Meeting of the Parliament
Meeting date: Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Official Report
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Time for Reflection
Good afternoon. The first item of business this afternoon is time for reflection. Our time for reflection leader today is the Reverend Michael Philip of Bainsford parish church in Falkirk.
Rev Michael R Philip (Bainsford Parish Church, Falkirk): Thank you for the invitation. I commented to the Presiding Officer just before we came in that it is just as well that Joanne Clinton asked me to send in a text of what I was going to say. Otherwise, I might have talked about loving your enemies, after what is happening down in the other Houses of Parliament.
I have in my hand a somewhat large screwdriver that I have never used. It was made some 50 years ago in the Carron Company when steam was still the king power. My father, who worked there, asked me to keep it in my toolbox as a reminder—but as a reminder of what? Well, he called the screwdriver his “Willie McGill” because that is the name of the person who made it.
As my father put it, Willie was not the most academic person. He would never have got a university degree. He might have scraped a couple of highers, but that is all. However, the Carron Company would have been much poorer without him. Why? Willie was a craftsman. You could describe to him a tool that you required. He would go over it with you and, once you were happy that he knew what he was doing, he would say, “Give me a couple of hours,” or however long he thought it would take, and he would go off to the workshop and produce it. He produced this screwdriver for my father. With no computer-aided design, Willie just changed the mental image that he had been given into something that was required in the foundry. He was not the brightest star in the sky by any stretch of the imagination, but he could certainly shine in some ways.
This raised questions in my mind. How do we value a person? Some people are obviously more gifted than others, be it in the fields of academic knowledge, sport or the like. Jesus told a story about that. We find it in the parable of the talents. I will give a brief précis of it and update it.
A manager had three folk of different abilities working under him. He knew that he was going off on a business trip, so he gave the three guys something to look after. One got £5,000, one got £2,000 and the third got £1,000, because that was what the manager thought they were able to look after. On the manager’s return, the first guy reported that he had used his £5,000, invested it and made another £5,000. The £2,000 man said that he had used his £2,000 and got another £2,000. The third guy, realising that he had been given only £1,000, put it in a bag, dug a hole and buried it in the ground. He did not even trust the banks. He knew where it was and he knew that, when the manager came back, he could give it all back to him.
On the manager’s return, the first two got equal rewards for what they had done. They had started off with different amounts but they used them equally well and gained more. The third guy, who had been given the £1,000, lost the lot. It was taken from him and given to the guy who had got £10,000. Why? Because the first two used what they had to the best of their ability and they worked well with it. The third one just moaned about how unfair life was and did nothing.
That raises questions in my mind. How do we evaluate people? Do we look at them and say, “They’re not academic— they won’t get a university degree,” or, “They’re not worth while”? What do we see in people? Do we see potential in them or not? The final question that I put to us all is this: how are we using the talents that we have been given?
Thank you.