George H W Bush

A peculiarity of  being a Pastor is that, although most days reinforce a sense of how inconsequential you are seen to be by the world, you do get to meet a disproportionate number of important, famous people.

One such for me, and whose memorial is happening today, was George H W Bush, the 41st President of the United States of America.  The occasion of meeting him - or more strictly of him meeting me - was when he visited the Church in America where I was on the staff.  He came to speak a greeting at one of the morning worship services and he was brought to meet those of us with whom he would be sharing the platform.

It was naturally a brief encounter, but it was long enough to feel the warmth of personality that has been eulogised today and which contrasts with what is sometimes experienced from lesser women and men.

But back to the meeting.  Did I meet him or did he meet me?

Well, I was at work; I was in a room that I frequented dozens of times in the course of that work and George Bush, I imagine, had never been into that room before.  He may never have been to the church premises before.  It seems to me that he met me.  I was where I would usually be and he wasn't.

Which neatly brings us toward Christmas.  For is it not one of the greatest and most wonderful things about Christmas that we do not go to glory to meet God until, first, he has come to our place - in truth somewhat beneath our place - to meet us?  We meet him because he first meets us.

Professor Antony Flew

Professor Antony Flew died a week ago. His story is fascinating not because it ends in a glorious conversion to faith in Jesus (it apparently didn't, though I am not his judge) but because it debunks the idea that it is especially rational to disbelieve in God.

Though the son of a President of the Methodist Conference, no greater philosophical mind stood in the imaginary atheistic pulpit in the 20th century than Flew. None of the current crop of atheistic militants approaches his philosophical standing.  And then, after a lifetime of reflection, Flew threw atheism out without a parachute.

Worse for your friendly local atheist, it can scarcely be argued that Antony Flew embraced the idea of god as a kind of pre-death insurance because a saving god was not the kind of deity that he came to postulate. His imagined god was creation's source and little else.

LESSON 1: Believing there is Someone Out There makes a whole lot more sense than being an atheist.

LESSON 2: But knowing that Someone caused you to be and squandering the chance to know him is a kind of rational irrationality.