D is for DIFFERENT

Tom lived about two hundred yards from my home, at the bottom of a steep hill, in a small cottage with his mum, dad, three brothers and three sisters. He was just a year younger than I and somewhere about the beginning of my teenage years, we struck up a friendship. His mum and dad were already friends with our family and they had lived in the area for longer than I care to remember. Just another two hundred yards along the main road and up another hill, stood the old stone house, surrounded by trees, where his grandmother, grandfather and uncle lived and which I used to visit on a regular basis.

We had similar interests, especially in music and would sit listening to records for hours or shared the singles or LPs we had bought. He was a big fan of T. Rex and together we lived through the Glam Rock period of the seventies. Often we would go for bike rides during the summer, aroung the country roads near our house or hitch a lift into town to visit the local swimming pool. Other times we just sat about, maybe perched on a gate top or a tree or on the pillars standing at an entry to a disused house. Then in the evenings we would jump over the fence into the field opposite his house and, along with his brothers, have a kick about for an hour or so. But as the years passed, so we drifted apart, not because of any disageement or fallout but simply becasue we were different in the only way that seemed to matter in our province at the time, for he was Catholic and I was Protestant. And our middle to late teenage years took us in different directions more and more until we rarely saw each other. I don't recall an exact time when it happened, for it was a gradual process as the two communities found refuge and companionship more readily within their own boundaries and, to be honest, our lives after school had taken us both away from home for several years. But our two families remained firm friends, able to respect each other's traditions and overlook our differences and recently, within the past four years, Tom and I have met on several occasions, mostly at family bereavements and the ease with which we still get along is evidence that the bond we created so many years ago is still alive and well, despite our obvious differences.

I met Joel through a project linking our two schools together about eight years ago. His school was situated in a little village quite close to an impressive chateau in the Loir Valley and after some intitial contact and communication between wife and I and our French counterpart, he came over with another teacher to visit our school with the goal of eventually bringing over some of his pupils to stay in our neighbourhood. Eventually that dream became reality when about twenty French children spent a week visiting the sights of our country and spending some time in our school and a year later they returned the favour when they became our hosts for a week in June and arranged accommodation and trips for our children and staff. It was a wondeerful experience at the time but it did highlight how different we were as individuals and as schools. Joel was a charming host, but often preoccupied with his job and his thoughts, so he seemed to smoke continuously and was never truly at ease. His school was similar to ours though they didn't have uniform and lunch time just seemd to last for ever. Our biggest problem was communication and though my wife spoke French fluently, neither Joel nor I had the same grasp of each other's language and so our conversations were often a mixture of English and French - a sort of Franglais that neither of us completely understood but allowed us to talk, if even in short, rather stuttering sentences. I remember walking back from the Giant's Causeway to the bus together and both promising that we were going to make a bigger effort to learn each other's language so that our conversations might become more meaningful and longer, but in truth, it never happened, because eventually our official link with the school ended and though we still make very occasional contact, there is no need to pursue our language studies. Strange though the fact that he was from a Catholic background never became an issue regarding our differences.

And maybe that's a sign of change beginning to happen in our country for now our minds are less occupied with religious differences when we meet someone and more likely to be wondering about their nationality. In recent years, it is quite possible to go into our local village shops and larger town stores nearby and not hear any accent sounding remotely from these islands and usually you don't have to travel too far to find a shop which caters for the specific nutritional needs of those we now term 'foreign nationals' . Yes, our differences are now much more diverse than before and religion is no longer the yardstick by which we asses our neighbour. Maybe at last we are starting to move forward.

Which is a good thing really, because in essence we are all the same, despite our different languages, cultures, religions and nationalities, for Paul says in Romans 3 verse 23 that 'all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God' and in writing to Timothy, states 'we have put our hope in the living God, who is the Saviour of all men.' With God there is no difference, we are all sinners and we all require the same salvation. And there is no other way, no different way to heaven except through a saving faith in His Son, Jesus Christ.

MInd you, when we take that step of faith, then we are different for we have a different mindset, a different journey and a different ending. TIme to settle your differences.