Living where we do...

As I walked down the high street yesterday several thoughts wound their way through my mind.
Living where we do is great. It's one of those places stuck about 20 years ago in many respects and for that it is lovely. How wonderful is it, in today's society of mega shopping centres and arcades etc., that I have a high street to walk down. Along which road there is a bakers, a butchers and a green grocers, a fishmongers, a chemist, a post office and a bank. Inside these shops there are staff that know the customers by their names and use them, they know details about the lives of these customers and ask about them with genuine interest.
I can buy my bread and fruit fresh each day!

While I was enjoying my little town and high street I came face to face with another side of the valleys and this time I was not filled with a wistful appreciation for the preservation of things past and almost forgotten.

There is also a pub in the high street. Outside were two youths, I say this because either I am getting too old too quickly or these two boys didn't look old enough to be drinking! I looked at one face and even now, recalling it, I can not believe that he was 18.
Both were smoking, both were inebriated to the point that standing still in one place for the conversation was too much and they were swaying back and forth. They discussed a third individual and his apparent skill for breaking and entering and his ability to evade police detection.
I was instantly filled with sadness. It was between two and three o'clock in the afternoon and here were two young men so drunk that they could barely stand up straight. Why did they not have a job to go to, or why were they not in school, why, even with "nothing" to do, were they disposed to be drunk at three in the afternoon?
I pondered the mentality that is prevalent here, the assumption of amounting to very little. Since the industry of this little principality was done away in the eighties, there has really been very little for the individuals who live here. When that first generation of fathers was laid off and couldn't find other work it set a precedent for their sons. They saw their fathers without full time employment, and instead of using the governmental help that is available in this country to bridge a gap, it became a way of life.

I felt sadness for the soul trapped in a cycle like that and how dis-abling and demoralising it could be. How hard it must be to overcome the idea that you aren't employable and have no skills and therefore no prospects. I ached that my children not be exposed to this or in anyway buy into it. I look around at the young people, the girls pushing prams and the boys driving cars that you hear before you see and I am forcibly reminded how blessed I am to know about the gospel and how grateful I am that my children will have the opportunity of youth dances and firesides to attend. And how I wish that those who are the faceless subjects of my thoughts tonight might have those same opportunities now.

What do you do when you see someone ill and you have the remedy but they aren't interested in taking it? When they don't even acknowledge that they have a condition in need of remedy!?

Some very hard situations exist around us, in lives and homes on every side. Every one struggles with something, some struggles are more evident than others. Yet, some struggles, no matter how well they are kept behind closed doors, effect change in the society to which we belong. Growing up without the example of a good work ethic, growing up with out both parents, being born to parents who are barely no more than children themselves; society has suffered the far-reaching consequences that knock on like dominoes lined up and stretching out to the horizon. It is crumbling and instead of trying for new change, we seem to be making tradition out of the deterioration.

The traditions of the parents, the mistakes, the oversights, blinding the up-coming generations and binding them down to what has become acceptable and normal.
I am glad for the gospel, that it can heal the fissures that have arisen in families and subsequently, in our society. I am glad for the hope of traditions that enliven and embolden and set free... and worried for the boy on the street who was drunk at 3 o'clock in the afternoon.