The Random Thoughts of Henry Holloway
The Huggett family gave me a great deal of amusement the other day when I was listening to the wireless. Mrs. Huggett wanted a washing machine very badly. Needless to say Mr. Huggett didn’t want to buy it. Everything seemed to centre in that washing machine. If only Mrs. Huggett had that she’d be content.
Jack Warner gave a very good impression of the long suffering husband. It reminded me of an incident in a novel I read recently. The hero of the book had met and befriended a blind girl. They were talking together one day and she said that he would probably get married and wouldn’t think of her any more. ‘How do you know that I’m not already married?’ he asked her. ‘Oh, I know you aren’t,’ she said ‘You don’t talk or act anything like a married man. You’re too calm and free and unworried. Married men are never like that.’
Mrs. Huggett wanted her washing machine and Mr. Huggett didn’t. If you could have anything you wanted, I wonder what you would ask for? Some people think that success is everything. There is a book which tells the story of a successful man who made success his God. One night he suddenly realised that he had missed a lot of important things in life. He said it had taken him years to find out what things were really important. ‘It is so easy to live with one’s conscience half asleep. There are so many things most of us do unthinkingly.’
There is a story in the Old Testament about God appearing to Solomon in a dream and asking him, ‘Ask what shall I give thee.’ What would you have said? Success! Long Life! Happiness! Money! Good Health! I wonder?
Solomon said: ‘Give thy servant therefore an understanding heart to judge Thy people, that I may discern between good and evil.’ You and I have to learn to judge between good and evil. We need an understanding heart to judge what are the important things in life. A barber was once walking in the Lake District when he came to a gate with two notices on it. One of the notices read: ‘Use McDonald’s sheep dip.’ The other one said, ‘Close this gate.’ It would have been a bad thing for the barber’s customers if he hadn’t the commonsense to know that he wasn’t expected to obey both instructions. We have to make up our minds about the things we ought to do and the things we ought not to do.
I think I would be more concerned still to ask for an understanding heart so that we might judge other people in the right way. There are many people who are cruelly hurt by harsh judgments of others. We don’t always know all the facts, and sometimes we misunderstand the circumstances of people’s lives. So we pass our cruel judgements without thought and without understanding and leave behind us wounded hearts and bruised spirits.
Charles Dickens spoke about having, ‘a heart that never hardens, a temper that never tires and a touch that never hurts.’
O God! that men would see a little clearer,
Or judge less harshly where they cannot see;
O God! that men would draw a little nearer
To one another; they’d be nearer Thee:
And understood.
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