Truth or Fanciful Story?

Reg is always telling stories… When he was a young man, working on the boats, he walked into a pub and saw a beautiful young woman and got talking to her. It was quite believable.

Suddenly Reg’s beautiful young woman sneezed, her eye popped out and Reg caught it. I was beginning to have my doubts.

The evening went well, they started dating; the story became long, involved and less plausible. Eventually Reg married this girl of his dreams. Someone asked why an elegant, sophisticated young woman would marry an ordinary working boy like Reg; she said, ‘Because he caught my eye!’

Yesterday I learned about ‘Combat2coffee’, a national organisation that improves the mental health and well-being of veterans and ex-uniformed personnel. They sell coffee, investing the profits in veterans’ education and training, providing practical help regarding mental health support, physical wellbeing, jobs, training or housing.

Combat2coffee is supported by former Ipswich Town, Rangers and England footballer Terry Butcher, whose son Christopher died aged 35 in 2017 after being diagnosed with PTSD following his Army service in Afghanistan and Iraq.

This isn’t one of Reg’s fanciful stories; it’s reality for Terry Butcher, and for many individuals and families.

I’m reading D.H. Lawrence’s ‘The Plumed Serpent’. The protagonist, Kay, is in Mexico, reflecting on the Mexican god’s:

‘Her Irish spirit was weary to death of definite meanings and a God of one fixed purport. Gods should be iridescent, like a rainbow in the storm. Man creates a God in his own image and the gods grow old along with the men that made them. But storms sway in heaven, and the god-stuff sways high and angry over our heads. Gods die with the men who conceived them…’

Some friends see God like Lawrence’s Kay – one of Reg’s fanciful stories; I choose to align myself with other friends who believe in the Jesus who lived, who’s concerned about mental health and physical wellbeing, who declares himself to be ‘The Way, the Truth and the Life’.