Despair … and hope!
Scripture
Psalm 71
1 In you, Lord, I have taken refuge;
let me never be put to shame.
2 In your righteousness, rescue me and deliver me;
turn your ear to me and save me.
3 Be my rock of refuge,
to which I can always go;
give the command to save me,
for you are my rock and my fortress.
4 Deliver me, my God, from the hand of the wicked,
from the grasp of those who are evil and cruel.
5 For you have been my hope, Sovereign Lord,
my confidence since my youth.
6 From birth I have relied on you;
you brought me forth from my mother’s womb.
I will ever praise you.
7 I have become a sign to many;
you are my strong refuge.
8 My mouth is filled with your praise,
declaring your splendour all day long.
9 Do not cast me away when I am old;
do not forsake me when my strength is gone.
10 For my enemies speak against me;
those who wait to kill me conspire together.
11 They say, “God has forsaken him;
pursue him and seize him,
for no one will rescue him.”
12 Do not be far from me, my God;
come quickly, God, to help me.
13 May my accusers perish in shame;
may those who want to harm me
be covered with scorn and disgrace.
14 As for me, I will always have hope;
I will praise you more and more.
15 My mouth will tell of your righteous deeds,
of your saving acts all day long—
though I know not how to relate them all.
16 I will come and proclaim your mighty acts, Sovereign Lord;
I will proclaim your righteous deeds, yours alone.
17 Since my youth, God, you have taught me,
and to this day I declare your marvellous deeds.
18 Even when I am old and grey,
do not forsake me, my God,
till I declare your power to the next generation,
your mighty acts to all who are to come.
19 Your righteousness, God, reaches to the heavens,
you who have done great things.
Who is like you, God?
20 Though you have made me see troubles,
many and bitter,
you will restore my life again;
from the depths of the earth
you will again bring me up.
21 You will increase my honour
and comfort me once more.
22 I will praise you with the harp
for your faithfulness, my God;
I will sing praise to you with the lyre,
Holy One of Israel.
23 My lips will shout for joy
when I sing praise to you—
I whom you have delivered.
24 My tongue will tell of your righteous acts
all day long,
for those who wanted to harm me
have been put to shame and confusion
Despair!…. And hope!
If I am beginning to sound like a scratched record, then I hope you will be encouraged by some new action I took over the last week, whilst certain pressures have been relieved a little. I have finally started to tidy up the “man-cave”, an upstairs room where I work and practise music, surrounded by all my “stuff”. The problem has been that the “stuff” has accumulated and no serious attempt has been taken to arrest its increase. So the hand-loom made for the family quite a few years ago by my father has now been set up in the cellar with all the paraphernalia that goes with it: shuttles, sheds, hanks, heddles, wool and winders!
Also moved to the cellar is my CD player with its 6 speakers that were attached to it, in order to create the “surround-sound feeling”. Clearly this was too much for the small room in which they were previously installed. As I ummed and aahed about whether or not I should buy the beautiful cherry-wood enclosed Roberts Blutune CD and Bluetooth-enabled player in the John Lewis store a few days after Christmas, Helen reminded me that the one I had been using previously was bought, at huge expense I might add, before Polly was born, 23 years ago. So, as she said “It doesn’t owe you anything!”. To give you an idea of its age and capability, it had a cassette deck, a mini disc player and a CD player all-in-one. It was from a time of transition when music-reproduction technology was already developing quickly. Cassettes have now virtually vanished, mini-discs never took off and CDs are now being replaced by streamed music. However, I still treasure my CD collection and will not now have to get rid of it, since going ahead with the purchase. Not so much a case of a scratched record, but a faulty CD reader which would only play about half of any new CDs I bought and whose cassette deck has all but given up.
So a new era has dawned: I can enjoy all the CDs I own, link up my ipod to the system via Bluetooth and have the benefit of the radio too. Now I have room to move into the bargain!
There is hope after all!
At the same time, I am trying to see through the despair of longing for something great to happen in our country and continent, through the glorious light of Christ’s coming to the world and the Epiphany of a new dawn where things will change for the better.
I maintain a hope that the light of Christ will shine on the dark places of the world and our country and continent and that we will not descend further towards cataclysm. However, I must admit to myself that things are not looking good.
As I look back at the election result, I struggle to make sense of what is happening in our once great democracy. How can this system of doing things be held up as a paragon of fair-play, an example to the rest of the world? Rather we have become the laughing stock of the world. A graphic produced shortly after the election showed clearly that for some parties, the number of votes required to gain a seat was hugely disproportionate. Yet who amongst the major parties would consider changing to a system other than “first-past-the-post” which continues to assure one of the two horses a place in the winner’s enclosure, with admittedly one of those panting exhaustedly as it stumbles across the line, the winner no longer in sight.
