War of the Worlds by Adrian Plass

Author:Adrian Plass [Plass, Adrian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781780780153
Publisher: Authentic
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

I once bewildered and annoyed my god-son by giving him a Christmas present that appeared to be nothing more than a handful of those large chocolate coins that are wrapped tightly in shiny golden paper. Muttering insincere thanks, he handed one of the coins to his sister, unwrapped another and started to nibble on it. Suddenly there was a cry of surprise from his sister. Inside her chocolate coin wrapper she had discovered a tightly folded twenty-pound note, the Christmas present actually intended for her brother. Leaving aside the difficulty of separating one small girl from what she considered to be her twenty-pound note and giving it to its rightful owner, it was quite a good idea. Well, I thought so anyway.

Some Bible verses are like that. Easily dismissed and well worth unwrapping. I have my own little list of these productive collections of words, and one of my very favourite verses in the Old Testament is Job 29:24: ‘When I smiled at them they could scarcely believe it.’

That’s what it says, and it’s spoken by poor, boil-infested Job as he recalls the good old pre-boil days when he was one of the best personal representatives that God could ever have hoped for. As far as we can tell, people seemed to love the things that he said and did.

By contrast, a lot of folk get very fed up with Christians nowadays. A lot of it is our own fault, of course. We do seem to have made an art out of patronising gittishness, especially on television for some strange reason. I hide miserably behind the sofa, like a cat with gastric problems, when someone on one of those audience participation programmes fixes a coyly sparkling smile on their face and begins their first sentence with the words, ‘As a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ, I would have to say that . . .’

I suppose the smile is intended to express joy, peace and love, but it actually fills me, a born again Christian (is there some other sort?), with a confusing turmoil of anger, shame and frustration. I have never actually thrown up or down behind that settee of mine (carpets cost money after all), but I have come close.

What a shame these enamel smiles are, because one of the most captivating things about being a staggering, faltering follower of Jesus like me is the realisation that it involves offering a genuine smile to people in situations where they least expect it. The smile is not just a facial expression, of course, although a real one can be amazingly effective. It could be a garden sorted out for a beleaguered friend. It could be the provision of a well supplying clean water for a small community in the slums of Bangladesh. It could be an hour spent with a lonely, elderly person. It might be an anonymous gift or unexpected forgiveness or a temporary abandonment of the rules, or telling a benevolent lie to your brother about you not really wanting the last sausage so he might as well have it.

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