27th April 2018

Today I became my grandfather. One of the arms of my reading glasses snapped, and I dutifully reattached it with a piece of sticky-tape. It looks dodgy and hideous and just like I remember the healed pair of glasses that my grandfather wore. I can’t wait to show my daughter, who will be predictably mortified and will refuse to accompany me in public should I be so audacious as to wear them.

My pride of course is romantic and sentimental and foolish, for the fix will not last, and the sticky-tape will annoy me with that glueyness that always seems to surround it with time. And I predict that the offending arm will snap again at the most inconvenient time, during a wedding or a funeral, and I further predict that at that tense moment, I will inwardly sulk and scowl and lament the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

God is good not to fix our hearts in such a temporary and inadequate way. And he will have no cause to lament his method of healing, for his fix was conceived without the least hint of romance and executed without the least trace of pride. And his fix will never fail, even at the most inconvenient of moments, and especially at that testing moment when all are assembled before the great white throne. No wonder then his people are not embarrassed to talk of Calvary, and to boast of the glorious repair.

DM 27^th April 2018