Dear Friends,
One writer said that it “shines out like a good deed in a wicked world”. What was this heroic and unusual deed, you may ask? He was referring to an event in the recent cricket match between England and India. For those who understand cricket and know what happened, it won’t need repeating. For those who don’t … don’t worry!
The key details are that an England player was given out by the umpire when the India captain asked. According to the rules, the player was indeed out, but the incident was opportunistic and possibly unsporting. Both teams then stopped for tea (one of the true delights of this most English of games!), during which the India captain reconsidered and asked for the England batsman to be reinstated – it hadn’t felt right.
Here was a man acting according to his conscience, an example of the ‘common grace’ that God gives to all people, where they show that “the requirements of [God’s] law are written on their hearts” (Romans 2:15, NIV). Someone has written that, “We human beings are a mystery to ourselves. We are rational and irrational, civilised and savage, capable of deep friendship and murderous hostility, free and in bondage, the pinnacle of creation and its greatest danger. We are Rembrandt and Hitler, Mozart and Stalin,…” While rightly deploring the evil we see in human beings, let’s not forget to rejoice in the good that remains, even after the Fall, of which this was one tiny but shining example.
Chris Hobbs,
Vicar.