Thought for the Day, Monday, 10th February

Good morning.

In 1976, I was a medical student in a hospital in Nepal, studying with an Australian physician.

She examined a patient then turned round to me.

‘Hansen’s disease’, she said quietly.

Hansen’s disease. Another name for leprosy. A diagnosis so fearful that she didn’t want to name it in the hearing of the patient and his family.

Why so fearful? The doctor knew that the patient would be cured with drug therapy. But the stigma and discrimination would remain. Stigma that received backing from laws in some of the countries of the East stipulating segregation and adversely affecting fitness for employment and travel.

There was nothing new about this. In first-century Palestine, a person with leprosy would be cast out of their community and lose their family. People who were healthy wouldn’t have gone near them – if they were to touch someone with leprosy, they would have been unclean according to Jewish law.

In St Matthew’s Gospel, chapter eight, we read an account of one of Jesus’ miracles. A man with leprosy came to him and knelt before him and said, ‘Lord if you will, you can make me clean.’ Jesus stretched out his hand to him and touched him, saying, ‘I will. Be clean.’

I’m sure that Jesus stretched out his hand and touched the man with loving-kindness and sympathy.

In our own world today, it’s good when kindness and mercy get the upper hand over stigma and discrimination.

Have a good day. 

I am greatly indebted to Mairead McIver for her advice.

In memory of Donald John MacLeod. A faithful friend.