A Fool's Story

"What is this I hear Mr. Noyce? Have you been disgracing yourself again?"

Not the words of my displeased boss, or even of unhappy parents.

They do, in fact, belong to one of my close friends. But what would prompt such blunt words, stopping just short of telling me to act my age?

Allow me to explain. Upon my return from a week's holiday in Tenby, he was offered the chance to see the video footage of my latest act of buffoonery, wrestling with a 4ft inflatable crocodile. (I was going to put pretending to wrestle in that sentence, but I feel I need to be honest on this blog. And, for those of you that know me or were first hand witnesses, I was trying hard, the crocodile wasn't really interested in wrestling.)

Now, I have been known to be easily goaded into silly, often dangerous dares, which is ironic considering that I am at heart, quite shy and introverted. But, for some reason, the prospect of being the centre of attention in ridiculous circumstances is something I seem to be able to get involved in with very little effort and, indeed, thought.

But the comments did get me thinking. Having been involved in a few (i.e. many) stupid dares and situations, I feel that I have to keep going on with them, upping the stupidity stakes again and again. But why? I guess the honest answer will be because I fear people will then stop liking me. That seeing Paul be zany is the only reason that they hang around.

I like to think that I have better friends than that, and I think I'm right.

But looking at it another way, how often do I try the very same thing in my relationship with God? That if I do certain things, then He'll stick around and be interested in relationship with me, but that He might stop loving me if I for example, stop being busy doing youthwork in the evenings or that if I stuff up with some stupid, secret sin.

The things that I do cannot encourage God to love me more. So no matter how many hours of youth work I do or how many prayer meetings I attend, God's love for me is already off the scale.

And there's nothing I can do that will stop God from loving me. Yes, I cause anguish and disappointment when I betray him, but the love doesn't end and He offers me redemption through Jesus.

At some point, my friends will, no doubt, reach their embarrassment threshold with me, and I'll do something so dumb they'll never want to be near me again. But God's love keeps on giving and will always go on giving grace, even to fools and losers like me.

Grace. Even for people who wrestle with plastic inflatable crocodiles.