Radio Leicester Thought for
the Day
© John Denney 12 June 2001
It’s an
exciting time in Leicestershire right now, at least
architecturally. Leicester City have lined everything up
and they’re about to start work on the new larger football
stadium. It’s been a saga of more stops than starts so
far, but at last the Foxes are going to have a stadium worthy of
their Premier status in this 21st Century. The
National Space Centre is almost ready to open its doors. What
a privilege for our City to have the best space facility in
Europe, and what an opportunity for jobs and tourism. And
Conkers, the new Centre in the National Forest, with its building
a strong contender for European Building of the year, recently
opened. Three fine public buildings befitting a county that
has had more than its share of architectural disasters over the
years.
It’s not
so much the good and interesting buildings that have been
demolished as the tawdry cheapjack buildings that so often
replaced them that have diminished the cityscape. It is important
for people to be proud of their environment, and buildings
matter. But people need to feel a sense of ownership of
public buildings too. You don’t spray your own wall
with graffiti; you don’t break your own windows; you
don’t uproot trees you’ve planted yourself. Good
buildings give us a sense of nobler things.
Too many of us
feel cut off from the privileges and responsibilities of
citizenship. That’s partly why the voting turn-out
last Thursday was the lowest for 82 years. “What’s
the point? It’s nothing to do with me. I
don’t count.”
However, the Bible reveals that we are uniquely valuable to God. He had each one of us in mind right from the first pico-second of the Big Bang, when He said “Let there be light”. And because He could see how we stumble around making a mess of things, He sent Jesus to show us the way to lives overflowing with happiness. A key teaching is to care for each other, even people who are our enemies. The Good Samaritan, who looked after the man who had been mugged, came from an enemy nation.
Last week it
was reported that Mazen Joulani, 33, a Muslim pharmacist, was
shot dead in Jerusalem, probably in revenge for the suicide bomb
that had killed 21 Israelis in Tel Aviv. And his family
donated his organs to the Israeli transplant system for
transplant, and three Jewish lives were saved as a result. That’s
true nobility – and Jesus would approve.