Anecdote Noah's Ark

I was with my oldest son recently and he told me this story which I thought was interesting but am finding hard to draw a moral from. I have only been to Felixstowe once. It must have been some time in the nineties and I was there to preach at Bethesda Baptist Church. In the afternoon I went for a walk with a man whose name I do not recall. As we walked near the beach he picked up a brown pebble that had a grain and he told me that it was fossilised wood.

Well, I took the pebble home and showed it to my son and carefully explained how it had been formed (taking a creationist viewpoint). Anyway, he told me that in school the next day he showed it to his teacher and announced to her that it was an original part of Noah's ark! His teacher was very good about it and suggested that may be he had got something wrong, which he clearly had. Perhaps the moral is how easy it is to miscommunicate. I certainly managed to that time and put two people in a rather awkward situation.

Childhood Anecdote 2

I thought this morning for some reason about an incident from my childhood. I was five or six years old and I was at the top of the stairs and for some reason decided to out my wellingtons on. As I did so I fell down the stairs. When I came to the bottom I remember both my father and mother rushing to see what had happened (it must have been a Saturday). I recall sitting at the bottom of the stairs and looking up at them. They were really concerned and were seeking to interpret the signs on my face as to whether I was injured, which I was not. Meanwhile, I was only thinking that I must be in big trouble for playing with my wellingtons on the stairs.

At the same time I remember them looking at my toes and noting that both of my big toe nails grow double (ie split - not because they are damaged but because of a genetic abnormality). It is the first time I remember being aware of this.  

Childhood Anecdote 1

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Somewhere around 1965 I went as a six year old with my family on our usual summer caravan holiday to Porthcawl. At some point my dad's younger brother Peter (still alive and well and living in Canada) turned up with a new car he had bought secondhand, perhaps his first car. It was some sort of Ford Zephyr, a convertible if I remember correctly. Anyway, the think about this car was the registration, GAR 12. My uncle told me (as uncles do) he'd got it with me in my mind (we had just moved into our new home, number 12). I remember thinking at the time that he might have been better to have had GARY B and dropped the 12. GAR would make it a Hertfordshire registration I think.

Daniel Rowland's Nose

Being in Llangeitho recently and seeing the statue of Daniel Rowland reminded me of an incident from the year 1981. That summer I worked in the Christian Bookshop in Aberystwyth, then located near the station. That summer the Banner of Truth had reproduced a memoir of Rowland by a vicar called John Owen. We put the magazine with a line drawing of Rowland on the cover in the window. One day two elderly farm women, in from the countryside, came in. They wanted a copy of the magazine they said. The talkative one revealed that the other one was a descendant of Rowland. "You can tell" she said "by the nose. She's got the same nose." When I looked, there it was - Daniel Rowland's nose right in the middle of this poor woman's face!

Rhodri Morgan Anecdote

It has been sad this week to hear of the death of Welsh speaking Welshman Rhodri Morgan, former Welsh first minister. He was the man who gave one of my sons his degree when he graduated (Cledwyn Hughes gave me mine, Cled the Red). I like the anecdote that tells how Tony Blair once stayed at Mr Morgan's house. Apparently Tony Blair was up early in the morning and so was Morgan's mother-in-law. When she came into the kitchen an saw him she blurted out "I know who you are, You're that Lionel Blair"!. Morgan confirmed the truth of the story in an interview with David Frost some time.

Baptist Anecdote

I came across this anecdote recently from 1824 in The New Evangelical Magazine, and Theological Review, Volume 10. A correspondent (Elimelech) includes it saying he had it from Benjamin Francis. (Apologies to any paedobaptist friends).

A poor woman, a member of a neighbouring Independent church, requested me to give her a Bible. I replied, “Yes, Mary, I have no objection to give you a Bible, but it must be on one condition.” “Well, Sir,” said she, “ and what is it?” “Why it is this, that you bring me one text from the New Testament that authorises Infant Baptism.” “Yes, Sir, that I will," was her reply; and she went away apparently very much pleased with the success of her application. The next day she came again, I said, “How do you do, Mary - have you got the text?” “Yes, Sir,” said she, “the best I could find.” She replied, with much seeming satisfaction, “It is in 1 Pet. ii. 13. Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake Sir.” I do not recollect the close of this short dialogue, except that it contained a promise that the good woman should have the Bible.

A childhood memory

I began my preaching yesterday evening with an anecdote from childhood.  It is from the days of cigarettes and fireplaces. It is of my nana or grandmother (my dad's mam) leaning over the open coal fire at home and burning the edge of the white tissue paper on the back of the foil from a packet of her cigarettes (Gold Flake or Kensitas she used to smoke – lots of people smoked in those days). She was then able to peel the white paper from the foil and add it to her collection of silver paper.

Lots of people collected silver paper in those days, in the sixties. My other nana who didn't smoke was collecting it too. The silver foil was sold to companies who would use it tin the steel making process. The money they paid for it was used by charities seeking to help the blind.

There was quite a high awareness of the needs of the blind then. My parents and grandparents were especially concerned about toxacariasis, which can be caught from dog faeces, if the dog has ring worm. They always seemed to be reading about cases where children had become blind by this means.

An anecdote from childhood

John Grayson, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

I just put this on another blog of mine.
My father was a fine sportsman. His main sports were soccer, (British) baseball and swimming. I never saw him play soccer but I did see him play baseball on the winning side in a final in 1965. I also remember watching him swimming once. It was at Maindee swimming baths in Newport and the annual Girlings swimming Gala (which we all pronounced Gayler) again some time around 1965. I can see my dad now in his green bathers lining up for the obstacle race. He was 6' 2" and had perfected an amazing racing dive so when they were started he went straight into the lead and I was sure he would win. But my mother knew better and tried to prepare me. One of the obstacles was to bite through balloons and she knew that with his false dentures (which he had from the age of 21) he wouldn't be able to go on as fast as the younger men. And so it proved. He came in third and won a set of three decorated chalice style beer glasses, which we had for years and almost never used.
(By 1965 my dad was 36).