In Sunday’s Lectionary, I’ll go back to that nugget in Ephesians about not getting drunk (not not drinking). It seems to me that there’s something sexy in the imagination about getting drunk – you can become famous, the star of all those stories; “He was so bladdered threw up in a traffic cone” (there’s far better ones I’m sure you can think of). Or at least it seems sexy in prospect when you’ve already had a few. And being sober is perhaps a little unsexy (though perhaps not quite as much as trying to kiss someone who has residual diced carrots in his beard – I suppose).
From time to time I read picture books about the railway which goes past the house where I was brought up. Among all the photos of exciting locos, there are few, if any, pictures of the Fairburn 2-6-4 tank, the engine I used to see most often in my young childhood. Much too unglamorous – and yet vital to the life of the railway.
I think it’s time to celebrate what, and who, is unglamorous, unsexy and yet vital in the life of the world, from the Black Five, to the elder who just gets on with the job.
God of love,
we praise and thank you
for ordinary people,
ordinary buses,
ordinary food,
unspectacular love.