The electorate has clearly opted for a simple solution: leave the EU. The radical options offered by the other parties over a myriad of issues seems to have done little but confuse an already baffled voting population. Without wishing to put down the population of the country as a whole in any way, or to underestimate its intelligence, the people en masse seem to be swayed by issues presented in black and white, or perhaps better put, in unmistakable terms. So the scratched record is actually used as a tool of persuasion: the more people hear it, the more times they hear it, the more they will believe it. It is something like a subliminal drip-feed. Our current Prime Minister is the master of the sound-byte, but also highly adept at the gaff and, in addition, the carefully chosen words or catch-phrase which compartmentalise, categorise, criticise elements of our society. It has then so often become a tit-for-tat battle into which all players are drawn.
At least as significant is the power of the press/media in this country. This increasingly powerful weapon of persuasion is running out of control. An individual or group is violently vilified by another and is allowed to peddle untruths with impunity and there appears to be no end to it. How can anyone be expected to make sense of it all?
It is against this backdrop that the new government will wrestle to try and re-unify a Disunited Kingdom and quite clearly they will have their work cut out. The stresses and strains are already evident on the face of the UK. The position with regard to Scotland is dire and the call by the SNP for a second independence vote is not going to be silenced, even though the Government is implacably opposed to it. As attempts are made to re-establish the long-dormant Northern Ireland Assembly in Stormont, it is happening under increasing tensions as to what kind of border will be set up between the UK and the Republic/the EU, according to what kind of deal, or worse still, no deal will be reached.
Yet in the most hopeless of situations it seems there is some hope. For we are well past the eleventh hour, as far as our stewardship of the planet is concerned. One only has to consider the ravaging forest fires in Australia, where a lethal combination of a lack of rainfall, high winds and record temperatures, touching 45 degrees C in some places, even at this early stage in the summer, has resulted in an inferno which even Dante could not have imagined possible. My nephew Tom has just begun his third stint of work for the British Antarctic Survey, this time an 18-month contract at the Rothera base which will see him through the Antarctic winter. I feel it is only a matter of time before reports come back of the dire state of the melting ice-caps, which herald continued global warming at an alarming rate and the concomitant flooding episodes to which we are becoming more and more accustomed. For low-lying countries, this could really and truly threaten life on a huge scale.
The hope of which I speak is driven by young people, whom we ignore at our peril. Thankfully many of us are beginning to listen to them. For they often do not learn the skills of artifice, manufacture and obfuscation until they are much older. In other words, they speak with clarity, directness and passion about the threats to their future existence. Perhaps the most stunning example of this phenomenon is that of Greta Thunberg, the Swedish environmental activist. Over the Christmas period she appeared as guest editor on BBC Radio 4. Anyone who heard this young girl, still only 16, speaking with such confidence, poise and clarity cannot fail to have been impressed. As a career linguist I can fully appreciate her command of the English language, remarkable for one so young, but not only that, her ability to use the language as a means of gentle argument and persuasion is truly astonishing. Even more amazing is that until fairly recently this was a girl suffering from depression. Somehow she found a voice… and what a voice!
One can only wonder at the paucity of the reactions of such Presidents as Jair Bolsonaro of Brasil, who, unable to remember her name dubbed her “pirralha” (“little brat” in Portuguese) or Donald Trump who said that she had “anger-management issues” (now there’s one to talk!). Shame on both of you and all the others who have no ear to listen!
So I am grateful for the God-given light of Epiphany, where new ways of seeing and hearing his glorious word are revealed. There is no longer a scratched record, repeating the same sounds and words, but it is replaced by a new technology providing a different capability and an enhanced experience.
To conclude hear these words of the Psalm again:
1 In you, Lord, I have taken refuge;
let me never be put to shame.
2 In your righteousness, rescue me and deliver me;
turn your ear to me and save me.
3 Be my rock of refuge,
to which I can always go;
give the command to save me,
for you are my rock and my fortress.
4 Deliver me, my God, from the hand of the wicked,
from the grasp of those who are evil and cruel.
5 For you have been my hope, Sovereign Lord,
my confidence since my youth.
6 From birth I have relied on you;
you brought me forth from my mother’s womb.
I will ever praise you.
7 I have become a sign to many;
you are my strong refuge.
Peter Lambert – January 2020
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