A Tale of Two Fires

As you may know, Saturday was Guy Fawkes Night, or Bonfire Night, or, Fireworks Night. The night when we British celebrate how back in 1605 a man called Guy Fawkes attempted to blow up with dynamite the Houses of Parliament, and failed, and was killed and his friends hung drawn and quartered. Lovely. They wanted to kill King James I (of the King James Bible) and replace him with a Catholic king. Every Nov 5th, or the nearest Saturday to it, most towns and villages have a huge bonfire, accompanied by a fireworks display (to commemorate the dynamite). In the olden days, and still sometimes today, someone will make a stuffed effigy of Guy Fawkes (which is then called "the guy"), and walk it around the village asking for money - "a penny for the guy!" - and then the figure is put on top of the bonfire to burn. Hmm, lovely.

We used to have handheld wire sparklers which you lit and then whipped around in circles, scattering sparks and enscribing green spirals on the backs of your eyelids when you shut your eyes. You could also write your name in the air with them, and they smelled of rich metallic burning. Sometimes people carved pumpkins into Jack-o-Lanterns and carried them around with a light inside. Bonfire night was a night for mulled wine or hot cider, and hot dogs. It nearly always involved a muddy field, wellington boots,  - and the best part as a young child, staying up way after dark, trying not to lose Dad's hand in the crowds and darkness.

This year we were staying with my parents in Devon, and they took us to a perfect Fireworks Night with all the trimmings, muddy field, mulled wine and all. Sadly "glowsticks" have replaced the "dangerous" sparklers... The outstanding thing about this display was that the organisers had built a great wooden model of the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben, and made the fire inside it - and a person dressed up as an Elizabethan Guy Fawkes ran down to it with a huge blazing torch and lit it up - and we all got to witness how it might have been if the plot had not been foiled all those years ago. I had to laugh at us British, all thoroughly enjoying the spectacle of our precious Houses of Parliament burning gloriously down, Big Ben blazing and finally keeling over. What a strange breed we are.      

The fireworks were brilliant, unlike the display I read about in Oban, where all 6,000 pounds worth of fireworks accidentally went off, all at once, in 50 seconds!! You can see it on youtube...

But, we were sobered to watch the television news when we got home later that evening, to see that there had been a huge crash on the motorway the night before, in a spot which Dan, Abby, Alex and I had driven right through on our way down to my parents, only five minutes prior to the accident. They called it the worst accident on the motorway in this generation. 37 vehicles were involved, many burning completely to nothing. Seven people died, and over 50 were injured. It was on the opposite carriageway to us, but even so, if we had driven past there just five minutes later we might have been involved, and we would have witnessed a huge fireball with six lorries jack-knifing across the road, and people running into the oncoming traffic to escape their burning vehicles.

We felt so thankful to God for protecting us, for allowing us to be ready to leave only twenty minutes later than our scheduled time, rather than thirty. For keeping us safe on these roads as He did in Uganda.

I can't help comparing this accident with the many that we witnessed, or saw the debris of, in Uganda. In this accident, only seven people died, compared to the forty-seven who died in a bus crash in Mabira Forest during our first week in Uganda. Here the road was closed from Friday until Sunday evening, while the police and forensic experts dismantled the wreckage and tried to find out the causes. There will be an investigation lasting several months, they say, and probably after that an "enquiry." There was no suggestion of "These things happen... such is life". On the contrary, something will have to change, somebody will almost certainly be blamed, and sacked, and there will almost certainly be a new law introduced. Here there were no photographs in the papers of dead bodies (unlike the coverage of a crash on the Owen Falls Dam also when we first arrived in Uganda, where the front page of the newspaper had a photograph of a distraught young mother, who happened to be a UCU student, watching her dead baby being dragged out of the river on a hook.)

In the west, death is unacceptable - unless the deceased is very elderly and has lived a good and fulfilled life. In the west we think we can control life and death. In the west we know everything has a material cause and explanation, and therefore we feel we can prevent a disaster from repeating itself. But I am not convinced our attitudes are correct. Who knows why we left home last Friday evening at 6.50 instead of 7.00? And why the family of four who died were not supernaturally hastened on their way as we might think we were? In our rational way of thinking, we tend to ignore that there is also a layer of mystery, of divine control, of divine reasoning which we will probably never understand.  We may be able to avert road deaths in more effective ways (which is a good thing), and to prevent what we regard as unnecessary deaths more and more as time goes on (which is also a good thing), but we should not forget that it is God who is sovereign over life and death. People will die and we will not understand why. It is not wholly in our hands, much as we think it is or should be. Whilst the African fatalism and therefore failure to bring change, for example in the area of road safety, does seem to be wrong, and even lax, yet the acceptance of God's sovereignty and of the inevitability of death shows a deeper understanding of life and death, and of our reliance on God than we with all our controlling ways tend to have.  

But I must admit I am glad to live now in a country where fatalities are not normally paraded on the cover of newspapers. I appreciate that respect towards the dead and their families which is important in this culture. (I was shocked that the body of Gadaffi was counted as an exception and I bought the only paper that day which did not show his blood-covered corpse.)

So Saturday was a day to remember God's protection of the Protestant monarchy and parliament four hundred years ago (although I doubt many of our fellow- revellers were considering God's part in it!), and of the Button family 24 hours ago, and to contemplate how little I understand really any of it, or how and why God acts,  - but perhaps I don't need to, perhaps I just need to Trust Him More...