We were woken abruptly last Sunday morning (8th May) just before 5am by a horrendous sound outside. We currently live opposite a building site and the main road has been closed to through traffic for the last five days, so the loud crash and grating noise outside caused us to wake immediately and look out of the window to see what was happening. There was little to see from our bedroom window, except noticing the cones blocking our little service road were scattered all over the place. I went and looked out of the back bedroom window and saw a car driver disappearing up the closed road. Clearly the driver had ignored the “Road closed” signs and crashed through the plastic barriers on the main road, then then scattered the cones presumably ending up with one trapped beneath the car. What a lunatic! the journey would have taken no longer if the well marked diversion had simply been followed, the car must have been damaged and I can only guess that either the car was stolen, or that the driver was high on something.
Sadly, this was not an isolated incident, we have been entertained during the road closure by people who have ignored the signs, driven up the slip road, driven along our cul-de-sac and then returned from whence they came. I have had motorists follow me as I have come home and have been delighted when I have turned into my driveway and left them looking slightly daft, oh what joy! The problem isn’t confined to cars, if anything, cyclists are worse, they drop onto the footpath, cycle at high speed in their Lycra and appear around a high hedge with little warning, threatening their own safety and that of the many dog walkers who use the path and my question is “why can’t people simply follow the rules?”
I watch Question time each week and people keep saying at the moment “why can’t we forget Party Gate and move on?” In some ways they are right, we have a war in Ukraine, a global economy crisis and there would appear to be bigger issues to deal with. My concern is this, if the rule makers become rule breakers we run the risk of the rest of humankind following suit. I marvel at some people’s interpretation of parent and toddler parking spaces at supermarkets. Some people seem to be under the impression that teenagers still qualify as “toddlers” others would appear to think that if you have an empty child seat in the car, then you are entitled to park there and I think some think that if you were once a toddler yourself, then it is OK.
You might say “does it really matter, don’t you have bigger issues to be concerned about?” I refer back to the Bible, way back in the old Testament times Moses led a whole nation of people out of Egypt, there were no rules initially, no standards, everybody could do whatever they please and chaos ensued. The Bible tells how God gave Moses ten very simple but effective rules and those ten rules form the basis of our laws today hundreds of years later. The elders in the early Church went mad and developed complex systems of rule making and made the whole thing really complex. Jesus simplified the whole thing by giving us one commandment “As I have loved you, so you must love one another” and I believe that sits at the heart of the issue. The driver on Sunday morning, didn’t care about other people, they only bothered about their own self interest. The parliamentarians who were partying while the rest of us followed the rules, though only about themselves. People who selfishly park in parent and toddler bays, so that they have the minimum distance to walk to the door only have their own interests at heart.
Let us be different! We can be the ones who reflect the love of God, not slavishly following the rules so that we don’t get caught out, but because we want to make the world a better place where everybody can live in harmony.