Today is a snow day: it’s cold (obviously) and dark. The school is closed (the university does not, and this is a mercy: the Library is warmer than most student flats). It is a day to leave the car at home and walk to work (and rely on the shuttle service between hospitals. For the snow is covering the roads and will turn rapidly to black ice. It was raining hard yesterday and the grit trucks have not been able to get up the roads.

(And there are no snowplows in town. They are too busy sorting out the high passes so people can travel. The snow does not linger here). There is a beauty in wild weather best admired by looking at photos: taking the same in this weather is an exercise in avoiding hypothermia.

And all this has not much to do with today’s readings apart from one thing: although one son has the day off (and has two duvets plus a cat around him as he reads on a tablet) the other son and I have to work. And we will do our duty, for that is what we are commanded to do. Regardless of the weather.

COLOSSIANS 1:9-14

⁹For this reason, since the day we heard it, we have not ceased praying for you and asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of God’s will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, ¹⁰so that you may lead lives worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, as you bear fruit in every good work and as you grow in the knowledge of God. ¹¹May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience, while joyfully ¹²giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light. ¹³He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, ¹⁴in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

The reason Paul is praying these things is because we are not like that. We are impatient, we are bleak, not joyful. We are ungrateful. We expect that things will be just given to us on a plate. And when this does not occur, particularly if we have been sheltered, we tend to rage. Particularly if they are disabled.

By now you have probably heard of the Isla Vista Shooting, carried out by a disturbed young man named Elliot Rodger. Elliot, who may have had autism and/or Asperger’s Syndrome, was living in a facility designed to help him address awkward social skills. Elliot was part of an on-line community called PUAHate, a website devoted to revealing ‘the scams, deception, and misleading marketing techniques used by dating gurus and the seduction community to deceive men and profit from them.’ Elliot posted some very disturbing videos on YouTube in which he rails against the women who rejected his advances and muses about killing all the men on the planet except for himself.

Excuse me while I put my professional hat on for a minute. What were this man’s doctors and caregivers doing?. The Autistic Spectrum of disorders is not a joke: people are crippled, and if this man was in supported accommodation the chances are that he was in that group. He has to learn the rules by rote. [One of the few good things that the DSM5 authors did was remove those who can function from the spectrum: Aspie was getting too fashionable, when the real thing is nasty]. If someone was making those videos locally, one of my colleagues would be asked to assess — and we’d probably get all the guns removed as a minimum. (I do live in NZ, where having a gun requires a licence. Just like driving).

I see a tragedy and a failure of community care. And I pray that the families of the victims are comforted.

But most of us are not Aspie. Most of us can understand how others feel. And most of us, if we reflect on what we are doing, know we can do better. We are not perfect, we do not chase the full perfection available in Christ enough. Instead, most of us deny it exists.

May that not be. We need to pray, like Paul, that we choose love, not hate, holiness not debauchery, and acting not expressing concern by pouty mouth and hashtags.

It’s still snowing. Time to do my duty.