Watching and listening to the actress Liz Smith on the Paul O'Grady show tonight I remembered that like her I was enabled to answer my call late in life.
She found herself on the stage; I found my self on the brink of ordination; she at 50; me at 40.
Which calls to mind another thing - we each are called to some specific task in God's economy; no one of us should regard another's work with disdain. We are all called; God will enable us!
Though the lawns need cutting and the lilies dead-heading, the gardens and surrounding fields are shewing signs of approaching winter.
The great straw cart wheels stand like pre-historic monuments and the shears with long handles have arrived from the mail-order garden shop so the overgrown ramblers are about to be attacked with vigour.
When everything gets in this state I think about the countryman leaning on his front gate when the vicar greeted and congratulated the man on the beautiful state of his garden. He closed by saying, "God has been very good to you giving such a great garden". "Ah", replied the countryman, "but you should have seen it when He had it completely to himself".
It has been a long time since I last blogged.
The reason is that we have just had a bruising encounter with part of the NHS. Foolishly we thought that when we felt ill and went to the doctors that we would be treated with kindness and compassion. It don't work like that. The bureaucrats that actually run the NHS surgeries pay more attention to form than the substance and are skilled in hitting a sick person when he or she is down.
Not only that but they act as prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner in their own cause.
However we have come through the ordeal, bloody but unbowed, and now want to forgive and forget the whole experience. So here's to New Labour and all its targets and penalties.
We shall not be moved...etc!
