Thought for the Week

The Revd Mark Smith

Vicar of Rawdon

Minister with Deaf People in the Diocese of Leeds

LAST night I went to turn on a light in the downstairs WC and it crackled, went and went "Phut"! The lights went out and I knocked over several items searching for a torch. I reset the circuit breakers and the house lit up, except for the WC. What a nuisance! The group in my house for a meeting tonight will have to use the upstairs loo or I'll have to light candles. And I need to organise getting it fixed (its an LED unit with no bulb to change) and all while I am not feeling very well. What a nuisance!

A few weeks ago I took a short holiday to the Gambia. Like many sun seeking visitors I was staying in the tourist area near the coast with sunshine and very nearly (but not quite) all mod cons. But it only took a short walk leaving the tourist guides to find the shanty town back streets with kids living in dirty streets with open sewers.

A trip upriver took us to villages of people living in primitive huts with mud floors with no electricity and no lights at all unless they could trade the few goods they could grow with hand tools for enough kerosene.

I have four adult kids who have had an education from nursery to college or university. But here were parents who had to chose which, if any, of their kids they could have a couple of years of education.

I am annoyed when the bus arrives 15 mins late. Whereas they are lucky to have a bus at all.

I remembered how I complained about having a bad tooth and about having root canal treatment over Christmas and how grumpy the long wait at the hospital or the doctors can make me. Most of these folk can't afford any medical treatment at all!

I started to realise how rich I really am!

In our church on Epiphany Sunday we have just been celebrating some wealthy, well educated, travellers (the magi) visiting a family forced to have a baby in a rough shelter they shared with the animals just before they became refugees, and also carrying expensive gifts way beyond the aspirations of that family! I wonder if, when they went home, they had any similar thoughts and feelings to those I had returning from the Gambia!