About the author: Sandra was a much-beloved core member of our congregation. She was diagnosed unexpectedly with a serious illness in January 2021 and died shortly afterwards. We still miss her very much.
The other day I was sorting through some old books and came across a
book by Graham W Hardy (titled “Another Minute Please”). Graham was the
Moderator of the NSW Synod and came to our church for a service in May
1981. Something Sue said in this morning’s service brought to mind this piece in the
book.
This book was published in 1979 and I feel still applicable to today’s
happenings!
“You in your small corner, and I in mine.
As never before, we are being steadily forced out of our
corners. Insularity is unrealistic and inhuman in a shrinking world,
where two out of three may have a struggle to exist and half may be
illiterate. Even in our own street, far more heartache is concealed that
we might ever guess.
Yet the instinct is to wash hands of responsibility, to say, in effect,
“each man for himself” Cain tried that tactic when God questioned him
after the first murder. Too late he discovered that he was his brothers
keeper.
Certainly we cannot avoid being our brother’s brother. Brothers have an
obligation to share blessings and to show compassion.
John Donne speaks from the seventeenth century to the twentieth:
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the
continent, a part of the main…Any man’s death diminishes me, because I
am involved in mankind. And there never sent to know for whom the bell
tolls; it tolls for thee.
O God help me to feel responsible for those I am reluctant to
recognize as brothers in your family.”
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