A heart-warming story this week from our daughter, who, when she was very young, was child-minded by a friend whom she came to call ‘Grandma Hazel’. She was about 2 years old (our daughter, of course, not Grandma) and was sitting on Hazel’s lap playing with her hair. At one point she lifted it up, kissed her ear, and said ‘There you are: all better now.’ and then just carried on chattering away. Hazel thought nothing of it, and it was a couple of weeks later that she suddenly realised two things. Number one, she’d had a long-standing infection in her ear which made it itchy, and in spite of various medicaments nothing seemed to have improved for ages, such that she’d got used to it and stopped noticing. But number two was that it had completely stopped itching. As she became aware of this she thought back and realised that it was since Vicki’s kiss that the itching had stopped. Vicki had had no idea of the condition, but she had apparently managed with a little kiss to heal it. Sadly this gift has not continued regularly, in spite of various people asking Vicki to kiss various bits of ailing anatomy.

But a few years later Vicki’s kindness towards ‘Grandma’ took a slightly less welcome turn. We were talking at home about some piece of household stuff (I’m not sure but it may have been an ironing board) which had passed its sell-by date, and we used the phrase ‘This [whatever it was] has seen better days’. This was a saying which Vicki had not encountered before. ‘What do you mean “it’s seen better days”?’ she asked. We explained that it meant that it was getting a bit old and worn out, and before long would fall to bits altogether and need replacing.

‘I see,’ replied Vicki. After a few moments’ though she asked a subsidiary question: ‘Has Grandma Hazel seen better days?’

Don’t worry, we’re all still good friends.

Steve’s Random Icebreaker

Hope you’re having fun in your homegroups with these tantalising questions to kick the evening off with a bang. Here’s the next in the series for you:

Take a moment to imagine portable rice… how does that make you feel?