Winter snow! Turn up the heat!

 I was woken up yesterday morning at 4.30 by the central heating kicking in. At night when I go to sleep I always lower the temperature of the thermostat to 18 in the kitchen so that we don't all boil in our beds. Needless to say I was quite tired by the time bed came around again. Well, it did it again, and before you ditch this story and turn away with a tiny violin playing for my suffering, there's purpose in this story. SO I lay there in my bed annoyed at the noise. I lay there thinking about it.

There's a chap called Andy who I met sitting on the ground outside Tescos in Poplar High st, he had put out a wonderful display of his hand drawn art. He's thin as a rake and has an unshaved face. I stopped by him and asked what he was doing. He said that he does the pictures in the hope that he can sell them so that he can use the money to top up his central heating as he has none. He wanted to raise £18. Canary Wharf and it's wealth loomed in the background. I wondered as I lay in my bed how Andy is doing right now.

Andy's Art

I thought what it would be like to wake up in the morning, as I occasionally have when the fuel card has run out of funds, and not be able to nip up to NISA and top it up? What would it be like if my kids woke up to find the house cold - they actually amaze me at how low a temperature they run around in just PJ's, but I bet the house would be less of a home if we had no heating at all. Probably find ourselves huddling in one room with an electric heater and loads of blankets! Imagine being a parent and having to choose between eating and heating?

Thankfully for the moment these are only nightmares, not realities for us. But for some people, although they live in one of the wealthiest cities in the world, it is a truth. I see the steam rising from the heating on the glass towers of Canary Wharf, warming the empty space in lockdown. I know there's hearing and there's listening and a God who is just. Loving your neighbour isn't just a spontaneous thing - spontonaeity is good but I think that to really love you need to be thinking into how things are going for others, and if they have needs how you can address them. I'm thinking about Andy (and I'm glad my heating is on) and the other Andy's out there. The organisation I now work for, First Love Foundation runs on a motto, it is from the bible - it is "Let us not love merely with words, but in action and in truth".