Meeting of the Parliament
Meeting date: Tuesday, September 18, 2012
Official Report
767KB pdf
Time for Reflection
Good afternoon. Our first item of business is time for reflection. Our time for reflection leader this afternoon is the Rev Gus Macaulay, the minister at Knightswood Baptist church.
The Rev Gus Macaulay (Knightswood Baptist Church, Glasgow)
Thank you, Presiding Officer and members of the Scottish Parliament.
On 17 December 1927, while the American submarine S-4 was resurfacing off Cape Cod, Massachusetts, she was accidentally rammed and sunk by a coastguard vessel. Immediately, rescue efforts were made to save the souls on board. As US navy divers listened to the side of the hull, the same question was being tapped out by those on the inside over and over in Morse code: “Is there any hope?”
When I speak to the people in Knightswood, I hear that same question being asked again and again, by the woman who lives alone in the nearby high flats, the asylum seeker family trying to make a new start in our community and the young family doing their best to make ends meet: “Is there any hope?”
Well, is there? When Jesus walked among us, he brought hope into people’s lives, to the outcast and the downcast, to the poor and the broken and to the needy and the hungry; so much so, that when people reflected on who he was and what he did, they described him as a light in the darkness.
But is there hope today? Well, I believe there is, and you have the privilege of being part of that answer. You have the privilege of making decisions that bless people and give them opportunities and something worth striving for that gives them hope.
I was once in Galway and asked for directions from an old gentleman to a place in town. After he struggled to tell me the way, he said, “Look, if I were you, I wouldn’t start from here!”
When we think of our social, political and economic circumstances, maybe we would not start from here, but here is where we are, and since we are here in the midst of these circumstances, let us give the people hope; not a false hope of pipe dreams or a phoney hope of soundbites, but a hope that is real, a hope that is tangible, a hope that is something worth living for and striving for and working for.
We serve a great nation. Let us in our different ways, but together, make our nation even greater, and may we give the people hope. As you do that,
May the Lord bless you and keep you; may he make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; may he lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. Now and always.
Amen.