Bangladeshi children travel at the back side of a moving train at a railway station in Dhaka, Bangladesh
Photo: (AP Photo/A.M. Ahad)

Clearly health and safety regulations do not feature much in Bangladesh

Thought on Sunday – January – 25/01/2015

Our Thought today is by Triona Doherty called ‘Now Is The Time’

‘And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back.’ ~
Martin Luther King Jr


Over fifty years ago, in his famous ‘I have a dream’ speech, Martin Luther King Jr talked about ‘the fierce urgency of now’.

‘This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilising drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges,’ he said.

That same sense of ‘fierce urgency’ seems to grab the disciples in today’s Gospel. The time has come, says Jesus – and Simon, Andrew, James and John are certainly ready. So ready, in fact, that they are prepared to leave behind their livelihoods, and even their families, to attend to the urgent task of spreading the Good News.

We can all be experts at procrastination at times. We put off making positive changes in our lives or taking steps to help others, convinced we will get around to it another day. Sometimes the sacrifices can seem like too much. But Jesus calls us, and he calls us urgently.