— Midweek Meditations:
thoughts, inspiration and encouragement
from ACF community members —
Last week we heard about Eric Liddell. This year there has been a lot of top-level sport to watch. The Euro 2020 was rescheduled to this year, the Tour de France was held at its regular time in July this year and the Olympics are being currently held in Tokyo, also moved from last year. Watching top-level athletes compete is always amazing. Even more so if you watch a sport you yourself take part in: professional marathon runners run the marathon twice as fast as I did! Or consider the cyclists that cycle over 3000 kilometers in the 3 weeks of a cycling grand tour. I would find it hard to do that in a few months let alone 3 weeks!
There are other places where people’s talents are also seen, such as the music played on Sunday In church. My children have recently practised for online music concerts and taken their music exams. It amazes me that they can play tunes when I would barely manage to get out a note!
Whilst watching a programme on TV I was reminded of a poem that I use to read to my children when they were younger. It firstly reminded me of the complexity of writing a good text and secondly of what we wish the next generation to become.
If
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:If you can dream – and not make dreams your master,
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)
Or walk with kings – nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And – which is more – you’ll be a Man, my son!
Freiburg Anglican Church 