When PC Wayne Couzens pulled out his police warrant card there was no point Sarah Everard running away. If she had done, she might have lived, as the monster was depending on her subservience. She knew that running from an arresting police officer was a criminal offence, and like so many of us would in similar circumstances, she bowed her head and complied. It was the last decision she would ever make.
The judge who sentenced Couzens this week to die in jail rightly pointed out that the murder of this innocent and beautiful soul was compounded by the betrayal of her trust, and ours. We appoint these officers to be guardians of our society and the abuse of that trust horrifies us. But sadly, this is not an isolated betrayal, as the dreadful murder of George Floyd by a policeman in the USA in 2020 shows.
minds, shocks our hearts, and shakes our confidence to its core. Whether teachers, or clergy, or football coaches or broadcasters, the issue of breaching trust can lead us to doubt the value of trusting anything or anybody ever again. Cynicism grows like bacteria in our souls in an atmosphere of mistrust and is fed by the curdled regurgitation of evil in the media. I have not read the sordid details of the Couzens case in the papers, and I don’t intend to, for this very reason.
But we cannot let this evil rob us of the power and hope that flows from trusting something or someone outside of ourselves. Over the years I have had to put my trust in doctors and surgeons who warned me that the upcoming procedure might kill me, and the only way I could make the choice to go ahead was to recognise that higher hands were holding theirs as they operated on me, time and time again. Bowing my head and signing the consent form was only possible because I had previously bowed my head to the Great Physician and put my trust in him. Of course, they could have made errors and sometimes did, but in the end my trust was not in the professionals alone, but in the God who loves me and has a plan for my life.
A very moving verse from the Bible letter of James says: ‘So, my very dear friends, don’t get thrown off course. Every desirable and beneficial gift comes out of heaven. The gifts are rivers of light cascading down from the Father of Light. There is nothing deceitful in God, nothing two-faced, nothing fickle’. This tells us that there is not an iota of abusive intent in the heart of God. He can be trusted. At my baptism as a young teenager, I was given the Bible verse Proverbs 3:5 ‘Trust God from the bottom of your heart; don’t try to figure out everything on your own. Listen for God’s voice in everything you do, everywhere you go; he’s the one who will keep you on track’ (The Message).
‘There is nothing deceitful in God, nothing two-faced’ – but tragically there often is in people. As we put our trust in higher hands, let’s also pray for the family of Sarah Everard who showed such courage and dignity in the courtroom at the Old Bailey this week. And let’s not allow a murderous fiend like Couzens to steal our ability to trust others as well as well as trusting the God who loves us. And may God help any of us in leadership or places of authority to be trustworthy in thought, word and deed.
