A Happy New Year to all our “Record” readers. I hope you have had a good Christmas and the New Year has begun well for you. Between Christmas and New Year our hospitals have been ‘under pressure’ as you will have no doubt read and heard elsewhere. While doing my ‘hospital rounds’ I have been acutely aware of how the winter, the flu and other illnesses have taken their toll on our members and those who care for them in hospital or at home. Pressure it seems is all around. “Pressure that brings a building down, splits a family in two, puts people on streets. It’s the terror of knowing what the world is about.” Under pressure. Few of us can go through life without experiencing pressure at some point or another.
The challenge of course is always how best to respond to pressure. Do you give in? Lie down and simply give up? Or do you fight back, get up and keep on going?
I suppose that depends on the circumstances.
Shortly after New Year, I experienced a small degree of pressure myself. Our dog, Mack who is now 20 months old, is an escape artist. He loves nothing better than to sneak out the front door and tear off down the street (off the lead) with me in hot pursuit. I always seem to be the one playing the retriever part!
Having escaped, I chased after him, to his obvious delight. In an effort to curtail his doggy activities I lunged at him to catch his collar. Instead with speed and power he simply knocked me into the hedge where I landed on all fours, my glasses landing on the grass beside me. As he passed me a second time, to his immense indignation I clutched a clump of his rear flank which stopped him in his tracks and I was able to get him back into the house, Not before my neighbour came over to help me, who observed that my forehead was bleeding profusely (from the hedge), and where were my glasses.? On the ground, but thankfully not broken. Under pressure.
The challenge of course is always how best to respond to pressure. Do you give in? Lie down and simply give up? Or do you fight back, get up and keep on going?
I realise this element of pressure I felt was minimal, and as I write this my experience is now quite comical. But as we approach our February Communion, I am reminded when under pressure; I find the words of Jesus hugely comforting and helpful,
“‘Come to me, all who are weary and whose load is heavy; I will give you rest.
‘Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me,
for I am gentle and humble—hearted;
and you will find rest for your souls.”
St. Matthew 11:28—29