In Unexpected Places

During today (2 January), you may see some really odd posts.  This is because Rosemary is attempting to rewrite the practice exercise for new bloggers.  Please bear with her.  She will keep disruption to a minimum!

What do you expect when calling at a motorway service station?  The vast majority of people who call at Clacket Lane on the M25 have only one purpose: to spend a penny.  Imagine then my surprise at finding a display board, situated between the ‘Male Toilets’ and ‘Female Toilets’, about an archaeological dig and photographs of Roman finds on the Clacket Lane site. It was a stopping off place for Romans travelling between London and Canterbury - so no change of use then.

So why am I writing about a motorway service station on a Christian blog?  Bear with me.  I will make the connection in a minute.

        Think now about our church buildings.  Church buildings are very important to those who don’t attend church, not least because they are always there, a prop and a comfort.  Residents of the community know and sense that people are worshipping, that these people believe.  At our church, every Advent Sunday Nat – who rarely attends church otherwise – mounts an illuminated star on our church tower.  It’s visible for miles across the flat Essex countryside, reminding people going about their Christmas busyness in one of the larger Essex villages that God is here and in charge.

On our journey home from Seville, where we had spent Christmas with our son, both my husband and I looked out for that star on the church tower and felt blessed by it.  In Spain, they don’t do Christmas decorations as we do them.  With just a few dull red banners wishing us Feliz Navidad hanging from windows of a few houses and flats, we felt ourselves to be in a very secular environment.  Yet, in the city centre on Boxing Day, amongst jolly and merry gatherings of families and friends frenetically shopping and drinking, we suddenly came across a Living Crib.  Living Cribs are a Sevillian tradition, large installations set up outside churches, of the Nativity stable, with life-sized models of Mary and Joseph, shepherds and wise men. We stopped and stared in wonder at seeing God in the high street.  We only saw one but we had to queue to see it properly – because the citizens of Seville wanted to see it too.

A display board about archaeological finds in a museum, I might not pay much attention to, nor a star or a crib scene inside a church – because this is where you would expect to see them.  But coming across them out of context made me stop and think.

So how does this impinge on we writers? It affects us very much if we write mainstream or genre fiction, because we have the opportunity to fit in a little bit of God into the not specifically Godly, when the readers are not expecting it.  Not a good idea to labour it, just a few sentences, then move on. This is surely the best way to spread our Gospel.

Rosemary Johnson is author of Wodka, Or Tea With Milk, a historical novel set during the Solidarity years in Poland and of many short stories and flash.  Rosemary is also the ACW Webmaster.  In real life, she is a retired IT lecturer, living in Essex with her husband.