Passed!

This being the day when my daughter passed her Practical Driving Test I'm reminded of my own.

If we can clear up the boasts first of all:  I passed first time after only 15 hours driving (not necessarily as good thing, but our family didn't have a car to practice in).  I thought you'd be impressed.

On the other hand, my daughter passed almost flawlessly today and that I cannot say for myself.  In those days the test ended with a series of questions on the Highway Code.  One of mine was, what signal follows amber?

In the whole realm of questions this one is very easy.  After all, when you know that the other two are red and green and that red and green never appear at the same time you are left with a choice of two.  I chose green.

It was a regrettable choice but for reasons I have never fully understood I was given a pass. Presumably I had already demonstrated in my driving that I did not really believe my own answer. 

What you do when warned of danger is down to two pedals - the accelerator and the brake.  As we move toward a General Election I think that moving back to London has helped me better understand the political life of our nation which is so firmly based here.  London seems to regard amber lights as a reason to hit the accelerator.  So many nation-changing decisions made during this outgoing parliament has been of the same kind.  People have warned about messing about with welfare caps, with marriage, with numbers of biological parents (good grief . . .), with freedom of speech and a host of other things only to find the accelerator pushed down.

I made a nasty mistake.  But I'm not alone.

Falling Apart

A few blog readers will know to whom I refer , but out of internet modesty I will content myself with the relative anonymity of writing that I was recently in a meeting with a Government Minister.  The purpose of the meeting was itself interesting (and not at all confidential).  What caught my attention was a little phrase that the minister used in passing:  referring to the general state of the nations the minister commented, "things seem to be falling apart everywhere at the moment".

 

 

In itself it is plain obvious.  Libya, Syria, Iraq, Ukraine, Nigeria, Somalia, Central African Republic, South Sudan, Egypt, Tunisia, Palestine, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Mali and even, in its own way, the (formerly) United Kingdom.

 

I suppose if I'd heard two congregants in Church, two people at a bus stop or two people watching the news on TV saying it I'd have barely noticed.  But a Government Minister?  So even up there at the Top it looks scary?

 

Well, thank God that Top is not the real Top.

 

Among a thousand Bible verses that help - but less well known than most - the disasters of the human story are characterised as God gathering grapes . . .

 

Still another angel, who had charge of the fire, came from the altar and called in a loud voice to him who had the sharp sickle, "Take your sharp sickle and gather the clusters of grapes from the earth's vine, because its grapes are ripe."

 

From the real Top it really does look different.

Whatever it takes

Several times in the past week, as the River Thames extended into Chertsey, the Somerset Levels became a new Lakeland and the beach at Dawlish incorporated the former railway the Prime Minister has stood and declared that he/the Government will do . . .

WHATEVER IT TAKES

 

I admit that in first hearing this I felt a little stirred and comforted (though not directly of course, living a few hundred feet above a river).  That may have been its intended effect. 

But then he's kept on saying it and now I'm becoming more analytical.  Because it's nonsense, isn't it?

 

King Canute, despite his supposed error of sitting enthroned on a beach as the tide came in as if he could prevent it, wisely actually said "Let all the world know that the power of kings is empty and worthless and there is no King worthy of the name save Him by whose will heaven and earth and sea obey eternal laws," (Historia Anglorum, ed D E Greenway).  It seems likely he deliberately set out to show he could NOT do 'whatever it takes'.

The problem, of course, is that in the face of powers too vast for politicians to control the simple, obvious thing for human beings to do is to turn to God in repentence and prayer.

But when Mr Cameron says the Government will do whatever it takes he does not in fact mean what he says if, as I suspect, what it takes is repenting or prayer . . .

A Son's Tribute - War

This picture comes in the BBC history section with the heading 'When Ken Dodd learned Welsh'.

 

We do not choose the when and where of our birth and my Dad was born in a most unfortunate situation from the point of view of Secondary education.  At about the age that we were exercised about 'which school is best', Ken Dodd, my Dad and thousands of others were evacuated from Merseyside to the perceived safety of Wales.

 

This may or may not have been a good idea by the Government though it had the obvious difficulty of breaking up the family.  Families still break up today of course for different reasons.  I was very blessed to be part of a family that was not broken up and this is another reason to be grateful to God for my Dad.  I have met plenty of people whose lives can recover the sense of stability that I enjoyed as a normality.

 

Governments do affect us.  The death of Margaret Thatcher has brought this starkly to light.  The wartime Government is regarded as heroic (presumably, as in the manner of a successful football manager, because it won).

 

It wasn't so heroic for my Dad though.  Having sent him to Wales away from danger but also family it decided it was safe to return after all.  So back he came to his home round the corner from a great shipyard - just in time for the actual blitz.  His teenage equivalent of my football on Saturdays was climbing around bomb craters in the middle of Merseyside.

 

We do well to trust in another Power than that of the State.