Jeeves, Wooster and God!

Over the past year or so I have been lucky enough to discover the delights of PG Wodehouse’s Jeeves and Wooster stories.  To have reached the grand age of 43 and not to previously have read any of these fine slices of English humour and writing at its very best is nothing short of a travesty.  Why are these short stories and novels not a compulsory part of English Literature lessons in our schools?  Wodehouse is surely the equal of writers like Thomas Hardy and Harper Lee whose novels do appear in the English Literature lists.

I came to Jeeves and Wooster by way of the sublime Granada television series starring Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie which is repeated fairly regularly on ITV 3.  I hadn’t seen these on their original airing for some reason (perhaps they clashed with something I then enjoyed viewing) but I thoroughly enjoyed them as superb examples of English farce and was minded to read the original source material as the book is almost always better than the screen adaptation.  This indeed proved to be the case.

As those of you familiar with Wodehouse will readily attest the stories resolve around Bertie Wooster and his friends and relatives getting into a series of scrapes and complicated situations from which they inevitably try to extract themselves with disastrous consequences.  It is only when they turn to the wisdom of Wooster’s valet Jeeves that the situations almost magically resolve themselves in a way that is inevitably beneficial.  Put simply, when Wooster takes the advice of Jeeves his life goes well, when he does not the inevitable disaster occurs.

I hesitate to make a comparison between a fictional character and God, but one does occur to me.  I can’t help but think that when we, like Bertie Wooster, try to go our own way, life becomes very complicated; but when we follow the way of our Lord, Jesus Christ, life just seems to be better.  That is not to say that if we follow Jesus our life is without difficulties; but it is to say that if we are following Jesus and obeying all that he has commanded then our lives will be better than if we were not.

Cut Off.........

I have been cut off from the Internet for the almost two weeks and it felt a lot longer.

The wireless broadband router simply died.  It was working fine in the morning and then, the same day, nothing!  No power!  It simply refused to work.  I tried plugging it into another socket but it was dead as a dodo.

I called my ISP, who shall remain nameless, and after fifteen minutes managed to convince them that, yes, I do know what I am doing when it comes to computers and the internet and that I simply required a new wireless broadband router.  I was promised one within four working days.

A week later and no router had arrived.  Be patient I told myself, it will come.  Two days later and still no joy, so I phoned them again.  It appeared that no router had been ordered for despatch to me, despite being told one was on its way!  Incredibly I kept my cool and very politely enquired if they could now send me a router.  Within four business days was the promise.

Finally, on Tuesday, it arrived.  A completely different model from the last one and so I then spent several hours installing it on all the laptops and PCs in our home.  Finally I was back online.

Being cut off from the Internet was annoying but endurable.  Many people are cut off from something far more important, the source of all life and being, the only person who truly matters in this universe, our Creator, God.

We need God.  Many people have an emptiness in their lives that they try to fill with all kinds of things.  Some try to fill that emptiness with one or more sexual relationships, others with alcohol or narcotics and others by idolising a celebrity and making that celebrity the focus of their lives and ambitions.  The emptiness cannot be filled in any of these ways because we need God in our lives; he is our Creator and we need to be in relationship with Him in order to be complete human beings.

We need God.  How do we get to God?  How do we enter into that personal relationship with God that each and every one of us needs?  Through Jesus Christ.  He is our route to God, the router if you like who connects us to our Heavenly Father.  Just as I could not connect to the internet at home without a router; so human beings cannot connect to God without Jesus Christ!  This is because we humans have spoiled our relationship with God through our sin, our selfishness, our rebellion against our Creator.  For our rebellion we deserve the death that is eternal separation from God, but God loves us too much to allow that to happen to us; so he sent his Son Jesus to suffer and die for us and then raised him to eternal life to give us the assurance of eternal life if we will only accept him as Lord and Saviour.

Are you cut off from God?  If you are, read the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.  Think about what Jesus went through for YOU on the cross.  When you are ready confess your sin in prayer to God and repent of all your pride and selfishness and accept Jesus as your personal Lord and Saviour. 

You will no longer be cut off from the God who made you, instead you will begin to know Him and experience his incredible love for you.  You will need to find a church, a fellowship of Christian believers who are committed to the truth of God’s word in the Bible and they will help you to grow in faith and love.

I was cut off from the internet and it was an annoyance and an inconvenience.  To be cut off from God is a matter of life or death.