Tuesday 2 June 2009

5 o clock in the morning, pitch black, a chill nip in the air, and not a soul around. Well, that's not quite true of course. I was there, pacing up and down waiting for my taxi to the airport and trying to ward off the chill. But I was not alone. There at the other side of the road, matching me pace for pace and turnabout for turnabout, was the fox.

We enjoy an uneasy relationship - he and I. He likes to take a gourmet approach to my rubbish, spreading it out liberally on the pavement so that he can take his pick at leisure. He's quite partial to the milk on my doorstep too - and has been caught red-handed before knocking bottles over so that he can glug the contents as it ebbs out across the drive.

The trouble is, I was on his patch now - like a dad turning up too early at a teenager's party and cramping his style. I got the distinct impression that he was less than pleased to see me. Not only that, but he was not really prepared to slope off and leave me to it, in case I got up to something untoward on his territory.

We're all a bit territorial really, aren't we? So often we invent different versions of ourselves - at work, at home, on holiday. This is fine, until the event comes when they all need to turn up together. All of a sudden our work friends are on our home patch, or our neighbour turns up at work, and we end up on edge and threatened, like my foxy little friend.

The Bible teaches that the best solution is to be the same person everywhere. Of course you do different things in different places, and you might even tell different stories in different places, but you should be the same person deep down. "Let your 'yes' be 'yes' and your 'no' be 'no'", says the Apostle Paul.

Jesus put it in an even more graphic way. "Don't be like a cup", he said, "that looks all squeaky clean on the outside, but when you get it up close it's yukky inside." I've always thought of myself as more of a mug than a cup - but I'm sure the same rules apply. been made.