at least ...

It's always good to have a fall-back position.

Like being able to say when Scotland lose, "Ach well, they may have lost but at least ..." - well, you learn over the years to make up your own end to the sentence.

Thankfully it's only a game! And maybe the fact that all the Italian players had black arm bands on their shirts put the whole thing in its perspective. That football fan being killed last week .. well, for him it was life that he lost.

We just lost a game. It's kind of rather different.

Sundays, I guess, are given by God to get that perspective back again. And today's been a day for getting myself ready for that.

Out and about, doing various jobs. In to the bank and cleaning the house and going to the shops and buying the food and cooking a meal and digging the garden, trimming the hedge and stopping to read for a while.

Then watching the game with a crowd of some grown-up boys in the home of one of my friends.

All of the day providing the chance to reflect on what God has been saying. Earthing it all in the up and down world of the people who walk these streets.

I know what he's called me to say. It's being able to say it in such a way it makes sense on the streets of the world.

Where people find their hearts are often broken and their hopes are often foiled. Where time and again they think 'If only this', 'If only that'.

That sort of world. What I'm given to say has got to make sense in a world which works like that.

A world where Scotland lose.