Revd. Canon Michael Woods

Team Rector Great Yarmouth Parish

 

Walking up the stairs of 10 Downing Street with our Member of Parliament Tony Wright, (as one does!) I noted the portraits of all the Prime Ministers on the wall. They were arranged in ascending order of time with the earliest at the bottom and the latest at the top (Tony Blair). What gave me pause for thought was realising that the people who have been Prime Ministers during my lifetime are all by the last six stairs before the top.

 

 

Each of them had taken their place in a long procession through history. Our modern times, which we think so important, are only a small part of that extensive chain of decision making. As each one of them was once ‘now ‘ so each has become ‘then’.

 

 

I have often had the privilege of saying something at the end of a person’s life and research reveals that, in their time, each of them have made their own unique contribution to the world and the people around them. They leave no portraits on the wall - just photos in an album maybe. Their time has come and gone. A space in which to live and work which will one day have its place in history. A gift from God to use in alignment with his creative purposes or against them. This is our responsibility as great as that of any Prime Minister who ever lived.