We all wear wrist-watches. Well, no. Some elderly gentlemen prefer a waistcoat chain and gold albert. (Thank you, Prince Albert.) Nurses are different; they wear upsidedown watches. If we don’t do either of these things, then we rely on the town hall or a memorial tower. No tower? Maybe we ask a policeman.
Upsidedown can catch us out. We may find ourselves flying the Union flag upsidedown. Life is not full of such traps – just enough to catch us out when it matters.
Community nurses are always cheerful. They look glad to see their patients and wherever possible see a bright future for them. Crotchety pensioners come to form the view that the medication is nowhere near as important as the gust of good will that comes in with the visiting nurse. The upsidedown watch is a tell-tale.
Old-time telescopes saw ships hanging from the sky. An update of technology put that right. Nelson could see things clearly when he wanted to. But perhaps we are too clever nowadays. We are too rigid in our sight-seeing. Alice knew better. She knew what sense there was in a game of cards where the cards knew better than the players what was going on. Sometimes an upsdidedown view is better than the squeezed, rational everyday thing.
That is the way the Christian faith is likely to upset our established notions about what is real, about what actually matters. ‘She is asleep,’ said Jesus. They all knew better. In fact they laughed at him (Matthew 9.24). When, later on, two disciples were startled and terrified to think they might be seeing the man they thought to be dead, they heard him say: ‘How dull you are!’ The penny dropped. They realised they had been harbouring an upsidedown view of things. The truth was Jesus had risen. Incarnate deity had punctured this world of shadows. An upside view gave them good reason to spend all their time in the temple praising God (Luke 14.53)
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