麻豆约拍

Good morning. My fellow-countryman, Seamus Heaney, died exactly one year ago today.
聽鈥淔amous Seamus鈥�, as we called him, was a farmer鈥檚 son from rural Ulster who became, as one of his obituaries put it, 鈥減robably the best known poet in the world.鈥� He took the ordinary things of rural life, like ploughing and cutting turf and invested them with significance.

Seamus was an academic whose work extended far beyond the narrow confines of academia and enriched the lives of many. We are thankful for him and for people like him without whom the world would be a poorer place.

Yet there was something more about Seamus Heaney than even his amazing gift for language.

Despite all his literary success and academic achievement, with professorships in Harvard and Oxford and a Nobel Prize for Literature, Seamus remained the same unassuming, quiet man from County Derry, the rich earth of his boyhood still clinging to his boots.

In today鈥檚 brash, celebrity-obsessed culture, where talent is overstated and a sense of self-importance seems to embody the shallowness of instant stardom, the quietly self-effacing Seamus Heaneys of this world are something of an enigma.

In his letter to the Romans, the Apostle Paul wrote, 鈥淒o not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you.鈥�

Heavenly Father, thank you for the various gifts and abilities you have given to each of us. Help us to appreciate them, develop them and use them wisely for your glory and for the good of others.

Amen.