A few weeks ago I decided that I should go see the movie, “Christopher Robbin”. The movie had been on my list of things to go see this summer. Every time I had the opportunity to see this movie I found something “more adult” to do. With the right price in Gladbrook and the hankering for popcorn, I finally went to see, Christopher Robbin. Let me say, as a child Winnie the Pooh was not a book in our household. Winnie was a cute bear that sat on the shelves at the store and that was the extent of my Pooh knowledge. I did however like Piglet and Roo. When I was in college one of my friends spoke often of living to be 99 so that he wouldn’t have to see the passing of his friends that lived to be 100. In seminary a friend often would send me a note of encouragement from Pooh. Earlier this summer as I was reading about the rise in teen suicide, run aways and those who are bullied, there was reference to Eeyore. You know the donkey, the one that doesn’t have much energy, always finds the negative side of things and yet, as this article said, “Eeyore is the one character in the Pooh books that everyone accepts.” Eeyore is accepted and is surrounded by his friends despite what some would refer to as his negative qualities. Yes! Eeyore is the one that challenges us to stay around him, to hear his wisdom and to slow us down from the everyday rush we seem to be in. So how does all of this fit into our Christian life? I am convinced that God puts every person into our life so that we can learn to be tolerant of others. We can accept different thoughts and together we can learn how to live in this world with all our differences. Jesus and the disciples encountered people different from them all the time and continued to reach and teach those different from themselves. I am convinced now more than ever we are all called to reach out to our young people who are demonstrating their independence with hair color and clothing choices, that the middle aged people are sharing their true selves by the amount of homelessness and/or lack of commitment. I challenge, even myself to find our similarities rather than our differences. As a story goes, an older woman was in the grocery store when a younger man walked past her. Just about the same time the woman dropped a can of vegetables. The young man, marked with tattoos and earrings calmly stopped, picked up the can and handed it to the woman. Her response was a bit shy, she thanked the young man and then said, Young man, who taught you such nice manners?” The man replied, “You did when I was in the second grade! ” In a frantic world I believe that God calls ALL of us to listen to ALL people, to be patient with everyone that we encounter and as I learned from the movie from Pooh and company, we all need to take time to enjoy the people and situations around us, we grow up too fast and get too busy to prove ourselves to others when God, like Pooh and company accept us just as we are. If we but look around and say, “O Bother!”

“Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God.” Romans 15:7