Wednesday 15 October 2014

Ancient and Modern Blog action14 #inequality#oct16

Throughout the ages God has spoken about the poor, in the old testament he set out laws to protect and provide for them. Deuteronomy Ch 15 V7 tells his people to be open handed to the poor and to lend freely, and in the seventh year to wipe out any debts that were owed them. In Psalm 72 V13  says God will have pity on the weak and needy. And in many other places it tells how God thinks about the poor, he loves them and always wants his people to help and love them.The laws about the poor were like the social services of their day, but because it was law to do these things, people resented having to keep these laws.

When Jesus came he brought in a new Covenant of grace and he wants us to keep these laws because we want to. In Luke ch4 v18 he says The spirit of the lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach the good news to the poor. he has sent me to proclaim freedom to the prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind, to release the oppressed, toproclaim the year of the Lords favour. Then he said today that scripture is fulfilled.

So again god is telling us how he feels about the poor.So today he asks us to care for the poor, it is not only the Governments work but every one of us, especially our Churches. We are seeing the churches now stand up and say yes we will strive to fulfil Gods heart for the poor.

We are seeing food banks filling the need where their is a gap in social services payments, leave people without  money to feed their families. People come in tears because their benefits have been stopped for various reasons. Christians against poverty is another  church based charity which is helping people to budget and learn how to cope they are supported every step of the way until they become debt free. The people then rejoice and are so grateful for the help they have received. It is good the church is responding in this way.

What about the benefit system, they are cutting people's benefits to the disabled, the elderly, those on Job seeker's allowance, but worse is the way they treat people, everyone is treated has been dishonest until they can prove otherwise. Some people feel so degraded that they won't ask for help'

Often you see them living rough on the streets and even then the Police will move them on has they don't want homeless people in there area. During the winter months an organisation called Snowdrop is providing night shelter for some of those people in Church buildings, where again Christians are welcoming them in a non judgemental way. They are provided with a bed and supper and breakfast in the morning.

We all know that monet is short today, but we can all be kind and not judge the poor, they often feel that society shuns them, and speaks unkindly to them. But think no one knows whaat is round toe corner for us, some of these people are well educated but things have gone wrong for them. So perhaps we can all make a difference on some small way every act of kindness is so appreciated. So please when you come across these people have compassion for them and trea them with dignity, we all deserve that.



Thursday 9 October 2014

Our time in Staithes

When I was about ten years old, my family used to open up a cottage in Staithes which was in east Yorkshire, for the season, it belonged to my mothers boss ,so we got a free holiday and then we went at the end of the season to close it down for the winter.
Usually my Grandmother would go and take my brother and myself, we would take a train to Whitby and then travel by service bus the eleven miles to Staithes, it would drop us at the top of the road down to the Village it was very steep and we had to carry our cases down it was about a mile into the village . The cottage was the last one in the village , it was called Mispah, and was built into the cliffs. It was painted white has were most of the houses.and nestled into the cliffs, their were steps on the outside which led to what we would today call a patio,and it was level with the bedroom I slept in,
We loved our time there and got to know the locals really well, it was a fishing village and the local fishermen would go out in an old cobble in all weather's , they would sit right outside our cottage mending their nets . They would also take us out on the boat we would all go including sandy the dog, he would sit at the front loving the spray that was thrown up.
Their was a sea wall about six feet above the sandy beach and we would play jumping off and the local kids would measure how far we'd jumped. Then we would go for walks in the country lanes , or sometimes on the cliffs we could walk for miles and we passed a deserted village and harbour it was called Musgrave. and then we would continue it felt quite eerie we would imagine stories of sailors being lost on the rocks the north sea could see quite violent storms and many of the local fishermen had lost their lives .
The local women wore bonnets which were called the Staithes bonnet a lot of them wore black after losing husband or sons to the sea others wore purple bonnets after a year of mourning had passwd the children would wear white one's has sun bonnets. The village had a very narrow winding road and a footpath would take you to the other side of staithes where the beck flowed and eventually joined the sea , this is where the lifeboat house was, and there were a few cottages and has you walked round the corner you would catch the sea throwing up its spray when the tide was out we would play on the rocks and tried our hand at fishing for tiddlers,
I remember one year my mother and aunty came to visit, and they went to the local public house which was called the cod and Lobster you could stand in front of it and the waves would try and snatch you away, Evidently the public house had been washed away more than once. But i thought my mother was going straight to hell going in there and when they came back they talked of having a Pimm's, of course I had no idea what that was but I think I prayed for my mum to be rescued from this demon drink..
One day I decided i would try and climb the cliffs at the back of the cottage, so I went from the patio and started climbing it didn't look very far but i soon got into difficulty and was hanging on like grim death when some fishermen had seen me and rescued me, after that i was told it was out of bounds.
but they were some of my most memorial times has a child.



