It’s easy to think that being a follower of Jesus is a serious business. I well remember as a child my mum warning me that the new vicar might ask for my name when I went up for a blessing during communion. From her Strict Baptist upbringing this was clearly outrageous informality and she advised me not to play ball. Sure enough as I knelt at the rail the question came, and being an obedient child I whispered “I’ll tell you later Father!’ Church was definitely not the place to have fun.
But as I was to discover nothing could have been further from the truth, and nothing illustrates that more vividly than the coming to faith of comedian Bobby Ball. At the same time that I was bored to tears in church he and his comedy partner Tommy Cannon had the nation in stitches. Who can ever forget Bobby Ball walking on stage, stretching out his braces out and saying ‘Rock on Tommy’.
In a famous passage about lost sheep from Luke’s Gospel, Jesus says that the angels rejoice in heaven every time someone accepts Jesus and comes home to God. Well what a party they must be having now as they welcome home Bobby Ball.
It is no longer possible to listen to this story in the iOS version of the app but you can do so by subscribing to Turn The Page in Apple podcasts.
