Guilty

Things are happening 'out there' about which I can do nothing. It is not yet nine o'clock in the morning and already I feel guilty about being useless. Worse follows: I start feeling guilty about feeling guilty! I am old, and the hardest exercise I take is putting on my own socks of a morning. So what am I supposed to do about the Greek debt crisis? How can I influence Rupert Murdoch? I can send £10 to UNICEF to deal with the Somali famine, but can anything I say make the gun-mad factions see sense? We know too much. Way back as a 'copy taster' on a provincial evening paper I had to sift what mattered from the shoals of material pouring off what in those days were 'the wires' from local, national and international news sources. There was always too much. What, of all the things happening around the world, do we really 'need to know'? Ancient peasantry had never heard of China, never mind what was happening there. Good news brought 'from Ghent to Aix' took days. Marathon runners gave way to to pigeons, to telephones, to morse code, and now to instant technology so that we know what's happening before it has happened. ' Breaking News' is on our screens by the minute. So.... I have said my prayers, and have switched to Classic FM, alternating with R3 and R5Sport extra  (Can somebody silence Boycott?).  Now all I have to fret about is whether rain will interferer with the Lord's test. But hang on there's an Indian fast bowler with a hamstring problem.  So what with that, and the rain, I have something positive to worry about. So needn't feel guilty at all.

Divine hacker

There are uncanny similarities in Psalm 139 to events now coming to light in the summer of 2011.  As a journalist I am especially interested in the motivations of those who go to any lengths to unearth and report a 'scoop': information which is assumed to be of interest to the general public. Often this information is about personal things people would prefer that others did not know. Is the writer of this psalm complaining about, or celebrating, the fact that God knows all there is to know about him? It is a hacker's guide:  'O Lord you have searched me and you know me.  You know when I sit and when I rise. You pereive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down. You are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O Lord....  such knowledge is too wonderful for me; too lofty for me to attain.'  Verse 19 suddenly drops this open-hearted submission to the all-seeing hacker, and lashes into some unknown monster, using language we may link to unwelcome prying eyes: 'If only you would slay the wicked, O God. Away from, me, you bloodthirsty men....Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord, and abhor those who rise up against you?  Then submission returns: 'Search me O God and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.'