When walking through the churchyard at All Saints Marlow, just inside the entrance to the churchyard is a grave dedicated to a child called Clive who died when only ten months old , part of the tombstone consists of two little bunny rabbits. On seeing this, it almost brought tears to our eyes.
Walking past the grave, the sensitive one amongst us and a close friend of a vicar, who will one day, be a bishop remarked “Only the young die young”. This remark then became a topic of conversation.
The Captain asked what was that suppose to mean. The First Mate said” Oh it’s a short expression for a piece of popular wisdom, meaning that if young boys and girls are good then they are destined to die young whilst the baddies amongst us will live longer lives.” Billy chipped in then “Us bad buggers will live longer lives then? The Captain corrected him “We have already lived long lives or so it seems.”
The Cabin Boy then remembered that such words are “Found in a song by someone like Billy Joel or Iron Maiden.”Right on both occasions” said the Captain. Phil had the final word on this topic and retorted “Yeah, that’s it, it’s about some guy trying to get your hands into some Catholic tart’s pants and is told that it could be a lot of fun if she would just let him”.
Just as they were about to leave, Billy turned around to face the infants grave again and asked “What do you make of that inscription chaps on the headstone chaps?”…”Something from the Bible I reckon “said the First Mate” and he continued “And it seems strange to that the word suffer should be ever be used on a little kid’s gravestone, a bit of a cheek if you ask me”.”Now then First Mate” said the Captain” Don’t forget that the Bible was written yonks ago and words get lost in translation have different meanings depending how long ago it was written?”.”What the hell are you talking about, then Billy?” queried the First Mate.”What most people don’t know”, continued the Cabin Boy,” is roughly you can divide the Bible into two parts, the Old Testament and the New Testament. The old one, was written in Hebrew, and the new one was written in Greek, and so straight away there’s always the chance that the they get the meanings of words wrong, spell them wrong or get the translation in the wrong sequence. Now if we take that word suffer on that that kid’s stone, it means allow or permit and I actually remember my Sunday school teacher telling us about it. You see, there was a group of kids trying to see and talk to Jesus and his minders, you know the disciples, were stopping the kids from chatting to the big boss. When Jesus saw this, he told them that kids should, also be allowed to enter the Kingdom of God. He stopped Pete, Jimmy and Matt and their other mates in their tracks by adding, that those who tried to stop kids seeing him would themselves be excluded from that kingdom”.”The Captain inquired, “Seems we have another budding Billy Graham here, what is the difference between the Old and the New Testaments?” “Obvious”, said the Cabin Boy, one was written before the birth of Jesus, and contains a lot about rules and regs such as the Ten Commandments , and the New Testament, is about the life and times of JC, and is more trendy and up to date .And another major difference is that the Old Testament was basically for the old fashioned, orthodox Jews and the New Testament was for Christians.” .No wonder , when you see all those Jewish kids at round Christmas time, they all look so miserable, they don’t get a proper turkey dinner, no Christmas presents and don’t get to join in the festive season at all” said the First Mate.” And the Captain “ said the Cabin Boy” for your information Billy Graham is a Christian evangelist who believes that Jesus is our savior” , to which the First Mate added” a bit like Fabio Capello, who’s gonna save our England football team from making fools of themselves in the next World Cup !”
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