It was Tuesday 29th April and I was reading The Guardian. What stunned me were the contrasting stories of two
teenagers.
On the front page and continuing on page 3
the heading is “Boy, 15, held after
teacher is killed in classroom”. On
page 6 there is a short article with the heading “Teenager’s cancer fund passes £3m mark”. In order to give our
youngsters the rewards they deserve you would have thought the articles should
be in reverse order and we should have been told much more about the brave
initiative of Stephen Sutton.
Three years ago he was diagnosed with
terminally ill bowel cancer. He set up the Teenage Cancer Trust and hoped to
raise £10,000. From his hospital bed he told the paper “To celebrate still being here after this crazy week, to celebrate this
wonderful journey called life, and to celebrate being part of raising over £3m
for the charity, here is a huge thumbs-up from me!”
By now we all know of the tragedy that
happened in a Catholic school in Leeds: a beloved teacher of Spanish with forty
years of dedication to her job, Anne Maguire, who was due to retire this
September, was stabbed in front of the class and died shortly afterwards.
We can all see the Holy Spirit at work in
Stephen’s endeavour. Several classmates of the murderer might well have
wondered “Where is God in this?” By
now we don’t know what made the youngster flip. However, let us hope and pray
that something enormously good will come from this event too.
