The Wonders of Christmas Cards 7: Where did you get that hat?

My favourite card this year wins the day for its utter daftness.  It is impossible to look at without it smiling.  Perhaps it is no surprise that it was sent to us by someone who smiles a lot themselves.

When you look at this picture, and after you've smiled, this is the question for Christmas Day - why could this picture only be on a Christmas card?

The car could be on any card except a serious Thinking of you kind of card.  The dogs could be on any fun card.  The background scene is quite Christmassy but could be on several other types of card - Thank You, Birthday, etc. 

As far as I can tell, what makes this a Christmas picture is the dog's Santa hat.

Headwear can be an accessory but as it is so close to a face and so visible it makes a big impact - in the recent cold spell I noticed that all manner of men in woolly hats look largely the same age whether they are in their 30s or 70s.

The baby born today grew up to be a man and we only have one record of his headwear.  One day he was given a crown of thorns, his coronation as king.  And on a cross hung the crowned king from Christmas, the Saviour of sinners.  In the partying we must find room for a prayer.

The holly bears a prickle,

As sharp as any thorn,

And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ

On Christmas Day in the morn.

Touch Wood

My daughter and I were sitting in the University Lecture Theatre.  Very impressive it was too.  And perhaps just as impressive were the credentials of the Professor who was explaining to us the course my daughter might be taking next year.

As the Professor explained the various ologies that were the components of competence and their necessity in the whole scheme of human understanding it seemed profoundly unlikely that faith and belief would figure at any point.  Especially the Professor's own faith and belief. 

He was explaining something important about the course and the success it had enjoyed.  And then he said, "Touch wood".  Now more than once on visits to Church members and adherents I have had the bizarre experience of the visited saying, "touch wood" and on one memorable occasion at a hospital bedside reaching out to the conveniently near bedside cabinet to do so.  This, I felt, beggered the question as to whether there was any point in praying to our supposed Creator regarding the illness when touching the bedside cabinet presumably warded off the spirits that, according to folklore, lived there with possible malevolent intentions to spoil the party.

Had the Professor simply said, "Touch wood" I probably would scarcely have noticed.  However at the moment he said it he was stranded at the front of the large hall, far away from anything to touch save himself and the remote control with which he controlled the projected display.  Well, that's OK - it's just an expression, isn't it?

The stranded Professor turned aside and headed to the desk on which his projector stood. - it was the nearest piece of furniture and he touched it.  This took but seconds yet walking several paces mid-speech made it noticeable.  However, on touching the desk a new problem emerged for him.  The desk was not made of wood.  Nor even the pseudo-wood of the bedside cabinet my hospital patient in earlier years resorted to.  It was metal!  Since when did any self-respecting nature spirit reside in a metal desktop?  Now the Professor had temporarily stopped talking, his whole (substantial) mental faculty devoted to the pursuit of wood.

Thankfully for us all the front row of the lecture theatre had a long counter made out of something passing for wood and a few seconds and another walk later he had finally touched wood and we were able to resume the information about pursuing a science degree.

I doubt there has ever been the remotest value in touching wood to placate the spiritual nasties.  Even if there was, there hasn't been ever since Jesus, er, nailed that victory for us on his very own wood. 

Fabrice

When a 23-year-old Premiership footballer collapses in front of tens of thousands of people, a game is abandoned and teammates call for prayer for him following a technical death from cardiac arrest the worlds of ministry and sports chaplaincy feel very close together.

Fabrice Muanga's life, we all agree, is more important than his footballing life.  Football, even at its highest level, is nowhere near as important as life and death.  This one man's trouble has stopped thousands in their tracks and brought an encouraging humanity into the business whirl of top-level football.

But.

The beauty of what has happened in response to Fabrice's heart attack is a reason to think harder about humanity than we first imagine.  In this connection it has been passingly commented that Muanga's father came to Britain as a refugee from Congo.  From this upheaval Fabrice grew into a fine student as well as an excellent footballer.  And if he'd stayed in Congo?

Over ten years of the internal strife in that land it is estimated over five million people have died and hundreds of thousands have been raped.  Under the floodlights one man's hurt was shared by thousands but in the Congolese rainforests thousands' hurt has, too often, not been observed or shared by anyone.

This is not a fair world, though sometimes (as here) gems of kindness gleam within it.  We are about to relive the God-Man's journey to a hill where a crowd watched, a Saviour died, but more truly he was the one who was watching them - "Father forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing".  Never a truer, kinder, or more heartfelt observation by one man. 

By one man watching a dying crowd.

Last

The invoice makes it seem so very ordinary.  It blandly states,

28 May 2010  Posterior Composite Filling Lower Left Molar

I have been very blessed to have a dentist as a friend!  It goes without saying that he did not become a friend by being my dentist - that's about as likely as making friends by being a Traffic Warden - but having become a friend he became my dentist (and stayed my friend - perhaps even that is difficult!).

Thursday was disconcerting.  A relatively useful day fell apart as a result of an apricot.  It doesn't happen to everyone, and I've had several uneventful apricot encounters over the years, but this one ended with part of the previously mentioned molar sticking closely to the apricot instead of to itself.  A broken tooth!  A phone call.  A Friday drive to my friend's surgery.  A read of the National Geographic in the waiting room.  The most enormous drilling sound - no, it was alright, just a gardener next door power sawing a rhododendron bush!  The smiling welcome.  The chair (aargh).  The light.  The inspection and confirmation of the evil apricot's misdemeanour. "Shall I fill it now?"  The grimaced "Yes, please". Then,

"You're my last ever patient"

Some of the potential threat from such a claim was mitigated by me knowing that some time in the next month or so my dentist was moving over to a teaching post.  But it doesn't take much to set the mind racing in a dentist's chair.  My mind raced between two poles. 

Maybe this was his least important filling ever.  After all whatever happened it would be some other dentist that would next work on my molars. 

Or was it his most important filling ever?  A whole dental career leading to the grand terminus of one of my lower left molars.

Like good professionals everywhere he just filled the tooth as he would have done any other day.  And, having told me not to eat for a couple of hours, departed into post-patient paradise to eat with his staff in celebration.  I wasn't sure what to say as a patient in such historic circumstances, but of course with a numbed mouth saying nothing much was most suitable.

I am fantastically grateful to my dentist.  I vaguely feel the dastardly apricot let me in to a privileged moment.

What I know more certainly is that when on the cross my Lord said, IT IS FINISHED, he really was describing the finale that everything about him had led towards.  Not only the most important moment in his life, purpose and future, the most important moment for me and my dentist too.