Faversham Times: Thought For The Week
Published 4 October 2012

I used to love Tom and Jerry cartoons. A particular favourite was one called ‘That’s My Mummy’. A stray egg rolls from the nest of a mother duck sleeping in a barn and slips under Tom. The egg hatches and the naive duckling (Quacker) immediately assumes that Tom is his mother. The cartoon follows Tom’s attempts to eat the duck, foiled as usual by Jerry. In the end, however, Tom has a change of heart and adopts the duckling as his own child. He playfully leads Quacker across the nearby duck pond, with “mother” and son quacking away at each other.

Now I was a strange child, and I remember thinking how sad it was that the duck hadn’t learnt who it really was. It had no idea it wasn’t a cat and never discovered it could fly – it was forever grounded. And if you had wings, why wouldn’t you want to fly?

Having faith is all about remembering who we really are. The Bible says that humanity is made in God’s image. That must mean we are capable of more than we imagine. Have we forgotten our true identity? Jesus’ mission was to remind us we belong to God and to make it possible for us to fulfil our potential. I think this is what Jesus meant when he talked about giving people “life in all its fullness”.

I for one don’t want to settle for second best like Quacker- waddling through life when I could soar!