Thought for the day – Tuesday 14th April 2020
Isn’t it fantastic the way the country is pulling together to heap their praises on all the care staff who are working tirelessly, often at risk to their own health, in their vocation to use all their skill and energy to save lives and restore health. The outbreak of applause throughout the nation, and the flow of food, drinks and good wishes into the hospitals and the care homes is a true sign of God’s grace in action.
As head of a minor professional body, I have the privilege of supporting some 1500 clinicians whose calling is less understood than the angelic nurses and the heroic doctors. Between them, they contribute to the care of around 2m people in the UK whose lives are enriched by the power of modern hearing aids. People who rely on the technology and their audiologist to enhance their ability to engage with the world around them, despite the loss of acuity in their hearing.
With a small team around me, including a truly inspiring society president, I’ve spent countless hours every day for the last two weeks engaging with other leaders and policy makers to ensure that those 2m people can still have access to the care they need so that social distancing does not become total isolation if their aids fail or they can’t replace batteries, condemning them to a soundless world. How can essential care be provided within the imperative of social distancing, especially given that the majority of wearers needing care fall automatically into the vulnerable, maybe even the shielded group needing protection from the virus in the outside world? How can we protect the half of those professionals whose total livelihood is at risk as their business implodes? How can we sustain the utmost clinical professionalism in a world of which we have no experience? How are we sure by 7pm at the end of our daily conference call that our fatigue is not forcing us to make the wrong choices, when some of the group had been on the go since 6 that morning for the tenth day in a row? As we try to make sense of the 30th policy document issued by the government that day, have we missed a critical sentence?
Reading Exodus 18:9-26,
Jethro was delighted to hear about all the good things the Lord had done for Israel in rescuing them from the hand of the Egyptians. He said, “Praise be to the Lord, who rescued you from the hand of the Egyptians and of Pharaoh, and who rescued the people from the hand of the Egyptians. Now I know that the Lord is greater than all other gods, for he did this to those who had treated Israel arrogantly.” Then Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, brought a burnt offering and other sacrifices to God, and Aaron came with all the elders of Israel to eat a meal with Moses’ father-in-law in the presence of God.The next day Moses took his seat to serve as judge for the people, and they stood around him from morning till evening. When his father-in-law saw all that Moses was doing for the people, he said, “What is this you are doing for the people? Why do you alone sit as judge, while all these people stand around you from morning till evening?” Moses answered him, “Because the people come to me to seek God’s will. Whenever they have a dispute, it is brought to me, and I decide between the parties and inform them of God’s decrees and instructions.”
Moses’ father-in-law replied, “What you are doing is not good. You and these people who come to you will only wear yourselves out. The work is too heavy for you; you cannot handle it alone. Listen now to me and I will give you some advice, and may God be with you. You must be the people’s representative before God and bring their disputes to him. Teach them his decrees and instructions, and show them the way they are to live and how they are to behave. But select capable men from all the people—men who fear God, trustworthy men who hate dishonest gain—and appoint them as officials over thousands, hundreds, fifties and tens. Have them serve as judges for the people at all times, but have them bring every difficult case to you; the simple cases they can decide themselves. That will make your load lighter, because they will share it with you. If you do this and God so commands, you will be able to stand the strain, and all these people will go home satisfied.”
Moses listened to his father-in-law and did everything he said. He chose capable men from all Israel and made them leaders of the people, officials over thousands, hundreds, fifties and tens. They served as judges for the people at all times. The difficult cases they brought to Moses, but the simple ones they decided themselves
None of my tale is about bragging rights, or holier than thou stories. It is about a small group of leaders making decisions they have never wanted to make, in circumstances they have never encountered, whose decisions and guidance and edicts directly alter the lives of maybe a thousand colleagues, who in turn offer life changing care to a few million. It is more than this. It is that we know, and everyone else in a thousand similar groups also knows that whatever we produce will raise a few cheers, but attract vitriolic hatred. It will be too late. It won’t be clear enough. It should have been consulted more widely. There is accusation of self-interest and personal greed, claims of bias, and downright ignorance The knives are out and there is no compassion or kindness for those who lay their necks on the line in a desire to bring order out of chaos, to bring clarity out of confusion, to bring reassurance to counter the fears and anxieties. Colleagues weep at the enormity and consequence of the decisions they do not wish to make, and they hold inwardly the pain of the verbal attack they know will come. This is the reality for a small, insignificant group of dedicated leaders far from the thick of the truly big decisions.
How much more is the anguish burned in the faces of those genuinely at the centre of the most devastating decisions in a century: people who are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. Those few whose detailed knowledge of the options is too painful to share, whose window on the future is simultaneously obscured by a thick mist, but with moments of clarity that are potentially full of indescribably horrific images – the stuff of recurring nightmares.
Love them or loathe them for their politics or the consequence of their decisions, these are people as socially isolated and lonely and distanced from every normal source of comfort as the people they are seeking to protect in their shielding and isolation. Like Moses, they need Jethro’s words: “Now listen to me. I will give you some advice. I want God to be with you. You must talk to God for the people.” (Ex 18:19). More than anything, and as much as those front-line workers, those leaders everywhere need your gratitude and your prayers no less than those we so readily admire and applaud. Even when we are diametrically opposed to their decisions, perhaps especially when we are, we must heed Jesus’ words “to love our enemy and pray for those who hurt you: if you do this, then you will be true sons of your father in heaven” (Mt 5:44-45) They need people of all persuasions to stand up to the trolls and the purveyors of hatred and condemn the petty and infantile bullying and vitriolic blaming if we are to come through this tragedy with God’s peace and love in our hearts.
David Welbourn