Christmas Consolation

Fellow Labourers-

My wife and went to the U.W.I hospital today (26/12) to look for the sick known and unknown. As I was about to turn into the gate I had a flashback of last year and had to resist the feeling of melancholy that was about to descend upon me.I started remembering the oft visits day and night, and I suddenly felt fear. But, on entering the hospital compound I felt a bit of consolation because the car park was near empty. Even though this could be a false sense of hope my eyes communicated to my brain a message of consolation.


As we walked holding hands and sharing we could not help but notice the quietness, and emptiness of the surroundings. There was a car park with not even one vehicle. Even the spaces marked for doctors and nurses were noticeably empty. The wards we saw were also noticeably empty. There was a sense of joy all around. As we exchange pleasantries with some of the staff I felt the seasonal change in their attitudes. Oh how I wish that it should continue through the year.

Permit me to quote from John Donne's "The Bell Tolls." "No man is and Island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Eurpoe is the less, as well as if promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. Neither can we call this a begging of misery or a borrowing of misery, as though we are not miserable enough of ourselves, but must fetch in more from the next house, in taking upon us the misery of our neighbours. Truly it were an excusable covetousness if we did; for affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man has enough of it. No man has the affliction enough that is not matured, and ripened by it, and made fit for God by that affliction. If a man carry treasure in bullion, or in a wedge of gold, and have none coined into current moneys, his treasure will not defray him as he travels. Tribulation is treasure in the nature of it, but it is not current money in the use of it, except we get nearer and nearer our home, heaven, by it. Another man may be sick too, and sick unto death, and this affliction may lie in his bowels, as gold in a mine, and be of no use to him; but this bell, that tells me of this affliction, digs out, and applies that gold to me: if by this consideration of another's danger, I take mine own into contemplation, and so secure myself, by making my recourse to my God, who is our only security."

Pax Vobiscum

Robert Stewart