Yesterday's evening service on health care was brilliant - crammed full of things to make you think, liberally scattered with Bible readings and threaded with beautiful, often poignant, hymns.  If I had ever had any doubt about the complexity of health care, I have even less now.  There aren't easy answers to these incredibly complex questions but it was good to be challenged to think about them.

It is unjust that a woman living in East Glasgow with the same diagnosis as me has a lower chance of survival for no better reason than her postcode.  She would receive the exact same treatment from the exact same specialists but there is measurable evidence that relative poverty, lack of access to education, even a different support network make a difference.  It isn't fair that my opportunities give me an advantage over someone else who didn't get them.

It is unjust that clever and capable physicians from so-called developing nations are brought over to the west to train in specialisms needed back home, may be underpaid while they are here and can be sucked into staying on the west where they can live a very comfortable life, leaving their home nations lacking in the very skills they need.  It is unjust that often such 'foreign doctors' find themselves treated poorly by patients and colleagues alike.

It is unjust that our home medicine cupboards are full of 'out of date' over the counter remedies that could save lives in other countries.

It is unjust that people find themselves pressurised to accept or decline treatment and unjust that physicians and surgeons are pressurised into meeting 'targets.'

So much that is unjust.

I am glad that the NHS is staffed by people who are willing to wrestle with these issues, to try to even out the injustices without creating new ones, to treat without fear or favour all conditions of humanity.

What does the Lord require, this, only this, do justice, love mercy, walk humbly with your God. These characteristics are evident in last night's speaker who holds together immense ability and responsibility, with grace, humour and firm trust in God.

Today I pray for all ethics and prescribing committees  and all those involved in case conferences facing the thankless task of doing justice in an unjust world

So this is what we did at church this morning...

We listened to the whole of Hebrews 11, the catalogue of faithful people.

Then we looked up a few verses about five of them - Noah, Abraham, Jacob, Moses, David - that revealed their flawed natures.  Well, 'we' is really the congregation who were invited to look up the verses and ask themselves (roughly)

• what was flawed about this person?
• why do you think this incident might have been included in the Bible record?
• what glimpses of the nature of God do we see?
• how might this speak to us about our own lives?

People were amazing!  They gathered in small groups and spent their allocated five minutes in deep discussion.

The thrust of the sermon was that even the heroes of faith were flawed, that sometimes the Bible can act as a mirror in which we see our own reflection, that it is a 'holy, human story' and that above all God is a God of second and third and fourth and .... chances - God never gives up.

Quite a few people commented favourably about the experience, so maybe I'll do it again some time!

Just as exciting I have some volunteers to read the Bible in all sorts of unusual languages next week.  Yay!

Almost every Sunday of the year is a 'special' Sunday, so each and every church has to make decisions about which of the umpteen it chooses to keep.  Back in the summer, we decided that Health-care Sunday was one we would mark during evening worship this autumn.  It seemed a good idea at the time, and as is the way of things, the more so now.

In our church we have several people who work in health care and many others who are grateful recipients of the benefits of the NHS.  It is good to remember those who work in the complex world of health care, seeking to bring thier faith in Jesus to life as they engage with people whose lives are affected by the realities of a disordered world.  We have medical students doing electives in very tough and challenging placements, an A&E nurse and an A&E consultant who tend people suddenly taken ill, patches up those who've over indulged or fallen victim to passing joggers (!), we have an internationally renowned oncologist (handy), we have several retired nurses, we have close links with a dentist, and I've undoubtedly forgotten or missed others.  We can't imagine the kind of things these folk face each day, and I suspect if we did our hair would curl.  More widely my friends include pharmacists, physios and medical physicists, a few healthcare hospital/hospice chaplains and not a few home care assistants.

From the lowliest cleaner mopping up body fluids to the chief exec of the health board we depend on those who expend their energies in caring for our welfare.  It seems good to pause this one day to pray for them.

More info can be found here

Living in Scotland and just round the corner from a branch of Sainsbury's means I can sample the wonder of the Purple Majesty potatoes which have been in the news recently.

It was a weird moment when I bit into the first chunk - all my reflexes were anticipating the taste of beetroot because the shiny purple vegetable was shouting 'beetroot' to my memory.  And of course it tasted just the same as a Maris Piper or a Cara to my untrained palate.  But it was an odd moment, eyes, mouth and memory in tension!

They are great potatoes, once you've overcome the surprise of their purpleness, cook easily and taste good.  They are also allegedly higher in antioxidants so better for 'people like me' than ordinary white ones.

Of course the metaphors and parallels are easy to spot...  I think what struck me was that even though I knew this was a potato and I knew it would taste like a potato I could not shake the expectation that it would taste like a beetroot - it is one thing to be aware of and understand prejudice and presupposition, it is another to actively overcome it even when we really want to.

Not quite sure what comments a purple-mash topped cottage pie might generate, but it's interesting to imagine!  However the idea of Lancashire hotpot with red cabbage and purple potatoes is appealing...

I think that's a line from a song by the Pet Shop Boys but my knowledge of all things musical is very limited.  And anyway it's not relevant to what I'm going to write about, just the machinations of my muddled mind.

At the moment one of my tasks is preparing to submit my reearch work for an MPhil - I decided to 'exit' the doctoral programme on health grounds and assumed, rather naively, that the task to tidy up and submit my work would be minimal, afterall, everything had already been submitted and judged adequate along the way.  Alas, no.  It seems that it has to be re-worked from a portfolio of discrete items into a single contiguous thesis, hardly the work of five minutes.  I think I can find a way to do it that will minimise the level of re-writing - and I'm secretly quite pleased with my idea - but I am waiting conformation that this approach is OK and will not exceed the word count blah blah blah.

Meantime I started looking at the first of the papers yesterday - it is so B-O-R-I-N-G I cannot believe I wrote such a dull (and frankly not so great) paper.  So today when I did a quick blog review it was a relief to find the person who supervised and mark it posting on boring writing (here), and by a little following of links to discover that he even told other people that academic writing is meant to be boring (here).  So, I will do some overhauling of my ultra-boring paper but clearly it mustn't become jolly or the academy won't like it....

Today I have other less boring things to think about, but over the next weeks I will be being boring and turning my sow's ear into a pigskin purse fit for the boring eyes of the academy.