Wednesday 24 September 2014

Kenya's hidden hospital part two

'Come now I show you the hospital we have to walk has their are no roads'.
So we set off, the country was very mountainous and the heat was tremendous we were soon struggling has we climbed and slithered over the paths. ' How do you get people to the hospital if they are too ill to make such an hazardous journey'.
'their families carry them, people here are very strong with the life they have to live..
We eventually reached the hospital, we looked down on an array of make shift buildings , it was quite extensive and obviously was well used their were queue's of people waiting to be seen. Joseph went off to find the Doctor in charge. He came back and said he was busy operating on a patient but wouldcome soon. But he told Joseph to show us round. He took us to see the wards, it was like going back fifty years, the equipment they had was long outdated, i remember when I started my training in 1961 we were shown examples of some of the outdated methods of treatment, and these were being used here in 2002 . Also the beds were bare with no linen on them Joseph said their was nonmoney for niceties, I wouldn't have called bedclothes a nicety, patieents were curled up on the beds, a lot were suffering from Malaria, which I always imagined that only westerners suffered from, but no the locals got it too and they had no money for Drugs to treat it.
We saw pregnant mother's waiting for antenatal treatment, and some were dying from Aids. Nurses were few and Joseph said they worked long hours,some of the relatives came in and did whatever they could.
They were many waiting for urgent operations but money and man power was so limited.
The doctor then caught up with us and told us how he had trained in UK and then came back to help his countrymen. He was the only Doctor and was also the Administrator. 'this is my life I do what I can, but it is never enough, no never enough'
We asked what we could do to help, 'We need money for Drugs and equipment and we need more nurses and Doctors'.
We were quiet on our way back, we vowed to come back and try and bring something to help. We will never forget what we saw, we begged our employers for medical provisions like syringes and catheters urine bags and blood transfusion giving sets, which had gone out of date but were still usable in third world countries, The Doctor was very grateful ,but if only we could do more, If i was single i would have gone and worked there,
Joseph told us the doctor was absolutely dedicated to the hospital. In the tourist areas the hospitals are very good but in these local areas it is a very different story .

Tuesday 16 September 2014

safe as houses Part one second part next week

Our holiday in Kenya was superb, we went has a family, their was my husband my daughter and her 9 year old son. we had done all the normal tourist things but this was something different.We had made friends with the hotel's motivator,that is a person who organises the visitors entertainment and encourages them to join in the various pastimes on offer.His name was Joseph and he had been telling us he was building his own house.Whenever he earned enough money he would buy bricks and other building materials and  build a bit more of his house. It sounded a long process to us but he was obviously excited about his achievements.

So he had said he would take us to see it has well has is parents house which they had built on the same plot, which they had inherited.He said he would also take us to the local Hospital has ha knew that my Daughter and myself were nurses.He said the hospitals serving the local community were far different to the ones in the tourist area's

So off we went in a Matuto which his like a camper van with benches in it they are used has local buses, they just cram the people in and maybe the occasional goat.
He had brought another man to drive the matuto he was called Amos I was a little nervous has we had never met Amos before and you hear such stories of tourists being abducted, but everyone else seemed perfectly happy about it so I kept my thoughts to myself.

We travelled for about two hours we passed through a few villages we saw men with clothing spread out on the ground with people around them Joseph explained these were gifts from tourists and instead of wearing them like the tourists intended, they were selling them so they had money to feed their families, so the tourists were really helping to  feed the poor.
They came to a village green their was cattle eating the grass and roaming round, we saw another Matuto with people piling into it and also farm animals and goats snd even hens were also being loaded onto the bus.
'We go to my house now,' Amos got off in the village, and Joseph took over driving
 we were soon at the complex .
His parents came out to greet us, such lovely people.They offered us a drink which we gratefully accepted after the long drive in the heat of Africa,They led us to a grassy area in the centre of the complex,There were palm tree's  and they just shook them and coconuts showered down, which they took and hit them with stones to open them then they passed them to us to drink the milk, never have I tasted coconut milk with such flavour. and the flesh of the coconut was  exquisite.
Joseph then explained their was a river at the bottom of the complex and that is where they got their water from.
Come he said ,I will show you my house first he showed us his parents house which was a great feat for amateurs he then showed us his own which was only partly built but we could see it shaping up.
'You like' he said
'Yes you've done a marvellous job'.he beamed he was obviously very proud of his achievement.
and so he had but we would have puled holes in it like there was no proper sanitation  they had a bucket at the side of the toilet. We asked about Electric
Oh no, only rich people have electric
My Grandson said but what about Television
Joseph laughed 'No television here '
'What do you do all night '
'We talk and play games'.
'Ooh ' he said 'What about cooking'
'We have a cauldron in the middle of the complex we cook there It is dry most of the year except for the wet season.
Life there is so different from our own but they are happy and thankful for what they do  have.

Tuesday 22 July 2014

The Reckoning based on a true story


She stared at the little crosses
they had been placed where her family had died,
they had been made to dig their own graves
then pushed into it and buried alive.

She had managed to creep away, and hide
she ended up in Canada a far away place
her foster parents were good,
but she longed for her own Mother.

She remembered the soldier laughing,
now was time to visit him
how would he explain his actions
following rules, ah but he was laughing.

She was told to forgive, but how could she
every night she relived the horror
she had run away and hid
while her family cried and died.

