I’ll let you into a secret: this column has to be written in advance, so I don't yet know the outcome of the EU Referendum.

Whatever it is, someone is bound to be disappointed.

In fact, judging by the tone of the debate, extremely disappointed.

Where do we go from here? If we disagree with the outcome of the referendum, how are we still to live together?

I suspect that's a more important question than who wins and who loses. Whatever our relationships with other countries we still have to live as one society here in the UK.

There will be the inevitable recriminations, but sooner or later (preferably sooner) we need to work out how best to make our nation work.

And to make it work for the benefit of everyone who lives here, not just for the ‘winners’ in this or any other contest.

It's back to the old teaching of Jesus, that we are to love our neighbour as we love ourselves. When people asked Jesus what that meant he told them the parable of the Good Samaritan.

We've taken the phrase ‘Good Samaritan’ into our language, but we sometimes forget that this was a parable with a twist in the tail.

The moral of the story isn't that we have to do good to people we don't like very much – instead the hero of the story, the Good Samaritan, is the one that people don't like very much.

We might find that the person who can help us most is the one we've most disagreed with in the political debate.

But that sort of mutual help and support across the political divide will only happen if we stay in touch with one another, look out for one another.

Which is another way of saying that we have to be one nation, not a divided country. Or as Jesus said, if we love our neighbours as ourselves, no matter how unlike us they happen to be.

Canon Sue Penfold