected, to face the farmer’s mousetrap alone. That very night a
sound was heard throughout the house like the sound of a mousetrap catching its
prey. The farmer’s wife rushed to see what was caught. In the darkness she did
not see that it was a venomous snake whose tail the trap had caught. The snake
bit the farmer’s wife.
The farmer rushed her to the hospital and
she returned home with a fever. Now everyone knows you treat a fever with fresh
chicken soup, so the farmer took his hatchet to the farmyard for the soup’s
main ingredient.
But his wife’s sickness continued, so
friends and neighbors came to sit with her around the clock. To feed them, the
farmer butchered the pig.
The farmer’s
wife did not get well. She died and so many people came for her funeral the
farmer had the cow slaughtered to provide enough meat for all of them.
And so it
was that the mouse’s problem was in reality a problem for the others. Many
times in history seemingly good people turned a blind eye to some evil going on
around them, thinking “This doesn’t concern me!” They were left to find out
later just how wrong they were. Some good folks watched as the Nazi’s began to
lock-up Jews for no reason other than their ethnicity. Later, many of them
faced the same atrocities and all of them faced a world war. In our world
today, there are many similar issues that we hear about and it is easy to say,
“That doesn’t concern me!”
The world is
getting smaller and smaller as our technology grows. Atrocities in the Sudan,
where certain tribes are being sold as slaves by militants of a different
religion; atrocities in Southeast Asia, where children are being kidnaped and
sold into prostitution; travelers are being killed to sell their organs on the
black market…etc.…etc. Perhaps such things will come back to eventually impact
us directly. If something bad or unjust is going on with someone else, it could
easily happen to us and those we love.
This story of the mouse wasn’t about the whole
world…just a farm. So it is that we should also focus on our little piece of
the world. It can be so very easy to simply focus on “ME” and my needs…my
concerns. It is so very possible that the problems of others could easily
impact us down the road. When one of our family members, our friends, our
neighbors, or our co-workers is going through some difficult problems…instead
of “This doesn’t concern me!” perhaps all of us should be thinking…”How can I
help!” “Love your neighbor as yourself”
takes on a whole different meaning when one considers what might happen when we
don’t do that. “This doesn’t concern me!”… Well, it just might! As the old
commercial said: “You can pay me now or you can pay me later!”
In case
someone might be saying: ”Well just who is my neighbor?” It might be good for
that person to read Luke 10 again. I say again because most everyone knows the
story of the Good Samaritan. Someone asked Jesus that very question and He told
him that story. A man was left for dead by thieves and two very respectable and
religious people ignored his plight completely. Then the Samaritan (a group of
people hated and despised by the Jews of Jesus’ day came. Here’s the end of that story:
“And when he (the Samaritan) saw him, he
had compassion. So he went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and
wine; and he set him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of
him. On the next day, when he departed, he took out two denarii, gave them to
the innkeeper, and said to him, ‘Take care of him; and whatever more you spend,
when I come again, I will repay you.’ So which of these three do you think was
neighbor to him who fell among the thieves?”
With love in Christ,
Fr. Stephen Powley
Source: https://upwordglance.com/2016/01/27/76/
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