I am Thomas

Good morning, my name is Thomas. You might have heard of me. I was one of Jesus’ disciples, been with him from when he first started going around the Jewish countryside, teaching, telling stories, healing people. Most people call me doubting Thomas because of something that happened to me at the end of Jesus’ time on earth. But I’m getting a bit ahead of myself. I do want to tell you the story of that day, but I’d like to build up to it, it that’s OK with you. Fill in some of the background. It might help to make a bit more sense of it for you.

I’d like to take you back to a few months before the end of Jesus’ time on earth, to a remote wilderness on the other side of the river Jordan from Jerusalem. Jesus had got it into his head that he ought to go back to Bethany, just down the road from Jerusalem. To be fair, we had just had some really bad news. Word had reached us that our mate, Lazarus, was really ill. What was really odd though was that when the message reached us Jesus didn’t seem to be in any hurry at all. We hung around for a couple of days and then, just as we were finishing breakfast on the third day Jesus announces that we ought to go and visit Lazarus.

This went down like a lead balloon. Last time we had been to the area, we had barely escaped with our lives, because the religious leaders had been plotting to kill Jesus. The others tried to talk Jesus out of it, but he was determined. Then, it all got even more bizarre. Jesus said that Lazarus was dead, but how he knew this was a complete mystery, it wasn’t like we’d had any more messages. We maybe could have understood it if he had wanted to go and see Lazarus when we was sick. We’d seen him heal plenty of people, he could have healed Lazarus as well, but no, he waited until Lazarus was dead, and then was in a big hurry to walk into danger. Really bizarre.

In the end I said to the others, “Let’s go with him, at least we can all die together”. But, as we were to find out later, death wasn’t where this story would end.

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Welcome, Travel, Message

I don't know if you have noticed but we have had a special visitor to the UK during the last week. In fact there have been lots of special visitors. The leaders of the G20 nations, the 20 richest, most influential countries on earth have been in London, with their ministers and advisors. But the one that everybody talked about most was the new President of the United States, Barack Obama.

Everybody wanted to welcome this man who has been hailed as a breath of fresh air, a new hope for the western world.

Even Radio Stoke got in on the act. Stuart George on the Breakfast Show yesterday said this about him, “Everybody loves him and he's going to solve the world's ills.” Now, I think that his tongue was in his cheek, but there is that kind of slant to a lot of the coverage of Barack Obama, expectations of what he can achieve are very high. Anyway, in order to mark the occasion of his visit to the UK, Radio Stoke are planning to send him a hamper of things to let him know about Staffordshire and South Cheshire, because he never really made it out of London. They invited people to ring and text in with suggestions of what could go in this hamper. They decided that they couldn't send food because that wouldn't get through customs. But in the end this was the list of things that they decided to send: a recipe for Oatcakes, a piece of pottery, a calendar with views of the Staffs moorlands, postcards showing views of the area, a model train, and two t-shirts for his daughters with a Staffordshire knot design on them. That is the list of things that it was decided represent this region and would be our welcome to Barack Obama to mark his first visit to the UK as President.

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Bending the Knee

I was at the Potteries Museum on Saturday with the rest of the family. Tabitha has been learning about the Tudors in histroy at school, and they had a Tudor day at the museum, so we all headed along to see what was going on. Well, there were a dozen or so people in Tudor costume, talking with lots of thees and thous, and generally being Tudorish. Including, Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn.

They had some Tudor musical instruments, they had a drum, and some pipes and they might even have had a trigon, but I'm not sure what one of those is, so I couldn't swear to it. Having played the gathered company a couple of tunes, they asked for volunteers to teach a Tudor dance to. As part of this, the victims / eager volunteers where taught the correct way to bow and curtsy. The dancing master insisted that gathered crowd ought to learn as well because we all needed to bow to the King. So he showed us all how to do this, and then instructed us to reverence the King. Which about half of us did, the rest being distracted or bored or just indifferent. At which point the King barked, “Those who do not bend to the King will break”. We had another go, and far more people made some attempt at the correct bow.

Nebuchadnezzar did more than bark a pointed comment, he threatened execution, and quickly to Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. If they didn't get down on their knees, and pronto they would be toast.

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