Good News in a Pandemic: 7. Warning

STAY HOME

STAY ALERT

KEEP YOUR DISTANCE

WASH YOUR HANDS

DO NOT TRAVEL

SELF-ISOLATE

The last few months have multiplied the warnings.  Even though they're becoming more complicated these days they keep on coming.

It's not that warnings, including Government warnings, are anything new.  There is a whole industry of them, like packets of peanuts with warnings that the packet contains nuts.  It is just that they are now serious news - and well received by most, however unpalatable they appear to be for our comfort zone.

The renaissance of the warning as good news is itself good news.  Through increasingly complacent times the idea that the Bible warns has been offensive almost, that God warns irritating, that the Holy Spirit warns best avoided and the Jesus warned (he did it a lot) just perplexing.

Given that the Bible begins (in a perfect relationship between God and Man) with a warning, and that its last chapter is replete with warnings, we should better understand warning as a positive thing.

What is a pandemic if it is not a general warning to humanity?  The birds don't care, the moon doesn't mind, no angel has caught Covid-19 and nobody who died before last November had it either.  It is a warning to the people of now - to me, to you - that life is finite, material things are temporary, relationships are precious, and attention must be given to our soul's relationship with its Maker before we are brought face-to-face with Him.  That's where the Good News of a Saviour comes in - it was the most important thing after all . . .

Stones and stoniness

It's a lump of decorated stone.

It is, though, very old. 

It is on display because it illustrates the way in which synagogues became places of considerable art, the people showing their communal commitment to religion, their culture and possibly their God by expensive and expansive decoration.

It may be a lump of stone, but it says something.

It speaks, but it cannot listen.  That could only be done by the people who attended the ancient gathering place.  Did they listen?  Well, they heard words each week.  Then, beneath these ancient stones came another day.  The voice that spoke was the voice of God himself.  

These are stones from the synagogue at Chorazin in Galilee.  

Jesus commentary:

“Doom, Chorazin! Doom, Bethsaida! If Tyre and Sidon had been given half the chances given you, they’d have been on their knees long ago, repenting and crying for mercy. Tyre and Sidon will have it easy on Judgment Day compared to you" (The Message, Luke 10)

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.

Fore!

Today I feel impelled to tell the story of one of golf's most famous words, aptly pictured here:

The game of golf as we know it developed amid the coastal sand dunes of Eastern Scotland.  St Andrews is enshrined as the town most associated with the development of the sport that now spans the world.  And with it the shout, "Fore" as the now traditional warning.

At the beginning of April in 1877, Alexander Kilcallon was playing on the Royal  course when, like many before and since, he was struck by a ball 'inflicting a wounde grievusse'.  What was to make Alexander's story amazing was that exactly a year later to the day - this day - he was struck by another golf ball in a very similar way.  The duality seemed too much of a coincidence and he consulted the Minister of the Kirk (Church).  The Minister, Rev. Hamish Kincaird, was not at all sympathetic.  He despised the worldly pleasure of sport and pointed Alexander to a Biblical Proverb that occurs identically twice (in Proverbs 22:3 and 27:12) - identical verses for identical incidents. In the King James version it reads

A prudent man foreseeth the evil, and hideth himself; but the simple pass on, and are punished.

Perhaps it was the way that the Reverend Kincaird pronounced the word foreseeth to make his point, but Alexander Kilcallon took the word back to his golfing party as a cry of warning.  Presumably it was quickly reduced to the one syllable that any passing walker is wise to observe!

Not the intended application of the Proverb but very useful and undoubtedly the most shouted Biblical syllable on the golf course - though perhaps others are sometimes used in anger as well . . .