hangings

Misunderstandings happen remarkably easily.

I'm not enough of a linguist (in fact I'm not a linguist at all!) to know whether it's a particular peculiarity of the English language, but English seems to lend itself to misunderstandings.

I mean, take the word 'inflammable'. I used the word in one of my posts a while ago and a friend who has the dual distinction of both reading my blog on a regular basis and being concerned to improve my English remarked that surely I should have written ''flammable'.

To which I replied that no, I'd meant to write (and was sticking by the use of) the word 'inflammable'. Even though I plainly meant 'flammable'. Which is what 'inflammable' actually also means!

Confused? No wonder! Just think of how confusing the whole thing is for those for whom English is not their mother tongue! When you see the words 'Highly Inflammable' on the back of a truck, it means ... well, it means it's highly flammable! A word which means two entirely opposite things.

No wonder we get confused. And no wonder misundersgandings arise.

The Guild were holding a meeting here tonight. I forget the speaker's name but her theme was proudly advertised as The Hangings at Stirling Castle.

Now I'm not a particularly blood-thirsty guy. But I was really quite struck by the topic and wondered how many there'd been down the years. And how gory the details would be the speaker would give. And whether there might even be pictures of some of the most notorious ones there'd been.

My thoughts had been taken to good old William Wallace, of course. Stirling Castle and all that. And yes, I know it wasn't at Stirling that he was put to death, but in London. And I know it wasn't by hanging (at least not that alone or at last).

But I was back in my mind in medieval times and the tales there must be from the scaffolds at Stirling Castle.

And, yes, I was just a bit surprised that the Guild were going in for a talk like that. I mean, the Guild, they're a lovely bunch of ladies (by and large - in the sense that sometimes the odd man pitches up), but I should have thought they were well past the stage of taking any pleasure in accounts of ancient hangings.

Except it wasn't that sort of hanging at all they were talking about. The hugely more cultured, much more refined and definitely far more lady-like art of wall hangings.

Well, I presume that's what the speaker was due to speak about. Because she didn't turn up! Maybe the mist put her off (it's been like something out of a Charles Dickens novel these past couple of days).

The whole thing reflected the day I've had. How very aware I've been today of the way misunderstandings can arise.

And the way things often don't work out the way they're planned.

Most of my day's been spent with different people. Morning, noon and night. Any number of different, very different folk. Not the way I'd planned my day at all.

But that's the way it often is, I guess. I spoke with a man tonight, whom I'd seen last night as well. He was worried that what he'd said last night had taken me off my guard.

And, sure, I hadn't expected at all what he'd said. But I told him my life is full of these daily surprises. And so, in a sense, I'm ready, I trust, for anything.

Some of the folk that I've seen today, I've seen in the next-day-aftermath of what he said last night.

Misunderstanding.

Where 'hangings' means two very different things.

Where one well-meaning person is going on enthusiastically about some brightly coloured, deftly sewn and carefully made wall coverings on some castle walls.

And another well-intentioned listener feels quite threatened by this seemingly aggressive sort of talk about a gory, grisly, unbefitting end to human life.

That's been the sort of backdrop to the day I've had. I guess I could blame the tower of Babel builders for the mess we're often in! (But blame isn't going to help one little bit).

As a body of believers here, we're going to be taking a quick crash course through 'Lent' on the book of Deuteronomy. Mainly for this reason. It's a book about living a communal life.

Which is what the people of Israel had to learn before they entered the promised land.

And what, I think, we, too, these days have got to learn if we're to enter ourselves and take up full possession of that realm of grace and blessing which our God has promised us in Christ.

We started in on the book last night. And I'd wanted today to get ahead with figuring out just what the book is saying to us here and now.

But, a little bit like the Israelites, I got a 'practical' first. The book of Deuteronomy is the teaching that they got at the end of the forty years they wandered through the desert on the way. A sort of summary of the lessons they'd learned while out in the field.

And I've been mainly 'out in the field' today.

And already I'm desperate for Sunday to come round again!

I've been learning so much and seeing so much, first hand, on the ground today, as it were, that's there in the book in the passage I'll preach from this week!

It's almost like the text there in the book of Deuteronomy was written just for us!

And how does this book of the Bible end? With a choice. "I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life ..."

Hangings and hangings. Colour draped across a prince's walls. Or the colour draining from a prisoner's face.

Life in all its beauty. Death in all its ugliness.

A lot always hinges (I was going to say 'a lot is always hanging'!) on the choices we make. How and what we choose to hear.

The guy, Moses, was wise (I guess that's an up-side of getting old). He closed by saying simply - choose life. Advice doesn't come better than that.