Loving God and our Neighbour

Since our recent holiday at Cotton Tree Caravan Park, I have commented a couple of times on the erosion at the Maroochy River mouth.

One person has seriously questioned my conclusions about why the erosion is occurring. I suspect a few more of you have gone to have a look for yourself as a result!

It is not my purpose here to defend my own conclusions - you can make up your mind about that!

The whole point of the illustration was that so often in society we see a big obvious undeniable problem. However, it seems so intractable - nothing seems to work because there is a basic problem somewhere else, another issue to be addressed first.

Jesus linked closely together the issues of loving God and loving our neighbour. When asked about the most important commandment, he said it is to "love God with all we've got" - as someone has put it - and immediately added that the second most important commandment is to love our neighbour as we love ourselves (Mt. 22.37-40). If our love of God is genuine, it will lead to practical love of neighbour. If we fail to love our neighbour, there is something wrong in our love of God.

You can have your own theories about the Maroochy River erosion. I still think it is "upstream" to do with the flow of water around Chambers, Goat and Channel Islands. But I am sure of this - many of the problems that we face personally and in the life of Church and nation are generated "upstream" by a failure in our relationship with God.