This is the script of this morning’s Pause for Thought on BBC Radio 2’s breakfast show with Zoe Ball.
I don’t know about you, but the summer gives me a bit of space to get off the treadmill and reflect on questions like: why do I do what I do … and in the way that I do it? I think back to what has gone well and what has been disastrous or, at least, could have been better. And I see this as positive stuff, not miserable self-absorption.
But, this summer – I have just got back from a couple of weeks in Germany by a lake – all reflection has been overshadowed by the threatening stuff around us over which ordinary people have little or no control: energy prices, conflict on the continent, and so on. The next few months and years suddenly look more worrying and less certain.
It seems to me that there are two responses to this. One is to worry and get fed up with it all; the other is to join with others in doing something about it. Both responses are understandable, but the latter offers hope.
For example, a group of Christian organisations (along with other faith and civil society groups) have just launched a new initiative aimed at offering a warm welcome in local communities. This recognises that in the next few months and, possibly, years many people will face huge problems keeping their heating on and feeding their families. Already we are hearing stories of fear about what is happening. But, rather than simply assess the size of the problem, this initiative encourages organisations with building resources to provide places of welcome – warm, welcoming, safe and free of charge – for anyone who needs it.
So, many community groups are coming together to encourage this generous opening of resources in order to give people refuge. For Christians it is a response to the stark call by Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel to care for those in need – whoever they are: those who are sick, unclothed, hungry, thirsty, trapped. “I was a stranger and you welcomed me.”
At a conference this summer I misheard someone quoting Frank Sinatra’s ‘Strangers in the Night’. I heard ‘Strangers in the Light’. ‘Warm Welcome’ chooses not just to curse the darkness, but to light a candle by which strangers can see each other and become friends.
