Lend me your lenses?

I had a strange experience once.

I went into Argos in the town centre7406795_6eb9a547fa_m and was looking at laptops on their little screen when a woman nearby, whom I did not know, asked to borrow my glasses.I said,Why do you want them?
And she replied that they would make the print bigger on the little screen.I said it might not be so as I am short sighted and the lenses makes print smaller and in any case I didn’t lend them out

.She seemed very angry like a toddler who has heard the word,No,for the first time.To me it seemed odd to ask a stranger such a thing.
When I was on the bus I was telling a friend who said she probably wanted to steal them.That never ocurred to me but it may be true.So beware.What next,my heart? Then I was thinking that my glasses were quite expensive and we come to the question of envy and whether it is ethical to walk around town in designer glasses.Because it might give pain to poorer people.She must have guessed I was a generous, soft hearted person but I would be in serious danger without them.

It seems very weird to expect someone you don’t know , outside, in public ,to lend you something so important to them.A tissue or even some money,maybe but not spectacles.

In Jesus’s time they were not invented so the Bible tells us nothing about the ethics of spectacle lending.So maybe I need to write a new book for the Bible discussing via stories this type of question.Imagine in those days they had no cars either or fridges…. so nobody could borrow them.I recall neighbours borrowing sugar when I was a child

2 thoughts on “Lend me your lenses?

  1. Probably innocent, especially since you were inside a shop – many people assume all glasses are ‘readers’. Always beware of people asking you the time – it can be to see if you have an expensive watch on your wrist, which their pickpocket accomplice will then target. I wear the cheapest plastic watch for the pleasure of seeing their disappointment 🙂

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