Bill and Wanda’s Incredible Journey

Going to work for a remote hospital in Uganda will bring its challenges, colour and adventures.  But are there not challenges and drama to be had here too?  Doesn’t the RNIB Community Living Service in Redhill, Surrey have a worthwhile task to do?  Challenges to meet?  Dramas to overcome?

The answer is yes, yes, yes.  The RNIB Community Living Service, formerly RNIB Redhill College can provide residential and day services to up to 50 adults with visual impairments and other disabilities (learning difficulties, Autistic spectrum issues, etc).  The Service is not a warehouse for the disabled, but provides a home where people with varied and complex disabilities can develop and in differing ways, become connected with the wider world.

The contemporary secular worldview looks on our clients and acknowledges their right to thier own lives.  But wishes they would live elsewhere.  A worldview that values good looks, smart dressing and fine lifestyles, is not comfortable with our participants.    The Christian worldview, and its derivative variants sees our service users as made in the image of God, just as we are.  Each one is loved by the Almighty, and so, should be likewise loved by us.  Much the same in Kisiizi, Kathmandu or Redhill.

 Society seeks to “economise” on those who work in places like RNIB Redhill, who work in care homes, as social workers, in day centres, etc.  It pays them  modest amounts, says “ah, but your work must be so personally rewarding” as some sort of compensation.  It then pays many in other work much more and then glorifies the associated lifestyles in media.

This equation works.  But it can can work in reverse too.  What we do is important.  Is valuable.  It is what God wants (in some way or another).  Society’s compensation may not be what it should be.  But working in our own way, towards the better society that the Almighty wants.  We need to be a bit more “evangelical” about it.

To adapt Jesus’ words in Matthew’s Gospel: ‘many will see Jesus and say “When did we see you hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger or needing clothes or in prison, and did not help you?” He replies “I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do it for me”.  Then they will go away to eternal punishment and the righteous to eternal life’.

p.s Bill was there for four years, as Vice Principal Resources.  Bill left the RNIB Community Living Service in Redhill, Surrey on the 26^th October.   He wishes them good fortune as the Service evolves.