Radio
Leicester Thought for the day
©
John Denney, 10 August 2001
I’ll bet I know some things that you don’t know. For instance, today is the anniversary of the birth of some people who were very important, at least in their own back yard. Happy birthday to John the Blind, King of Bohemia in 1296; Peterus I Scheemaeckers, a Flemish tomb stone sculptor, in 1652; the composer Franz Joseph Leonti Meyer von Schavensee in 1720; Michail M Soschtschenko, the Russian author, in 1895; Arthur Porritt of New Zealand, who won a 1924 Olympic bronze medal in the 100 metres and was born in 1900; Fred Ridgway, the England fast bowler born in 1923; and Keisha Delancy, Miss Turks & Caicos islands and Miss Universe born in 1973.
And on this day, we remember the deaths of Erik IV Plovpenning, king of Denmark, who was murdered in 1250; Kinjikitile "Bokero" Ngwale, the East African rebel leader, hanged in 1905; Ivor Dean, British actor in 1974; and Arias Arnulfo, 3 time president of Panama, in 1988, among many others.
I told you you
wouldn’t know about them. To be honest with you, I
hadn’t the faintest idea of the existence of any of these
people until I looked up what happened today in history. Nary
a one of them means anything to me at all.
Yet, every one of
these people had a mother and a father who loved them. I
don’t know if they had children, but if they did, no doubt
those children loved them too. And they had friends who
cared about them and who were saddened when they died. And
their children and their friends remembered them and perhaps told
their children and their friends about them. And
so the memories of these people, and what they were like, and
what they did, was passed down until – well, there’s me
telling you about them. And that’s a sort of
immortality.
One of God’s commandments – one of His rules, if you like - is to honour our father and mother. And that includes remembering them after they have gone. Few of us will go down in the history books, but we will be remembered. What sort of person will your family and friends remember you as? Dearly loved, or soon forgotten?
The
apostle Paul said: Remember this: Whoever sows
sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously
will also reap generously. [2 Cor 9:6]