See all

Uncategorized

Opening Eyes and Hearts

One of the delightful things about living in Wooler is going down to the riverside and watching the salmon leap.  We were leaning over the bridge observing their Herculean efforts to get up and over the weir and one of the locals, a guy in his 40’s, football mad, came by and engaged in conversation.  As ever with him, it only ever revolves around football and we spent the next 10 minutes listening to him extol the virtues of his team and deriding my commitment to Middlesbrough who are languishing now at the bottom of the Championship.  (Thankfully we have a new manager and whilst it will take an equally Herculean effort, I am hoping that the damage of the last 12 months can be healed and the club restored to its good traditions and some movement up the league).  Eventually the guy paused in his football commentary and asked, “What are you looking at?” to which I replied and pointed to the salmon.  “Good God, I’ve never seen that before” he uttered.  I took the opportunity to affirm his description of the nature of God and couldn’t hide my astonishment that he, who has lived here all his life and who had walked over this bridge every day, had never seen the salmon leap before.  For the next two minutes he was speechless and watched in amazement at the spectacle in the water below us.  I’d love to think that somehow a glimpse of the kingdom of God entered his consciousness in that experience and that on subsequent occasions when he walks over the bridge he will remember the salmon leaping and recall his words, “Good God”.  They are you see inextricably linked.  What saddens me is that a canny bloke is walking around with his eyes closed to the beauty of God’s creation and his heart and mind so consumed by his fanatical obsession with football that he cannot hear the whispers of God’s voice.  Surely the task of living missionally and sharing faith is simply about opening people’s eyes, ears and hearts to the fingerprints of God and the whispers of his voice all around.