The Officer’s Blog
This month we are indebted to Major Kathy Woodhouse for her thoughts on changing the world!
Major Kathy
She writes:
A couple of weeks ago, while on holiday enjoying the Devon sunshine (yes it really was a warm and sunny week!) – I went to the cinema. My friend and I had intended seeing The Simpsons movie, but somehow ended up with tickets to Evan Almighty. It was an interesting 95 minutes.
Briefly, the storyline is that American news reader Evan Baxter has just been elected to Congress when God (actor Morgan Freeman) tells him to build an ark because of an impending flood. He is also to gather two of every species of animal together and house them on the ark.
As the story unfolds, Evan grows a beard which defies his attempts to shave it away, and begins to wear Old Testament style clothing, despite trying to ignore God’s word. His family and his colleagues despair of ever seeing the ‘normal’ Evan again.
During one of his ‘appearances’, God asks Evan what his intention is, now that he is a Congressman. Evan replies that he ‘Wants to change the world.’
God then gives His advice on how such a broad objective might be achieved. He says that the way to do it is by performing ‘One random act of kindness every day.’ The fact that this can be summarised as Acts of Random Kindness (spelling ARK – corny or what!) is left until the end of the film.
But my thoughts went quickly to the nameless woman with the alabaster jar of expensive perfume whose story is told in the gospel of Mark. The theologian William Barclay has referred to her action as almost the last kindness that Jesus had done to him, and calls it loves’s extravagance. She was not deterred by those who thought that her action was wasteful, she had no thoughts of keeping the perfume for herself, although that was probably her original intention. The woman did a lovely thing, and Jesus recognised it as such. She wanted to show him the extent of her love, and so she followed her intuition that this was the thing to do, and poured the perfume over Jesus’ head, not the few drops that were customary, but the whole jar.
Barclay says, ‘Love can see that there are things, the chance to do which comes only once. It is one of the tragedies of life that we are moved to do something fine and do not do it…It occurs in the simplest things – the impulse to send a letter of thanks, the impulse to tell someone of our love or gratitude, the impulse to give some special gift or speak some special word.’
Perhaps the world would be a better place if we were inclined to follow her example. It would certainly be a different world.