Resurrection...

Just visited old chums in Taunton, and enjoyed a day at the cricket, seeing 22 wickets fall on a remarkable day’s play. I declined the option to stay for the second day, thereby missing out on that rarest of results in county cricket: a tie.

Now I’m parked up in in Watchet, on the Somerset coast, having listened to an old guy telling me about the power of prayer. He said he had healed people - including himself - who had been given a terminal diagnosis by their doctor, but denied being a healer; the power to heal was God’s gift, he insisted, not his. I carried on listening, resisting the temptation to comment, as he told me of an incident in India, when he was doing missionary work. On one occasion he visited a hospital, and saw a mother who had recently given birth. Unfortunately, her baby had died. The guy prayed over the baby, which, after a few minutes, opened its eyes and smiled at him. A miracle!

A few months later, he said, he was back in the same village, and was asked if he would like to visit that mother and her now-healthy baby. She was walking along the road, and, when she saw him, she fell to her knees. The guy said he turned around at that point, and walked away, because “I didn’t want the place being turned into a shrine… to me”.

He won’t find his way into my book, though I was intrigued by the juxtaposition of faux-humility and self-regard. The righteous can make the most remarkable claims for themselves (it was this guy, after all, who was able to bring the dead back to life… not Joe Bloggs), while simultaneously praising God and his “mysterious ways”.

I did wonder whether his remaining years could be put to better purpose by bringing more dead people back to life, and, while he has God’s attention, maybe finding a cure for cancer… rather than running a second-hand bookstall on the quayside in a small Somerset town. Ten million children die every year, before the age of five, because of poverty, starvation, illness, drought, war and natural disasters. God, when unprompted or un-prayed to, is able to watch this carnage with apparent equanimity. If the old guy could jog the creator’s elbow once in a while, maybe God could be encouraged to show a bit more compassion.

The 9th century cross in Irton churchyard, Cumbria... licensed today...