Dear Friends

As I write, the floodwaters of the Avon and the Thames are receding but the images of living rooms and gardens under water have left a vivid reminder that for many there will be a wretched time for months ahead struggling to get their homes and lives back into order.  They, and many others, will also be worried for what may happen in future.  Up on the Weald, flooding may not be such a worry; indeed, in this corner of Kent, we are extraordinarily fortunate on most counts even within the British Isles, while, on a world scale, any threats that hang over us look insignificant by comparison with drought and starvation, floods and fires, earthquakes and wars. 

Listening to some of the media coverage on the flooding, I was struck by the way in which people can be lured into thinking that anything can be changed, that all risks could be eliminated; commentators struggled to decide the balance between praise for the excellent work done by the public services and accusations of failure to do more at an earlier stage.  It sometimes seems that we expect our governments always both to have the potential to solve all problems and never to solve any! 

Yet we live in a society of amazing complexity, able for the most part to rely on a wide range of services which depend upon people doing their best to do a good job.  However selfish our genes may be, whatever the terrible things that humans will do to one another and our shared environment, we also have the most amazing capacity for co-operative and self-sacrificial behaviour, shown vividly in crises like the Avon floods, but also visible day by day in our own villages and homes. 

The willingness of neighbours to help each other out is a starting point for any human society and is embedded in our systems of insurance, which can be traced from syndicates of traders in China and Babylon through Greek and Roman friendly societies dealing with health and life insurance to the sophisticated marine insurance which became focused on Mr Lloyd’s coffee house at much the same time as the establishment of the first buildings and fire insurance company in the aftermath of the Great Fire of London in 1666. 

But no amount of insurance can remove all anxiety, and none of us is free from worry for very long.  For each of us, there will be issues that we are concerned about and threats can come from outside or from within ourselves; they may be sudden or they may be expected, old or new.  Change can be hard; and the start of the new academic year brings big changes for those involved in schools and colleges and their families that may be stressful.  Fear is a natural and helpful human response to a potential threat, a motivator to thought and action, but we also need confidence in ourselves and people we can trust if we are to turn it to our advantage.

Confidence, trust, faith: not always easy, and more easily destroyed than created. Faith offers help on two levels: at the deepest level, the confidence that in the end, in the words of Julian of Norwich, “all shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well”; but at the immediate level, the reassurance and assistance that can come from trusting others, whether strangers or friends, and finding that we are supported, that others will put themselves out to help us.

Faith is worth nurturing; children flourish in an environment of trust, and so do adults.  Every instance of kindness and loving care is another encouragement to faith, a chance to build up what can so easily be knocked down by accident, ill will and care-less-ness. 

Yours in Christ,

David Harmsworth