Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Don't look up now

I heard in the news yesterday that very soon visitors to Rosslyn Chapel are not going to be allowed to take photographs inside the building any more.
And the reason?...
... wait for this...
Too many people, apparently, have been trying to take pictures of the ceiling and have been falling over, or tripping on the uneven stone floor!!
So it's a Health & Safety issue!
It begs the question, should people who fall over when they look up even be allowed out of doors by themselves?
Frankly, when I heard the piece, I was beginning to wonder if it was April Fools' Day, or that I was listening to a sketch from a Monty Python Show.
But - no - you couldn't make up something like this.
Does anyone else think that 'Health & Safety' issues are sometimes taken just a bit too far?
In my opinion, most people don't look up often enough! They don't marvel at the stars, or the rising moon, or the glories of a sunset, or the flight of birds.
In these pre-Christmas shopping days it's 'heads down and keep moving' - don't pause even for a moment to look up at some of the magnificent buildings in our cities, or even to lift up your heads enough to look your fellow shoppers in the eye.
One of the things I like about the Christmas stories as you find them in the New Testament (without all the additional ingredients that over the years have grown on to the stories like barnacles on the hull of a ship) is their honesty in admitting that very, very few people actually noticed anything special about that night, or that baby. Just a handful of shepherd and a few wise men.
And what did they have in common?
Only that they were in the habit of regularly looking up at the sky.
So they were the ones who saw stars and who heard angels sing.
On that first Christmas time God looked down so that we could look up.
Lift up your heads.

1 comment:

E.Louise said...

You would think they could just put up a sign that said 'be careful when looking up'..or cover the floor with bark chips maybe...
Merry Christmas! Emma