• Not your average city traders
• Giving Lessons
• Striking out for the Kingdom
• BudgetBuilder - try our new tool!
• Haiti, the story beyond the story
• What's your story?
• Bowling alone on Plymouth Hoe!
• Transforming Generosity: The Third Way
• Remains of the Day
• Gift Aid tax reclaims - alarm over new restriction
• Happiness is...spending money on other people
• ANNOUNCING LEADERSHIP TRANSITION AT STEWARDSHIP
• Gold or Gravel: it's our choice
• Not so fasta with the pasta!
• What would you do if you found £100?
• Giving for Life
• Try this at home
• Water Rates – new law to ‘rain in’ excessive charges?
• Signs of recovery - an end to the tough times?
• Putting faith in good governance
• The VAT Package and 2010
• Do you have these in blue?
• Millionaires seldom smile
• The big print giveth

• All blog posts

Categories

• General (14)
• Gift Horse (6)
• Legal Eagle (4)

Gold or Gravel: it's our choice

 
Four Labour MPs have been suspended from the Parliamentary Labour party; Labour’s Stephen Byers admits he said some boastful and untrue things; Conservative John Butterfill admits he made a fool of himself. It raises questions about political lobbying and vested interests of MP’s. And, as Patrick Wintour in the Guardian notes, ‘the true crime of the former ministers is that they look greedy....’.

They are not the first and wont be the last. Elizabethan explorer Sir Martin Frobisher (1535?-1594) was determined to discover the famous north west passage, a new sea route to the riches of Cathay, Asia.

Souvenirs from his first voyage included a captured Inuit Indian (the ‘strange man of Cathay’) and a small black stone which was pronounced to be gold. The 150 Cornish miners and their equipment indicated the motive for his second journey, and his third! Alas, no alchemy could turn Frobisher’s worthless stone into true gold.

Frobisher was disgraced for a time. He had vowed “to make a sacrifice unto God of his life rather than return
home without the discovery of Cathay (Asia)" but his fools gold was turned to gravel to pave the streets of London.

Frobisher’s legacy could have been so much greater. Whatever their other achievements what will be the abiding memory of the Dispatches politicians?

Jesus said, ‘What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul?’ (Matthew 16:26) The seduction of wealth is not just money; it is the power, status, respect and influence that are so often the travelling companions of money. But in seeking these things we can lose so much of our true selves.

No wonder Paul challenged the rich not to be arrogant, to temper wealth with service and generosity, to have a set point, a focus outside of self satisfaction (‘lay up treasure in heaven’) if they were ‘to take hold of the life that is truly life’ (1 Timothy 6:17-19). It’s our choice.


Fascinating facts:

Frobisher redeemed his reputation with Drake against the Armada and died of wounds fighting the Spanish. Bits of him are buried at St Andrew’s Plymouth, the rest in St Giles-without-Cripplegate. A Royal Navy heavy cruiser is named for him, HMS Frobisher.

An inlet on Baffin Island bears his name to this day, Frobisher Bay. Here the first sermon and Anglican communion in the New World took place, celebrated by Frobisher’s chaplain Rev Robert Wolfall in 1578

Links

These links are for fun and do not imply our recommendation

• Dispatches
• Martin Frobisher Wiki
• Golden quotes
• Mandelson, Paxman and Lobbygate
• Fools Gold by the Stone Roses

Comments

There are currently no comments on this post

Post a Comment

Your comment will have to be approved by a site administrator before it is shown on the site so please be patient.