Epiphany on the Central Line

Do you ever find yourself assessing people on the Tube? Yestarday I was standing in a crammed carriage and found myself unconsiously passing the time by inspecting my fellow passangers. It's the shallowest kind of judgement, deciding whether someone looks interesting or attractive based on a few seconds glance in a sweaty train. Most of the people around me looked depressing, ugly and smelly (as I'm sure I appeared to them). No one's at their best on the Tube, but some people look particularly repelant (and other passangers edge away from them, not wanting to be squeezed up with against an Arsenal supporter reeking of lager or an obesse American tourist) while once every few days, among the thousands of people one passes, there is the flash of an angelic face, seemingly untainted by the London grime, which causes one to gasp and almost miss a stop.

Then it struck me. Looking around at all those depressing and ugly faces of my fellow commuters - God loves them.

Not in some sort of general philosophical way (love is an attribute of the divine nature) but in an intense and individual way. Mel Gibson's controversial new film The Passion covers the most extreme expression of this love - that God "became nothing, taking the very nature of a servant" and chose to bear immense suffering to wipe away our sins. But God's love is also revealed in more tender ways. The Bible says that he counts the numbers of hairs on each of our heads (the sort of thing lovers might do as they are wrapped in each other's embrace) and that he even sings love songs about us! [Phil.2.7, Matt.10.30 and Zeph.3.17]

I've known this all for many years, but occassionally it strikes me at a particular moment in a profound way. And that's what happened yestarday on the Central line between Oxford Circus and Bond Street!

I've just watched the DVD of "Bruce Almighty" the rather mediocre Jim Carrey film in which a very self-centred TV reporter is given God's power for a week. The film is not very theologically sound of course, but I rather like Morgan Freeman's representation of God as a wise-cracking cleaner. It captures two characteristics of God - the way he humbles himself in order to relate to humans and the deep love he has even for Carrey's spoilt and irritating character.