14 January

Today's the day when in 2002 the UK was officially declared free of foot-and-mouth disease. The outbreak had begun 11 months earlier in Northumberland and over 6 million animals were slaughtered to try and prevent it spreading across the country. The crisis cost farmers an estimated £900 million. By January there had been no recorded outbreaks for 3 months so the Government department responsible for rural affairs announced that it now considered Britain free of the disease.

As usual, there was a flurry of enquiries and reports and we were all wise after the event. The Lessons To Be Learned report criticised the Government for failing to prepare for such an outbreak, and acting too slowly after the first few cases were diagnosed.

A report by the National Audit Office said warnings of a shortage of vets to deal with such an outbreak went unheeded. If only everyone everywhere had thought of everything beforehand!

One of the wonderful things about the Christian good news is that it was not God's knee-jerk response when things were going wrong in the world. The Bible tells us that he had planned in advance to send his Son to save the world at the time he chose. This is what it says in Galatians:

When the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law, to redeem those under law, that we might receive adoption to sonship.

The world has turned away from the God who made it but he isn't in a helpless panic about it. He had planned for this eventuality and at the right time he sent his Son to rescue us from our own failure and bring us back to himself.