Dear friends,
Recently I came across a new story about a climber called David Sharp. Coming down Mount Everest, Sharp was 1000 feet below the top when he began to struggle with oxygen deprivation. Unable to adjust his equipment as he needed, the climber became ill and died. The worst part of the story, however, was that more than forty climbers are thought to have seen him struggling with his equipment, yet not one of them stopped to help. Many of them went on past, focused only on their own determination to reach the top. Among those who expressed anger and outrage at the events near the summit was Sir Edmund Hillary who insisted he would have given up his own successful Everest climb to rescue a fellow climber.
The story is like a latter day story of the Good Samaritan, except that the Good Samaritan never came along. Among the mountaineers who passed by there were several who said they saw David Sharp but thought others were better able and better equipped to help.
It’s a sad story of what can happen when we think caring is somebody else’s job. When we wait for somebody else to stop and care rather than doing it ourselves, then the truth is that too often nobody stops at all. That lonely person, that difficult neighbour, that struggling man or woman, may be needing your help or mine, and if we walk past, can we expect that anyone else will stop?
One of the things I most value about our community is the care which is so widely shown to family friends and neighbours. But that will only remain true for as long as every one of us is prepared to stop when we meet someone in need of support, and don’t leave the job of caring to someone else.
Yours in Christ,
