Handkerchiefs and Tissues

You can tell you’re getting old when you start sentences with, ‘In my day…’ or ‘When I was a boy/girl…’ or ‘Do you remember when…’, and you compare today with something from your past.

The sentence then continues with something about phones, television programmes, music, the price of things, schools, clothes and fashion, food, computers, games, estates that used to be fields… The list is endless.

Like the old nonsense: ‘I remember when milk was a penny a loaf and bread was tuppence a pint.’

My contribution this morning is ‘When I was a boy we didn’t have tissues. We all had handkerchiefs.’ When I went out Mum often said, ‘Have you go a clean hanky?’ I knew that the right answer was, ‘Yes’, whether I had one or not.

I was taught: ‘Coughs and sneezes spread diseases; trap your germs in your handkerchief!’

I learnt that hankies had multiple uses… nose-wiping, tear-drying, dribbled gravy-removing, glasses-cleaning, chewing-gum-saving, blood-mopping… which leads me to another thought:

‘Children don’t fall and cut their knees like they used to!’

Yesterday I was musing on Christine’s Thanksgiving Service and lines from Nathan Fellingham’s song ‘Death has now been swallowed up in victory’ (quoting from Paul in ‘1Corinthians’) and ‘Then all hurt and pain will cease’ (quoting from John in ‘Revelation’)

This morning I read Isaiah 25:8 ‘He will swallow up death for ever. The sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears from all faces; he will remove the disgrace of his people…’It’s where Nathan, Paul and John all got their ideas from. It pulls it all together!

I remember the A-Team and ‘I love it when a plan comes together!’

And I love the idea – and the reality – of a death-swallowing, tear-wiping, disgrace-removing God… who therefore will make both tissues and handkerchiefs redundant.