Advent draws us to great life crossroads

ADVENT is a faint whisper of better things to come. Two Scots Gaelic-speakers were in adjacent PoW camps during World War II.

One camp had a home-made wireless set hidden from German guards. The Scotsmen met at the barbed wire between their camps and communicated in Gaelic.

When radio news of Allied advances in Europe was very positive, one of the Scotsmen whispered in Gaelic: “Thainig iadi” (They’ve come). Prisoners knew immediately, on hearing this dramatic news in English, that their liberation was at hand.

A large cheer went up as the good news travelled fast and was warmly welcomed. Battlefield factors, however, which PoWs had absolutely no control over, would determine the exact date of their release.

Advent is very different, in one critical regard, though, because it draws us to a great life crossroads. Our individual decision or response, to that “One Solitary Life”, must be reverence or scepticism.

James Hardy, Belfast