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Good Morning. It’s because of my mother that I like to ask people who inspired them. After she and her parents fled here from Nazi Germany, a Christian family, the Micklems, welcomed them into their home for the duration of the war. When they eventually left, my mother said, ‘I don’t know how we can thank you.’ Mrs Micklem replied, ‘Our thanks will be that you’ll do likewise for others.’ These words have stayed with her, and me, and guided my family’s commitment to refugees ever since. Maariv, the Jewish evening service, contains an ancient prayer, 1st century or earlier, which touches me deeply: ‘I love you with everlasting love.’ The words refer to God’s love. But the Hasidic teacher Israel Ba’al Shem Tov brought that love down to earth. If ‘God is your shadow,’ he taught, quoting the Psalms, then God’s love for us is a reflection of our love for our neighbour. It’s a challenging counterbalance to the more common idea that our love must mirror God’s. For the Baal Shem Tov, making God’s ‘everlasting love’ real is our responsibility. On the news earlier this week I watched an emotional meeting between a newly qualified doctor Karim al-Jian, and the family of the British surgeon who inspired him to take up medicine. In 2012 Dr Abbas Khan had travelled to Aleppo, the city of Karim’s birth, to care for those wounded in Syria’s civil war. Captured by the Assad regime, and accused of terrorism for treating dying civilians, he was imprisoned and placed in solitary confinement. When his mother went to visit him, before his promised release to Britain, she was told he was dead. But his example survived, inspiring Karim, who was just thirteen at the time, to train as a doctor. On graduating, Karim - now Dr al-Jian - posted a tribute that led to the emotional meeting with Dr Khan’s family. The love we share need not die with us. It survives in some space safe from the corrosion of time. In another phrase from the evening prayers, it finds shelter beneath God’s wings. Through memories, connections, even the invisible legacies of people we never knew, love returns to inspire new goodness and kindness. It lasts forever. We make it our own through how we lead our lives. As Mrs Micklem said to my mother it’s what we do with the love that matters.
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