Thankfulness Arrives - After 63 Years!

Every weekday morning up to September 12th, 2015, or at least nearly every weekday morning throughout our then sixteen years of marriage, just before rising, I ask my sleeping wife in bed next to me: 

Would you like breakfast, dear? Or more realistically: Breakfast?

When she normally answers in the affirmative, often with a sleepy hum which tone I can interpret, I then utter a groan:

Doh! Another day to face! - As if such was another day on the battlefront, in prison, or attempting to teach, without much success, a class of rowdy and verbally abusive pupils while at the same time forbidden by law to keep a cane in my desk drawer, as many staff members did half a century earlier.  

No, it was none of these. Rather, as one self-employed and depending on my own initiative, and without a boss to tell me what to do, or to cover for me if anything goes pear-shaped, to set out to the street I'm currently working in to ensure that I return home that evening with enough cash in my bag to keep our stomachs full, to keep our bodies clothed, to keep a roof over us, and to satisfy all creditors.

A bowl of Malted Wheat for breakfast is ideal for both of us.

And so, a typical morning in the life of a window cleaner. Hoping for a smooth sail - or ride - whichever way you interpret, sometimes it won't be as I hoped. The bright sky allowing sunlight to stream through our bedroom window looks so inviting, thus, doubting the day's forecast. But soon, clouds gather and eventually, the heavens tip a heavy shower over our locality. Then the customer comes to the door with the announcement that she does not have her windows done during wet weather.

No payment coming from that house, then.

At another property, the front of the house had received a facelift with a sloping roof built beneath the two front bedroom windows. One way to reach them was to stand on the recently-wetted roof tiles and risk a slip and a fall to the ground - very much like the accident that occurred in September 1997, which was exactly what happened, fracturing my right shoulder and ribs, and also causing a small wound on the scalp which dyed the whole of my hair blood-red and puddled the concrete step where I landed. After five days in hospital, I had to take a further two months off work with my arm resting in a sling.

With further wrestling with the weather, it was business as usual. Whether we had rain, snow, fog, wind, or warm sunshine soaking my shirt with sweat, by the grace of God, I managed all 35 years of it. And this includes the unexpected - a client messing around whilst deliberately delaying payment or even giving me a bag full of pennies, losing customers due to the sale of their property, or being made redundant, a death of an elderly pensioner, or disputes - usually about payments - that can so unexpectedly arise. There was even one occasion when this thirty-year-old asked me to take a tight screw out of the wall of his property after struggling unsuccessfully with it. I climbed up his ladder and turned it without too much difficulty. But was he pleased? Rather, I became scum, a target for his expletives! Oh well, busting egos wasn't meant to be part of the job.

Then you wonder why I said back then, I have another day to face.

However, retirement wasn't all a sense of relief as I first anticipated. Rather, I was suddenly aware that I had just turned a page in my life book. More than that, a chapter ended and a new one begins. A chapter that is titled, 

A Pensioner.

A pensioner. Whenever I imagine a pensioner, I tend to visualise an elderly gentleman and grandfather with wrinkly skin and thinning white hair, stooping forward as he relies on the support of his walking stick, trembling as he slowly makes his way on his three legs. And now, I'm one - a pensioner. Yet this isn't a definition of a mere elderly gentleman. Rather, he is defined by his income - the money he receives to live on. The same money as a wage, salary, or even benefit, but this one with another name, the one which defines old age.

A pensioner I might be, simply because the income I receive is called a pension. But, thanks be to God, I bear no resemblance to the elderly gentleman I had described above. Instead, I could pass myself off as in my forties or fifties. I need to be. My current job is to love and look after my partially-disabled wife. Thus my need for regular exercise and sensible eating. I suppose there is no such thing as retirement in a true sense of the word, at least for the Christian. Rather, I merely changed jobs.

But this changing of jobs has brought a whole new dimension in my perception of life, and that is, to be thankful for each day God gives me. It's to be thankful for the appreciation of the finer things in life - the benefit to serve Christ in a way by giving to those in need, whether time, money or even both. And to appreciate God's mercy. And I'm talking here about the rollout of the vaccines for inoculating against the virus. 

Since I see the vaccine rollout as a wonderful act of God's mercy, I grieve when I hear about or read of some of the stuff put out by anti-vaxxers. I am aware of at least four people, all of them Christians, three of the four are women, one of them giving an almost convincing argument that this worldwide vaccination programme is the forerunner of the coming Antichrist, and therefore paving a way to receive the Mark of the Beast described in Revelation 13 - even though each jab has no resemblance to what is written in the Bible.

This kind of false news which anyone can write on Facebook can be frightfully convincing to anyone not fully acquainted with Holy Scripture. But the vision to get a vaccine out to combat Covid-19 as soon as possible was shared among middle-aged, professional women, rather than by men in suits.

