Last year at this time I wrote about the Festival, but ‘been there, done that’, so this time I looked for another prevailing activity in Westbury community and was immediately confronted by ROADWORKS.
A sense of outrage hovers over us. At least ‘they’ have managed to dig roads up for the drains before tarmacking them this time. We like nice smooth roads devoid of potholes, but we do not like the inconvenience of ensuring that we have them.
We accept that eating our own home-grown fruit and vegetables sometimes involves disagreeable activities or inconvenient schedules, and we rejoice over new babies, but pregnancy is not always unalloyed joy.
So what is it that makes us so angry about the road works? I think it must be rooted in its being out of our control and unavoidably imposed on us, but that’s life, isn’t it? I think this is a matter of how we see life. If we have an overall picture of being persons created by God as part of his creation, and of God being essentially Love, then we can believe that his love of us ensures that we are kept from ultimate harm. But bear in mind that the cost of things being set right between us and God was the particularly unthinkable death by crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth, believed by Christians to be God’s son. In some way we can’t fully understand his death overcame Death, and he rose to new life so that we are offered eternal life too, as a love gift from God.
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” John 3.16.
Lynette Weekley, Holy Saviour Church.
