Weekly Reflection – How’s that?

If you listen to Desert Island Discs on Radio 4, you will know that at the end of the programme every guest is invited to nominate a luxury that they would take if they were cast away on a desert island.

My luxury (probably not allowable!) would be two cricket teams (with two umpires) playing an endless succession of five day test matches on a decent pitch. I wouldn’t mind terribly much which team won more matches. It would be enough to have a seat on the boundary, reading the one book I had been allowed to take with me during the lunch interval. These thoughts have been prompted by England’s remarkable win over New Zealand last week in the first cricket test match of the summer. The match was in the balance for much of the time, the final result in doubt until quite late in the match.

Clergy are fond of offering images to describe human beings’ relationship with God. I sometimes think of my own as rather like my relationship with test cricket. Sometimes I am on the edge of my seat with excitement; sometimes l am content to let the relationship ebb and flow without paying a huge amount of attention; sometimes I find myself frustrated; sometimes I am simply surprised by the way things turn out. This sporting image of a relationship with God may not be one that you find helpful at all. But other images are available, and exploring one or more that speak to you can be a very rich way of developing your own relationship and deepening you faith.

There is, of course, one significant difference between my relationship with God and test cricket: my faith assures me that the relationship will always end well, however many the ups and downs I experience on the way. Sadly, that cannot be said of every test match that the England team plays.

Time to draw stumps….

With prayers and all good wishes,
Dean Simon