Thought for the Week

by Rev David Watson

Clark Memorial Parish Church

January is always a long month! After the excesses of the Christmas holidays, pay day seems a long way away! Debt is a fact of modern life. It isn’t necessarily a problem until it becomes unmanageable. When Theresa May became Prime Minister she addressed her comments to those who were “just about managing”, or “jams” as they have subsequently been called in the media. The fact is that most people manage from one pay day to the next and credit cards help to smooth out the bumps. Very many people struggle just to keep their heads above water financially.

Debt was also a scourge in Victorian times. Debtors were sent to debtors prisons until the debt was paid. Charles Dickens spent part of his life in a debtors prison, and many of his novels touch on the subject of debt. Brilliant though his stories are, many of Dickens’ works are rather wordy. The reason for this was that he wrote many of his novels in episodic form for weekly or monthly publications. He had to spin out the story in order to pay his debts. Sir Walter Scott also used the income from his writing to pay his debts. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was perpetually in debt and despite being a brilliant and prolific writer, died a pauper while he was still in his thirties.

Even if we are not in debt financially, we are all in debt one way or another. We are in debt to those who have gone before us and left us a rich heritage of art and music, literature and philosophy, science and economics, law, medicine, education and faith. It is incalculable how much we owe to other people.

We ought to recognise how much we are indebted to others. Isaac Newton was a brilliant mathematician and astronomer but modestly he acknowledged his indebtedness to those who had gone before him when he said “If I have seen further than most men it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”

We all stand on the shoulders of giants in our Christian and cultural heritage. We owe so much to those who have gone before us. One way or another we are all in debt.