He was married with children now.
But for her she could never love again
Love was too painful,she cried at night
oh the anguish, oh the hate in her heart.

Now they sat across the table from one another,
he spoke of his shame, has his tears flowed
she saw he had suffered too
And then God gave her the grace to forgive.

Monday 14 July 2014

Prostitute's deserts

'Well he didn't really kill the first one, it was just an accident.he backed her up to the platform and she fell onto the rail and was electrocuted.They'd had an argument about him smoking on the platform. He ran off but the police caught him.

'but the second one was murder, he'd gone into this bar and  got into an argument with a prostitute and he just lost it, he saw red and hit her, she went down like a sack of potatoes. She hit her head on a step and it cut her head open. it was a terrible sight they said. The police were a bit rough with D an, probably because of the other incident, he was out on bail for that. It's a shame really, his wife was barred from the local supermarket she'd probably been shoplifting'.

Cheryl was nodding 'Yes a right pair them two are and the kids just run riot, if you say anything to them you get a right mouthful'.

'I wonder what will happen to them, probably better for them if they go into care',said Sadie.'It will be better for the neighbourhood', she laughed.

They had met Dan and his wife Juliette at a barbecue last summer at a neighbours house.They had been the life and soul of the party,but their kids were a menace charging round on their bikes and nearly knocking people over.
Dan was covered with tattoo's  he looked really menacing, but she was quite pretty. They both drank too much and it wouldn't surprise me if they were on drugs, you hear about these sort of people.but later when they met they always spoke to them, tried to be neighbourly like.
Well it seems last year Dan had been out with this prostitute, and Juliette found out and she went berserk and threatened to castrate him and well what she would do with her wasn't quite what you talk about if you know what i mean.

Well the barmaid was a friend of Sadie's and she told me what happened, it seems he went into the bar and that prostitute was in there.She started mouthing it off about him and Juliette and he just went mad and hit her, she let out a scream and just crumpled like a concertina, blood was everywhere she'd hit the step and blood spurted right up the walls it just looked like a massacre. He stood with a look of horror on his face, I don't think he meant to kill her but it just happened. The police were called and he still just stood there with a gormless look on his face. The police wouldn't let anyone go till they'd questioned them. it was awful.

She said I'd never seen a dead body before it was unreal one moment she was mouthing him off and the next moment she was on the floor, she gave a funny gurgling noise and then she was still, her looked to be at a funny angle and her eyes were staring like saucers.It was awful I'm still having nightmares about it.

Sunday 6 July 2014

Did God really say !

sorry about last week had digital problems.

I just read about someone being told by god to move to a new location and the doubts that came in ,well I remember in 1986 we believed that god was telling us to move away from our home location in west Yorkshire UK we looked around and went to bible weeks in a different area and wondered about moving to Dorset but nothing opened up job wise, so we carried on praying and looking. At the time i had a mother with dementia in a residential home i spoke to the staff there who reassured me that she no longer recognised me and didn't like to be taken out has she became panicky when we tried. So with the reassurance that it was the best time to move . My children were teenagers the eldest said she would stay with her Grandfather and my younger daughter was at grammar school and insisted on staying with her friend whose family were in the Church, so we thought she would be alright.Our son was only fourteen so he would come with us.

Still wondering where god wanted us but feeling more and more we were in the wrong place I was  looking in the window of the Job centre in Bradford when I saw a post advertised for a deputy matron at a Nursing Home in Hastings East Sussex.I knew I was qualified to do the job has i was a Registered general nurse and had been nursing the elderly for some time. So after a discussion with my husband I applied for the post, I was successful has the owner came from Bradford and wanted some of his staff from that region, it also came with a three bed roomed flat looking over the sea it sounded perfect, but we had to make sure their was a church there similar to the one we were presently in So we decided to go down for the weekend my husband .found out their was a church in Hastings which was part of a group called coastlands and the Leader in charge of it was known to us so we contacted the one of the Elders and he arranged for us  to stay in a cottage owned by one of the members. It was beginning to feel right. We went down and explored the area and was really delighted with it, we then visited the Church and we just Knew it was right we were invited out for lunch everybody were so friendly. The cottage we were staying in was delightful..

So it happened in January 1987  we moved to Hastings we had to sell everything we had so we arrived with no car but a caravan not that useful without a car The enemy kept whispering are you sure god said But we were there the flat wasn't ready and we just laughed they put us up in a bed and breakfast .hotel which was not very good, so we managed to stay in the cottage we'd stayed in when we came to look.
The next morning their had been a snowfall and all the buses had stopped so for my first morning I had to walk to work, and the enemy kept whispering in our ears, but we believed it was the right move.
We got our son into a school and my husband found a job and eventually the flat was ready.
Our eldest daughter came down but said she would return every weekend, but of course she didn't Then My other daughter came down after she had finished her Exams she eventually got a place at Guy's Hospital to do her training.My Eldest daughter started at Hastings college for catering My Son had learning difficulties and went to special school he eventually left and started working in the home has a kitchen assistant and later has a carer.
So twenty seven years later we are still in the area and in the same church We have been cared for and well shepherded God new what he was doing .