Tower and Town, October 1986

Editorial: A Second Chance

During October Marlborough, together with several other towns in the south of England celebrate with a Mop Fair. Every year here it is an amazing sight to see the busy High Street transformed in a few hours into a Fair Ground, and it is an event that the young, and many not so young, eagerly look forward to.

The annual fairs go back a long way, and as I understand it they were largely concerned with the hiring of labour. With the harvest safely gathered in it was a time when lab ourers would seek new employment and farmers look for new workers. There was to be a week when the new situations could be tried out, and if it was obvious that they weren't going to work both could come back to the second Mop Fair and try again. There would be a second chance.

And how we all need that second chance! So many things can go wrong in life: the thoughtless word, the selfish action, the unkind deed; to say nothing of all the things that can go wrong over which we have no control.

The great message of Jesus to his day and to ours is that of forgiveness - and having the second chance. The Jewish religious authorities wanted to stone to death the woman caught in the act of adultery: Jesus said 'I don't con demn you - go and sin no more'.

Our forgiving God gives us a second, and a twentieth and a two-hundredth (etc) chance. All we need to do is to have the humility which was at last shown by the returning Prodi gal Son who said 'I have done wrong - please forgive me'.

But we must not forget the words of the Lord's Prayer either, - when we ask God to forgive us, as we are prepared to forgive others.

Geoffrey D Gordon