O No It Isn’t!

Saturday’s football… Norwich had a mediocre first half; Coventry scored after twenty-four minutes. At half time we deserved to be 1-0 down. Our second half is better but we can’t score. After eighty minutes spectators start to leave.

Defeat’s inevitable? O no it isn’t! The manager brings on substitutes… We go into extra time. After ninety-one minutes substitute Amankwah Forson scores… in the ninety-fifth minute he scores again! We win 2-1! Twenty-six thousand fans celebrate!

In ‘On This Day in History’: ‘The first cross-Channel flight took place today in 1785 as a Frenchman and an American flew a balloon from Dover Castle to Calais.’

Dan Snow tells of Jean-Pierre Blanchard and John Jeffries: ‘At one o’clock the balloon rose gently from the castle grounds , as a crowd of spectators roared… After two and a half hours they landed, shivering and somewhat traumatised, just outside Calais. The world’s first international flight was complete.’

Flight impossible? O no it isn’t!

The film ‘Wicked’ was popular over Christmas… Elphaba’s grown up a social outcast, the only green girl in Oz. Misunderstood, judged and ostracized, she’s labelled the ‘wicked’ witch of the West.

Impossible to change perceptions? O no it isn’t! Elphaba sings ‘Defying Gravity’: ‘I’m through with playing by the rules of someone else’s game… I’m through accepting limits ’cause someone says they’re so’

Elphaba defies the gravity that pulls her down. She challenges societal norms, embraces her true self, brings about transformation…

St Paul writes about ‘a thorn in my flesh’. Whatever it is Paul, desperate to get rid of it, prays for it to be removed. Impossible to live with? O no it isn’t! God answers his prayer: ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’

Paul concludes, ‘When I am weak, then I am strong.’ With his God’s help Paul turns defeat to victory, flies for the first time, defies the gravitational limits of other’s perceptions… Accepting his weakness, he learns to depend on his God’s strength.