The Chris Rea song of our title blog today is one of my favourites. Red lights on the road a far cry from coach and horses of previous times.
Yesterday while driving home for Christmas on the radio came a Tesco radio mobile phone advert wishing us all a Merry Giftmas. The Christ in Christmas has been dropped , forgotten in the these days and yet we hear only murmur of derision.
Tesco was according to their founder Jack Cohen , whom I met was a good Jewish boy and whose mantra was ‘ stack em high and sell it cheap ‘ . His daughter Tessa drove the name Tesco ( Tessa Cohen , Tesco ) later becoming Mayor of Westminster then having to resign for selling the cemeteries in Westminster for £1 in a ‘ stack em high sell them cheap moment ‘ . Jesus Christ that Jewish rabbi from Nazareth is forgotten, shame on your legacy Jack.
Hardly surprising bearing in mind that the established Church of England is in chaos as the Guardian newspaper editorial points out today saying below as it awaits a new Archbishop of Canterbury ( ABC ) .
‘ Perhaps a future archbishop should seek a humbler, less imperial role: concentrating on being a spiritual, even parochial, leader ‘
Spiritual guidance is the missing ingredient these days as our leaders fail us and our business leaders deface us. In that new movie Conclave we see the political machinations in the Roman Catholic Church as it chooses its Pontiff. The movie delivers through the white smoke a candidate to match the times we find ourselves. If Jesus was in Rome or Canterbury today I reckon He would struggle in the selection process.
We see Santa Claus in the photo above readying to drive his reindeer to the homes at Christmas. Like Santa in the carols we hear ‘ while shepherds wash their socks by night ‘ and reminisce of those innocent days of childhood and the pre gift excitement. There are of course gifts and we see in the Christmas story wise men bearing gifts though in some of the gospels they are not mentioned.
These three wise men followed the star in that bright sky to that stable with gold frankincense and myrrh, not a Tesco mobile phone among them. Let’s not take Jesus Christ out of Christmas and let’s pray for some decent spiritual guidance in a world that so needs all that Jesus offered. Man cannot live on bread alone and we need that inner steer , that moral compass, that conscience check , that spiritual tug as we follow the star. Life is short and then there’s taxes.
I leave you with the link to the song and some red lights on the road seen recently from my hotel room in Istanbul where the traffic is a nightmare.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DDt3u2Ev1cI
Be safe , drive carefully, don’t drink and drive , and follow that Star of David into 2025. Jesus is coming back not by sleigh , car not coach and horses but somehow , some day somewhere , no man knows the time. Meanwhile the best we get is ABC , the Pontiff and man. ‘ Stack em high sell it cheap ‘ mankind is in the room.
qbitblogger 