It’s nice to be able to share good news sometimes, and the good news I enjoy sharing at the moment is that, come December, there will be a new addition to our family. Yes, grandchild number one is on the way, and who could have imagined the amount of energy and excitement this news has generated. Suddenly I am surrounded by people who are either knitting for babies, shopping for babies, or talking about babies.
One of the ‘must buy’ items on every prospective parent’s shopping list is a pram – at least that’s what they used to be called in our day. These days they are not called prams, or even buggies. These days, as we have discovered, they are called ‘fully integrated travel systems’. It has to be huge but light weight, tough but flexible, adjustable in every conceivable way (including full swivel), and, most important of all, safe! I know this, because the one Lucy ordered has just been delivered to the manse and I have spent my lunch hour trying to assemble it.
Now I’m not usually fazed by assembly instructions. I tend to approach B&Q flat packs with an air of confidence, and have even been known to manage an IKEA wardrobe. The assembly instructions for this ‘full integrated travel system’, however, were another matter entirely. The problem was not that there weren’t any, but that it was all done in tiny complicated drawings, with, for clarification, strange disembodied arrows appearing in magnified insets. Before long I had broken into a cold sweat, not wanting force anything into where it wasn’t meant to be, thereby causing lasting damage (and humiliation in the eyes of my trusting daughter).
It was Lindsay who came to my rescue by ‘googling’ the travel system in question on her lap-top. Within seconds we were reading the firsthand account of a mum who already had one of these things, and, more to the point, had already worked out how to put it together. Immediately we felt encouraged to persevere, for we were not alone in our struggle, and before long the object was fully assembled (and able to fully swivel).
And the moral of this story? Perhaps it is this: a picture may paint a thousand words, but sometimes words paint a clearer picture.
If you google ‘Jesus’ on the internet, you will find hundreds of pictures – all painted centuries after his life on earth and all reflecting the different cultures, theologies and assumptions of the artists who painted him. If you want to know what he was really like, the best place to start is with words. It has been said that the whole of the Bible points to Jesus. The Old Testament points forward to his coming, the Gospels describe what happened when he came, and the rest of the New Testament points back to its significance.
If you want some words that best summarise this, you can’t do much better than these ones, drawn from John’s Gospel…
For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, so that whoever believed in him would not die, but have everlasting life. For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but so that through him the world would be saved. (John 3.16-17)
Paint that!
Much love
John