One of my favourite characters in the short-lived sitcom ‘Faulty Towers’ is the astute but hard-of-hearing Alice Richards. She frustrates Basil on a number of occasions throughout the episode by not hearing him properly. Watch the clip below to giggle…:)

Polly and Basil are shouting at her about her lost glasses ‘They are on your head!” But she cannot hear them. She goes off into a short monologue whilst they are pointing and screaming at her. I love it!

Sometimes we spend ages looking for something, some truth, some reason, something profound, not realising it is already on our person, or in our hands.
I have been seeking God – rather grumpily it has to be said – and rather desperately in these past three weeks about what to focus on and He has been asking me to focus on who I am. Nothing new under the sun eh?

But this morning as I stirred and opened my eyes, I realised something fresh. The thing that God has been trying to say (only I hadn’t really HEARD) was that I am His friend (see blog of a few days ago re HEBRON)

I had not realised the real significance of that. This is actually not just to cheer me up or make me see I am loved. It is my LABEL. It is WHO I am. It is what HE chooses to say about me. This is irrespective of how I feel, whether or not I succeed or fail at a certain task.

Hilariously, the only song that I have been really playing on the piano for the last year has been Israel Houghton’s ‘I am a friend of God.’ I do a slow version of it. You would think then, that I would have got this message by now. But I think I have been like Mrs Alice Richards. The glasses have been on my head, but I have not known it.