I went walking on a Guernsey headland during a recent week on a day when the weather was particularly dull and cold for mid-July, and the sky was black with foreboding. A brisk chill wind was blowing in my face, and it looked like a storm might be brewing. Suddenly, at the top of a little grassy hill, I came across a lump of granite on which someone had sprayed the word ‘HOPE’ in golden letters. I felt as if the word had been painted there just for me.
Addressing islanders at last Friday’s coronavirus briefing, the island's leading psychiatrist Dr Bishop urged that people continue to trust the relevant medical and political teams that have watched over us so well but added two more things we need at this time: kindness and hope. After the dark cold months of pandemic, when so much has been taken from us in terms of freedom, only to be replaced by fear and isolation, we are all in need of both!
What struck me as interesting about the painted rock is that the granite is split in the centre from top to bottom. Into my mind came the words of an old hymn, ‘Rock of Ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in Thee’. The hymnwriter Augustus Toplady drew his inspiration from an incident in the gorge of Burrington Combe in the Mendip Hills in England. Toplady, a preacher in the nearby village of Blagdon, was travelling along the gorge when he was caught in a storm. Finding shelter in a gap in a nearby rock, he was struck by the title and scribbled down the initial lyrics. He drew on the biblical idea that Jesus is a rock who was split or ‘cleft’ on the cross at Calvary and can be a place of shelter for us today when life gets stormy.
When threatened with destruction during the Second World War, the George Cross island of Malta was saved by, among other things, three flimsy Gloster Gladiator biplanes which were christened by the locals ‘Faith, ‘Hope’ and ‘Charity’. They overcame huge attacks thrown at them by enemy air forces. Perhaps these same virtues will help and protect us, including our mental health, as we fight on against the pandemic to regain our freedoms today.