Soon after the outbreak of the pandemic early in 2020, a 45-year old Cambridge graduate, Maddy McTernan, spent a night at her desk negotiating for contracts with firms such as Moderna, Novavax, Pfizer and AstraZeneca for millions of doses to be made and delivered to the UK before even one vial was produced. Sarah Gilbert, Teresa Lamb, Annette England, and Kate Bingham were the pioneers for the development of these vaccines which would, I hope, eventually free us from the grip of the pandemic.

And so, God's mercy works through these people and all the teams of scientists involved in developing such inoculations against the various strains of the pathogen. But instead of giving thanks and glory to God for such mercy shown, many, and Brexiteers in particular, began to act with aloofness against the EU, when a lack of proper coordination and fearmongering among its leaders has set the EU into a disadvantage when it comes to the vaccine rollout across the Continent.

As this arrogance begins to make itself felt, with Brexiteers going as far as laughing at Europe's misfortune, such statements appearing especially on Facebook, what I have found as a comforting rebuke, also on Facebook, is taken from Proverbs 24:17-18:

Do not gloat when the enemy falls; when they stumble, do not let your heart rejoice, or the LORD will see and disapprove and turn his wrath away from him.

The trouble is, English Brexiteers has acted arrogantly against Europe and gloated over its failures. And such evil attitudes are also found among Christians, who should know better. This can make it difficult to fellowship with them. It takes a greater effort of the Holy Spirit at work within to stay friends with them, to do them good and to show hospitality. But as long as this gloating is kept up, sooner or later the tables will be turned. Although God is God, and his thoughts are higher than our thoughts, and his ways than our ways, it still may not be too difficult to fathom out what might happen in the future.

And that, the EU vaccine rollout will eventually accelerate until the disease is brought under control, alongside a growing economy among member nations following the end of the pandemic. In turn, although Britain might, by then, have brought the virus under control, its economy might suffer as a result of the new trade tariffs affecting imports and exports of goods, along with the dispute affecting the borders with Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic, and perhaps a further collapse of its interior economy in one way or another. And who can guarantee that The Troubles will never restart? Or be free from the threat of international terrorism? Indeed, with such fears, everything has always looked to be so fragile. 

And such fragility of emotions had reared its head again only this week when two presenters of BBC Breakfast, Naga Munchetty and Charlie Stayt, made a gag against Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick on the morning of Thursday, March 18th, 2021, regarding a British flag and a portrait of the Queen, both on display in his studio. I never watch these chat shows at all, as they tend to be a drag and boring, but I couldn't help take notice of the fuss surrounding this incident, right in the wake of the Meghan/Winfred scandal. Then, in today's edition of the Daily Mail, I read of Amanda Platell's tirade against the BBC as a whole for allowing these two to "lambaste" Jenrick.

The word "lambaste" is a pretty strong word to use for what was meant to be a lighthearted joke. But all this shows a fragile, eggshell culture of national insecurity. Platell goes on to say that there is no other country where its citizens poke fun or criticise the presence of its own flag.

Perhaps I can see what she means. Having visited both the USA and Australia, I saw that both take great pride in their flag. In the States, its Stars and Stripes flies from the flagstaff of every administrative building, while in Australia, the image of the Southern Cross Constellation with the British Union Jack at one corner reveals the pride the Aussies have in being one in the Commonwealth. I recall one morning when I stayed at a hostel at the Queensland resort of Hervey Bay, which is also the launching pad for ferries to nearby Frazer Island, the world's largest sandbank. It was here where I asked to cash a US$ Traveller's Cheque. I was almost to the point of being told off for daring to request for such transactions on the Queen's Birthday, which, Down Under, is a public holiday. Fortunately, I had my credit card at the time, which bailed me out from a sticky situation. Then my friends wonder why I'm sympathetic towards Republicanism!

It's so unfortunate that the English St George's Cross had been taken over by far-right extremists, who tend to fill football stadiums with their racist chanting against non-white players. Relegating black players to the level of monkeys is an insult as a direct result of Darwinism, itself having grown out of England's fertile soil.

Naga Munchetty

Being in such a state of mind on a national scale seems to have made any joke or comment against patriotism something of a threat to the nation's wellbeing, as did Meghan Markle's accusation of racism in the Royal Family. Just as Piers Morgan's loss of temper over that incident, so Munchetty's crack at Robert Jenrick's flag had rocked Amanda Platell's boat.

Perhaps 2 Chronicles 7:14 may provide a worthwhile piece of instruction for this sorrowful state of our nation: 

If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.

"My people" refers to the people of Israel who were under the reign of King Solomon. But this verse can be applied at present to the Church, itself a nation of born-again believers who are meant to be devoted to Jesus Christ. To my mind, the behaviour of some of these Christians, especially those who voted Leave, was and still is, appalling.  

Reading the Old Testament book of the prophet Daniel, chapter 9 and verses 4-19, provides an excellent template on what intercessory prayer for our nation should consist of. It is worth patterning our prayers to this template and with thanksgiving for God's goodness and mercy, bring our intercessory prayers to God with a sincere heart.