Mercy on the 134 bus

A few stops down the road from us one of London's latest knife attacks took place - on a bus.  The next day I sat on the same numbered bus and all of a sudden a 134 bus felt all bad.

The Curate's Egg is famously used to describe the part-good, part bad.

The wit derives from the curate awkwardly answering the Bishop that his bad egg is good in some parts.  Awed by the Clerical Eminence he is too timid to agree that it is all bad.  But a bad egg is, of course, just bad.

Life is a curate's egg of good and bad.  Only in the bad, such as on my 134 bus, it rarely feels that there's another chunk that is/was/will be good.  Only one organ may be diseased but the whole body seems bad;  only one neighbourhood gang is hostile, but the whole place feels unsafe; only one charge relating to one incident is made in court against you but you feel wholly criminal; only one relative is dangerously ill but the whole family lives under a cloud.  And so on. 

Psalm 23 does this in reverse. 

Goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life. 

Part of life is goodness from God.  And the other part?  Well, others may call it badness, the wrong side of the street, a run of bad luck or the going getting tough.  But for the believer it is interpreted as the place of God's Mercy.  Was my bus ride no longer good?  Then it had become a place, for me, of mercy instead.  But no less divine.

World Cup Blogs 15: Japan

Every World Cup is about much more than goals and results.  That Iceland, for example, are there at all I noted in an earlier blog is an amazing achievement.

Then there's Japan.  They have become famous in this tournament not for the players but for their fans.  Not for their fans during the game either.  But because (and difficult to imagine how counter cultural this is to me, and English football supporter) after their first game their fans were filmed cleaning up their litter before they left the stadium.

Bluntly, when English fans go to a tournament we are grateful if all of them have left the seats fixed in place.

If goodness is a powerful cultural weapon in a football tournament, how much more true are the words of the apostle Peter regarding goodness as a powerful weapon for the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ:

Dear friends, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul. Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.

Matt Chandler

Stuff happens.

At least we can all say that.  Matt Chandler is one of the great Biblical preachers of the next generation (next after mine that is of course - don't ask whether there are any in mine . . .!).  On Thanksgiving Day (late November) he suddenly collapsed.  Which introduces you to Matt's health blog.

What marks this out is that Matt faithfully reflects the goodness of God in a context where many people, and - let's be honest - too many Christians only ask questions instead of looking at blessings.  This is a story that is sad but, thanks be to God, certain to have a happy ending.