Tomorrow morning we shall all be up early. Expectations will be fulfilled. Presents, cardboard boxes, wrapping paper will abound. Batteries will be put in place. There may be time for breakfast. But tomorrow is another day. It is birthday time.
What changes a day can bring! A Cup Final, a flight by Blériot across the Channel, a flight by Lindbergh across the Atlantic, a record-breaking run by Mallard, the breaking of the Enigma code: these marked an abrupt upset or earth-shaking series of tremors in the terms and conditions of our existence.
In his day the chronicler living in the midst of other super-powers and other petty states marked another morrow: ‘and when they arose early in the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses.’ (2 Kings 19.35 KJV).
Byron turned this into a startling poem ‘The Destruction of Sennacherib’. We do not dwell on such events but the world in which this happened and the world that the children of Israel served out their days was a world of clashing arms, sieges, massacres and brutality – much like our world today in fact.
It was also a world in which unimaginable change could take place. The starving citizens were unexpectedly spared the horrors of an Assyrian invasion. Again, this is much like the world we are familiar with. We never know what is round the corner, what may come out of the blue, what good and bad men may be capable of.
Even then we read that the word of the Lord came to his people saying: ‘I have heard thy prayer, I have seen thy tears: behold I will heal thee.’
When we pray, ‘Lord, have mercy’, we have to remember what a new day may bring, even if we cannot visualise it. Christians believe that one day it brought the incarnation.
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