RADIO
LEICESTER THOUGHT FOR THE DAY
©
John Denney, 12 SEPT. 2000
I was working in
London yesterday (and came back with a cold!) and got back to
London Road Station earlier than I expected, a little after five
o’clock. But I still got home about the normal time.
And the cause of the traffic delays was motorists queuing up for
petrol. It brought back the time a little under thirty
years ago when we suffered the petrol crisis, and we sometimes
had to queue for a couple of hours and even then we only got a
measly four gallons. The government even issued ration
books to us all, though they never came into effect.
That time, it was
the oil producers who caused the shortage. This
time, it’s the hauliers and farmers and taxi drivers and
others who are blockading the refineries in order to impress on
the government their view that it’s the government’s
own fault for jacking up the price of petrol through excessive
taxation.
Now (he said
smugly) I filled up on Saturday before the crisis. I
felt a bit like those wise maidens in the Bible who kept their
lamps filled with oil so as to be ready if their bridegroom came
elope with them in the night. But my self-congratulation
turned a bit sour when I found I had to pay £50 for a tankful
that’ll last me about a week. And about forty quid of
that is tax.
The Bible tells
Christians they must cheerfully pay taxes - even petrol taxes -
properly levied by the government, because that’s part of
the government’s job. Of course, there’s another
side to that: government ministers will be accountable to God for
how just they have been in their exercise of power. That’s
an awesome responsibility, and I hope that those we elect to
govern us bear it in mind.
To finish,
here’s a story about a couple of nuns, who ran out of petrol
one day out in the countryside. One of them trudged off to
find a garage. When she found one, they didn’t have a
spare petrol can for her to use, but eventually the garage owner
found the only container he had – an old potty his children
had long ago grown out of. She filled it with a couple of
litres of petrol and trudged carefully back to the car. She
was just pouring from the potty into the tank when a farm hand
passed by, driving a herd of cows. “I don’t share
your religion, sisters,” he said, “but I certainly
admire your faith!”