Medway Messenger, 21st January 2005

A journey from our part of Gillingham to Rainham can be miserable along the top road. So often we take the ‘new’ link road and the Lower Rainham Road. The sights, sounds – and indeed smells – are many and various.

There are the farms – just when you thought you were in urban Medway, a goat may be tethered outside a field. The pub where gigs by seventies hitmakers Chicory Tip have been advertised on a chalkboard outside. The traffic-jam bottleneck by The Barn restaurant that favours eastbound vehicles at the expense of westbound. The river and the, er, lovely view across to the power station.

And then there is the racetrack. Yes, racetrack. The dual carriageway either side of the Strand roundabout, tempered only briefly by speed cameras.

It was on that stretch the Sunday before last that we noticed the police had cordoned off the eastbound carriageway as we came back from Rainham. The Messenger reported what had happened. A mother from Grain was thrown from her motorbike as her husband and son in the car behind watched in horror. I’m not suggesting she was speeding, but I am only surprised I don’t see more accidents on that stretch.

What must it be like to witness something like that? In my nightmares I sometimes imagine awful things happening to those I love. I wake in a cold sweat. But to see it – in real time – now that I hope I never have to face.

I don’t know how that family is coping. But my work brings me into contact with people who have witnessed or experienced all sorts of suffering.

It brings up all the big questions about a God of power and love allowing this. I can’t give a full answer in this short column and could only scratch the surface in a longer piece.

But this I know. When I go through bad experiences of life, the people who are the most help to me are not those with the clever answers but those who have faced the same difficulties and come through them.

In this respect God is more relevant than ever. He watched his only Son die in agony on a Cross. Jesus knows suffering from the inside. But he is no longer dead, he is alive, and so he brings hope.

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Copyright © David D Faulkner, 2006 except where other sources are attributed or noted as inspiration.