Ridley Lent Book Reflection

At Ridley we were all asked to write a piece for the yearly Lent book. I chose the reading from Luke 10:29-37, the parable of the 'Godd Samaritan', this is my humble reflection:

Have you ever been ‘moved with pity’? If you’re anything like me, you may have felt sorry for a poor small furry creature, bewildered by your car headlights, so you swerve to miss it and let it live to dice with death another day. Or maybe you’ve felt a pang of guilt when images depicting starving kiddies in a far off country crept up on you during the ad break of your favourite sit-com, so you ring the number, give a few quid, feel good about yourself and get back to your show.

But what about real pity, the kind of loving-pity that grabs you and moves you with compassion? The pity of the Samaritan that the Worldwide English New Testament describes as wanting, ‘to share in his troubles.’

One summer I was in Malawi with my fiancée and her mother. Speeding along an empty highway we came across a horrific accident, an overcrowded minibus had driven off the road and flipped over into a ditch. It was chaos. My mother-in-law-to-be leapt into action and began to organise and attend to victims, but I froze with fear. All I could think about was the blood and the prevalence of HIV, Aids, Malaria and Hepatitis. Pity was the furthest thing from my mind.

Jesus teaches us that to be a neighbour is to be moved with pity and into action. To see the battered bloodied individual as not just a problem; cross barriers of prejudice and fear; get our hands dirty; allow the stranger into our personal space; and give generously of our time and money.

Lord,

Help us to be true neighbours.

Greetings everyone from Sunny Cambridge. We've been back for over 2 months now although sometimes it feels like we've never been away! Tim has started college and I'm back working at the school I was previously. Our blog has been severely neglected so for any die-hard bloggers, you'll be able to catch up. Now where was I....



So we went back up to the North Island and had a wonderful last week. We had amazing weather whilst in Roturoa and went on a tobogon run which Tim professes to be the best adrenalin N.Z. thing he's done. I however managed to fall off whilst children zoomed past me on the all age 'safe' run. Sarah (my sister) and I went zorbing which is basically like tuning into a hamster and running in a giant ball down a hill. And then we headed further north to the Coromandel. We had the most beautiful clear blue skies and though it was meant to be winter it was lovely nad warm. We spent out time on the beach digger monster sand castles with the kids, and then there was the massive hole...

There's a place called hot water beach where you can go and dig a hole to create your own spa pool. Due to the thermals in the area the water is schorching hot and all you have to do is fill it with a bit of cold to get the temperature right. The important thing to know, if you ever happen to go, is that the thermal area are very localised and so you have to check where they are before you start digging. You can just feel them if you put your hand on the sand. This is the imformation my sislter forgot to tell us untill after tim had dug his big hole, in a cold area of the beach. anyway, some Japenese tourist had inherited a boiling pool from some previous tourists and so they let us share there's after laughing at ours. The amazing thing is our was about a meter away and too cold to stand in, there's however was too hot to stand in!

The last day in the coromadel we spent visiting cathedral which was just the most beautiful day and I'll let the photos do the talking.

Our penulatamute weekend in New Zealand was spent with some of Sarah's friends and us in a beach house complety isolated. It was very relaxing with Tim trying his first attempt at fishing and spending most of our time on the beach. The landscape was really beautiful and it felt that there wasn't a care in the world, no need to rush. And then before long we were transported to the hustle and bustle of Hong Kong.