Wednesday 9 June 2010

I wonder if anyone has ever anywhere enjoyed sitting in a traffic jam? I seriously doubt it. Traffic jams are the occupational; hazard of the motorist and you just have to live through them. As you crawl by, inching along where you had hoped to be whizzing along - there's nothing to be done except look out of the window. Of course it helps if there is something to look at - and that's where motorway roadworks come up trumps. I guess that tucked away inside me there is still a bit of the little boy who used to rush to the front gate to watch a monster truck or a 'big digger' go rumbling by.

Crawling round the roadworks on the M25 the other day there was plenty of opportunity to 'admire' the construction site along the way. Its pretty impressive - vast spoil heaps, enormous workers' villages, huge earth-moving monster trucks and orange tape as far as the eye can see. Everywhere you look there are serious looking workmen in their day-glo jackets and their hard hats.

Here's the thing that made me laugh, though. Right there in the middle of the construction site was the loo block - as you would expect. After all, all those mugs of builder's tea have got to go somewhere. But the block had separate doors for separate construction companies. Honestly it did. Loos were segregated according to whose hard hat you were wearing. Do you think there was better loo roll in one than the other? What happened if you were caught going into the 'wrong' one?

Perhaps I shouldn't be surprised. We all like our individuality, after all. I might be like the next man, but I'm not the next man, and never will be. Sometimes people think that the church is a kind of clone factory - turning out the same kind of people wearing the same kind of clothes and spouting the same kind of phrases. It certainly shouldn't be. After all, Jesus chose all kinds of people to be his disciples. He never asked that they should share the same identity - only that they should share the same aim. The mark of a disciple was not external, but internal - a determination to follow Jesus.

When the construction work is over, the orange tape packed away, and the segregated loos dismantled I guess many of those who built that stretch of road will drive their cars along it. I hope they feel a sense of pride as they do so. Its great to be part of something big - which is why I am a disciple.