IT'S JUST DAWNED ON ME!

I’m not going to claim that Avenue Hoche is the noisiest street in Paris, nor even in the top ten, but I don’t mind admitting now that when I came here first sleeping through the night was a luxury that I rarely enjoyed. Apart from the normal traffic there was the frequent clattering of the tow-away truck in front of the church in the middle of the night and the early morning grinding of the garbage truck which seemed to stop right under my window to dispose of the rubbish from the entire neighbourhood. But one gets used to anything, and gradually it has got to the stage that if a nuclear bomb were to go off in the street I doubt that I would wake up! (OK, OK, I know - but you know what I mean!)

That’s why I was so surprised last week when I was wakened in the middle of the night. I should explain that I was on a brief business visit to our headquarters in Dublin. Our house and church there form a square with a totally enclosed quadrangle in the centre. The room I was sleeping in was overlooking the quadrangle, which has nothing but a lawn and a few bushes in it – not a garbage, tow-away or any other kind of truck in sight! So, what had wakened me? In a semi-coma I turned over to see the time – only 4 am! And gradually, as I returned slowly to the land of the living – that hole-in-one that I was just about to score in the Open Championship in St. Andrew’s would have to wait – I began to recognise the sound.

Probably my favourite music! But who would be playing it at four in the morning, you might ask. Slowly, but surely, I began to identify some of the principal musicians. The loudest of them all by far, and the most musical – constantly hitting impossibly high notes - was the blackbird, with the thrush trying its very best to outdo it! A few finches and robins were providing a constant background, such that there was never a moment’s silence. The enclosed quadrangle provided the perfect sound chamber for them, and they were making the best of it! I really do love the Dawn Chorus, but 4 am? And believe me when I tell you they kept at it until dawn, a few hours later. I know, because there was no way I could get back to sleep! It was almost good to get back to the familiar cacophony of Avenue Hoche the following night!

The blind man in our gospel story today had probably become used to being treated as an outcast – one can get used to anything! It was the widespread belief at the time that either he, or his family, must have been awful sinners for him to be so afflicted. But it gradually emerges that he’s not the really blind one, but all those around him who are suffering from culpable spiritual blindness – those who refuse to see because curing a blind man on the Sabbath doesn’t fit comfortably into their smug, self-righteous, way of judging things. They’d much rather turn over and go back to sleep than to wake up to the fact that the coming of Christ was the dawn of a new era. The message that should have been music to their ears is rejected in favour of the familiarity of “noisy gongs and clanging cymbals”.

We’re all invited to share in the enthusiasm of the Dawn Chorus – of course they couldn’t wait ‘til dawn. Showing through our lives the Glory of God, and His goodness and beauty, is not something to be postponed, but to be done right now! God must be constantly asking Himself when will it dawn upon us!