This weekend I was lucky enough to go punting in Cambridge with my daughter and her friends for her birthday. I have now been a few times and so I am prepared for the fact that rather than being the gentle peaceful romantic experience I imagine from reading too many romantic novels, it can often be more like the M25 for boats with lots of collisions and crowds albeit very good natured.

So I smiled as I saw a couple who clearly expected something different, there they were wine glasses and picnic basket trying to remain composed while having to work too hard at avoiding other punts.

 

Life is often far from perfect isn't it, we have an ideal in our heads yet often the reality is nothing like it, and we have to just go with what we have. I think we have very romantised ideas of the life of Jesus, the perfect nativity scene, the crowds sat at the feet of the teacher yet the reality was harsh, poverty, oppression, travel by foot for miles under the blazing sun.

 

Yet we have what we have, this time, in this place, now and it is up to us to do our best with it, waiting for things to become perfect is a fruitless exercise.

"This is the day that the Lord has made, we will rejoice and be glad in it."