Thought for the Week

by Pat Reid

Associate Minister, All Saints Church, Ilkley

SOME young children were recently learning signing ready for an upcoming school concert. I realised that the concert was going to be led by the man who, as a young music graduate, had been the organist at the church I attended. Nothing unusual you say. Well indeed it was, because Paul is profoundly deaf. He played the organ wonderfully and for a period led the choir. He went on to found Music and the Deaf and now signs musical productions for deaf people. His life has included much adversity, but he has made an amazing contribution to deaf people by bringing to them joy in music. The young hearing children had a great concert, by the way, and gained greater understanding of others whose lives are challenged.

I thought also of a friend’s small girl who had been diagnosed with a degenerative disease that would take all her faculties in time. At the age of 12 and still playing her flute, although blind by then, she was taken to a concert given by Evelyn Glennie, a deaf percussionist. A visit behind stage to meet and play some percussion with Evelyn was a great joy for the little girl – meeting someone who had overcome her deafness encouraged the young girl on her increasingly challenging journey. She played her flute for a while longer and always loved music. Adversity!

Help the Heroes works with service men and women who have been injured in the course of duty, and we have seen on our TV screens many men and women determined to live a life of purpose despite injury and impairment; dealing with adversity.

For all of these, and others, the hurdles have been great. Our times of adversity are perhaps not on the same scale, although for some they are. There may be the death of a loved one, a serious illness, a frightening prognosis, a miscarriage, an unsuccessful IVF treatment. All are adversities, to be acknowledged and addressed; the pain is real and has to be worked though, but perhaps remembering the lives of others who have overcome difficulty will encourage us that there can be better times again.

George Matheson was training for the ministry and preparing for a joyful life ahead when he began to go blind. The girl that he had hoped to marry felt she couldn’t cope with a blind husband and left him. His world was shaken, but his faith in God wasn’t. He wrote the hymn O love that will not let me go. In it he expressed his faith, “O joy that seekest me through pain” acknowledging the adversity, yet able to look ahead and say, “in Thy sunshine’s blaze its day may brighter be”. For him there were brighter days ahead. May we on the dark days be able to look ahead to brighter times.