Lewis, Isaac & Matthew

I spent yesterday with our family. The day’s summed up by three quotations:

‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe…

We remembered Lewis Carroll’s ‘Jabberwocky’ from ‘Alice Through the Looking Glass’. Complete nonsense!

I’m very happy talking nonsense much of the time; I do it deliberately. Sometimes I think I make sense, but I’m told that I’m talking nonsense…

‘Experts’ in politics or religion sometimes seem to make as much sense as ‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves’…

‘I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.’

Bryan remembered this Isaac Newton quote. In all of his great intellectual work in maths, science and theology Newton realised how much he didn’t know.

We get older; we may get wiser. The more we know the more we realise we don’t know. I used to think I knew all of the answers; now I’m not sure I know all of the questions.

I’m Newton’s little boy.

‘What good will it be for a man if he gain the whole world, yet forfeits his soul.’

We mentioned these words of Jesus; I read it again from Matthew’s gospel this morning.

We reflected that in all of the busyness, activity and enjoyment of life that it’s important to focus on that which is genuinely valuable.

We talked… family memories, children, grandchildren, joys, fears, hospitals, cancer, death… There was laughter there were tears. We reflected on the faith that believes that nothing is ‘able to separate us from the Love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.’  

It was a good day that I shall remember…