Such a Man

On Saturday Joe and I saved our local library from being closed down. We were responding to an email that was fired out to everyone encouraging us to visit the library and borrow as many books as we were entitled to. I don’t know whether Saturdays are normally busy days anyway, but there were a lot of people there.

Joe doesn’t possess a library card. He has a history from way back of unreturned books and huge fines. We are not talking about unreturned books from in Inverness library, but from Guilford where he lived in the 1980s. He is convinced that he is blacklisted, although I am quite sure that his crime has been forgotten. I am sure that records don’t go that far back, and since everything went computerised he has nothing to worry about.

It has been a while since I went to the library. I am a book lover – but not a very good book borrower. Yesterday afternoon, a friend of ours was evicting cyber bugs from the laptop for us. He was admiring the bookcase behind him and commenting on the fact that there were a lot of books. Then he remembered a book that I had borrowed from him – a biography of a climber. I am not sure how many years ago I borrowed it. Returning books is not my forte – but people know me well enough to know I will not be offended if they ask for it back. It’s only the library that charges me for retuning books late!

So, we borrowed books. Joe borrowed a non-fiction book about the truth behind movie making. I am trying to wean myself off Dan Brown type religious conspiracy who-dun-its, and off novels with high body counts. I have enough angst in everyday life so true to life emotional train wrecks are also off the menu. I have started to read a thriller “The Dying Light”. It began with a bomb going off near a Columbian restaurant and the death of a government worker. They’ve just attended the funeral – a event that seems to be devoid of sorrow and mourning, however, a friend from his past has erupted with a very emotional eulogy. Whereas everyone else seems to be content to let the deceased person leave this world without due celebration of his life, this man speaks passionately about his friendship. The congregation are swinging between nodding their heads in agreement and cringing out of embarrassment that someone is breaking the rules of keeping it all civil and calm.

The man talks of his friend in such glowing terms and then ends with the line “Such a man makes you think God is possible.”

I have said to many people the words “There is a God”. I have dived into deep conversations persuading people through argument and rhetoric that there is a God. One can say the words but not necessarily live a life that demonstrates that there is a God. God is more than the words spoken. He should inhabit every act.

I am not going to say that it would nice if someone could say that about my life – that I lived in such a way as to make people think God was possible. It’s too passive – I can live that kind of life. And not just that God was possible – but beyond the “maybe” to “God really is.”