Far From The Madding Crowd

Tabi and I had to watch "Far From the Madding Crowd" for her English Lit GCSE. Thankfully I didn't have to read the book too. How Hardy became a classic I will never know! Though I have a good friend who would disagree and thinks he's brilliant. Each to their own. And why if we all have so many different tastes in what makes good literature do we have certain people picking what is a "classic" and what to make young people study of GCSE and 'A' Levels, which often put people off reading for life?

Anyway I was struck by 2 things:
Firstly Bathsheba is so upset that Boldwood shoots her husband and is going to hang for it that she gets his case sent back and makes sure he is then locked up in an insane assylum for the rest of his life. This at least eases her conscience but I am sure is no fun at all for poor Farmer Boldwood, and if not insane when he went in definitly would've gone insane.
And it got me thinking of how often we manipulate situations because they ease our conscience and may not be what is best for others. But we feel better about it.

And the second thing was when the sheep go off in the clover field and get really, really sick eating something that poisons them and how Gabriel Oak is the only person who knows how to deal with their gassed up stomachs without killing them. And of how we are often compared to sheep - sheep who have gone astray, sheep in need of a shepherd.
And it struck me that so often we don't let the Holy Spirit come along and get the bad stuff out of us in the way He knows best, but that so often as church we think we know the right formula and so deal with it as we have always done and actually can cause more harm than good. Instead of waiting, which is what they had to do, asking in the right way (as Bathsheba had upset Oaks and banished him - oh don't we often do that with God too??), and then letting Him do it in the way He knows best.