Every Lot

Have lost interest in my own blog of late, which doesn't bode well for anyone else maintaining any interest in it. At the moment I am house-sitting in lovely Balmain, and breathing in the air of materialism - that and the car fumes as I jog the bay run, which is purported to be nice, and it is, but a little too close to the traffic for my liking. But the view is lovely and I'm enjoying playing house in this nice little terrace and at times imagining that life had taken a different path.

That being the case it is probably a good thing that I am also re-reading North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell. Each chapter begins with a poem, and Chapter 17 with this one:

There are briars besetting every path,

Which call for patient care;

There is a cross in every lot,

And an earnest need for prayer.

A.L. Waring

Margaret the clergyman's daughter is visiting the sick and poor Bessy and after Margaret's encouragement to hope Bessy remonstrates "It's all well enough for yo' to say so, who have lived in pleasant green places all your life long, and never known want or care, or wickedness either, for that matter."

But Margaret, who carries her own hidden sorrows, responds with "Take care how you judge, Bessy ... [followed by the story of her life] ... Have I not care? Do I not know anxiety, though I go about well-dressed, and have food enough? Oh, Bessy, God is just, and our lots are well portioned out by Him, although none but He knows the bitterness of our souls."

Bessy asks for pardon and after Margaret's departure she says to herself "Who'd ha' though that face - as bright and as strong as the angel I dream of - could have known the sorrow she speaks on? I wonder how she'll sin. All on us must sin."

It's a nice little preventative against any kind of sideways judgment or covetousness. We never do know all about the briars and crosses in the lots of others do we, which I have found even in the lives of the Balmain residents.

And the sadder and truer reality is that we will all sin ...