Thought for the Day

24 AUG 26

At last, a few showers. They’ve never been more welcome in this strange, uncomfortable, record-breaking summer. Day after day of sunshine, held fitfully at bay by air conditioning on overtime, cooling drinks, and the drawn curtains which to an earlier generation would have signalled a community in mourning.
Today they might be reminding us of lost gardens, parched lawns, and blazing hillsides, threatening some homes directly, and sending a choking warning over great distances.
At the same time, the heat has taken a grim toll among people seeking to cool off in rivers, lakes and at the seaside - this week a couple and their 14-year-old daughter in the sea off Shoreham, in Sussex. Understandably there’s been a huge outpouring of sympathy.
The emergency response included coastguards, lifeboat and ambulance services and police, and I think it’s good to pause occasionally to honour men and women who give themselves to rescue services of all kinds.
Leading the battle against the wildfires across the country, of course, have been firefighters. We marvel at their willingness to get up close, putting their own lives in jeopardy. How they must sweat before those flames, wearing their heavy protective gear, as conscious of the risk they’re taking as the volunteers crewing a lifeboat in a stormy sea. And how their families must share the anxiety.
I believe the would-be rescuers reflect something of the character of a God who is also in the business of rescue – often getting people out of scrapes of their own making. It was while we were still helpless, powerless, says St.Paul, that Jesus Christ died for us.
There’s regular debate about how we should treat people in difficulties because of what they’ve consumed, knowing it could harm them. Within the rescue services, I suspect there’s occasional irritation, anger maybe, at those who put themselves at risk needlessly…sailing the channel in bathtubs, attempting to scale serious peaks wearing flip flops. But those who’ve trained for this mission still do it, because they might be the only hope.
On a glorious sunny day sixty years ago, I ventured into the sea from a popular beach in Jersey, with big waves and wonderful surf. Hardly a swimmer at all, I was soon in trouble. Currents I knew nothing of sucked me under, and no matter how I fought, I was helpless. I really thought I would drown….before I was fished out by a team of lifesavers, feeling shaken, foolish and very grateful, one of a dozen rescued that day.
It’s not how I usually put it, but I understand why some people finding faith in Jesus talk of being saved. I’ve been rescued, and I’m glad today’s rescue services remind me.

21 AUG 26

20 AUG 26

What does it mean to erase a woman? You don't have to kill her. You can simply make her invisible. Tell her she can’t get a higher education, she can’t work freely, tell her where she can go, who she can speak to, and how loudly she can speak. Eventually, you don't need to silence her because her absence has been made normal.
Five years after the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan, women and girls have told the BBC their lives are unrecognisable under the rule of the regime. The Taliban's foreign minister, Amir Khan Muttaqi, was asked by the BBC about education for girls in Afghanistan, to which he replied that "it is not correct to say everything is banned for women", "Women are not totally restricted on all walks of life... Only one small part (of their affairs) is restricted until further notice."
And while there is some disagreement within the Taliban as well as condemnation from many Muslim voices and organisations, those who rule say they are doing this in the name of Islam. But a government that needs to control the movement, clothing, education and voice of women in the name of morality, a morality that requires women to disappear isn’t showing strength; it’s showing fear dressed as piety. Because often across all faiths, religious authority which says `We know what God wants’ always conveniently discovers that what God wants looks remarkably like what we want. And that’s why gradually the word woman is ignored from the Qur’anic verses which speak of the moral agency of “the believing men and believing women, the devout men and devout women, the truthful men and truthful women.”
Today the women of Afghanistan have become a political and theological test. But perhaps the most dangerous thing is the possibility that the world will eventually become accustomed to it. Because oppression has a final victory. Not when people are silenced, but when their silence no longer disturbs us.
And yet despite all of this, many women tell the BBC, `One day, everything will change... but we must continue with patience, and we will not lose hope." A government can close a school, it can close a university, it can close a woman's workplace but it can’t destroy the future she imagines.’ In the words of the Afghan poet, Nadia Anjuman, who wrote in her poem `My Garden’: `I will trust the meaning of hope, I will shut the door on grief and find another path.’