THANK GOD!

Don’t you love an optimist – the kind of person who is always positively hopeful? And I venture to suggest that it’s not a bad attitude to have towards life – as long, that is, as it is tinged with realism. The other day I met one of the other kind – you know the ones – you feel like saying to them “now, you’re really pushing your luck”. I was on a very crowded metro at the time. She had just got on before me and so got the seat that I’m sure God really meant to be given to the elderly. But she showed no respect to my grey hairs! To be honest, I would have been both shocked and embarrassed if she had.

But then she did surprise me. I should explain that she was relatively young – certainly not more than sixty! (Only joking – I would guess she was somewhere around thirty of so – though you know how hazardous it is to guess a woman’s age! By the way, that reminds me – did you know that ‘hazardous’ is one of only four commonly used words in the English language that end in ‘dous’? But I digress – back to the metro!) She rooted in her purse, and out comes an embroidery frame! (Don’t get it confused with a needlepoint frame!) As people who engage in embroidery do, she had the needle enmeshed on the frame, ready for use.

With the frame balanced near her knee, she removed the needle and proceeded to attempt a stitch. I was quite fascinated – was she going to succeed? As the metro was bumping along between stations, she took multiple jabs – risky, as she hadn’t got a thimble that I could see – without much success. At the station, so many people were knocking against her as they got on and off that she had no greater success. This proceeded for the duration of a few stations, and then she packed it away, and got off.

But in fairness to her she was not the only unrealistic optimist around Paris in the past few weeks! I seem to remember seeing guys wearing green white and orange wigs recently who thought their team would eventually wake up! By the time you get around to reading this you will know whether the fellows similarly adorned with blue white and red wigs (at least, I hope they’re wigs!) are realistic or otherwise in their optimism.

One might be forgiven for thinking that the Jesus of today’s gospel was a bit of an unrealistic optimist. Could He possibly have imagined that if He cured ten people of leprosy there was any chance that all ten of them would arrive back to thank Him? No doubt that’s what He would greatly have loved to have happened, but when it comes to understanding human nature, there is no greater realist than Jesus. And isn’t that one of our greatest comforts – that He doesn’t allow our lack of gratitude, and indeed our many other lacks, to get in the way of His generosity? But that doesn’t excuse us from saying “Thank you” regularly. God knows, we have good reason to!