Being Frank

Being Frank

31 December 2014

If only there were more Franks in this world.

Yesterday I went to the funeral of Frank, a friend of mine. It was a really good northern working man’s funeral and I felt completely at home there. It was the best funeral I’ve ever been to.

It was a good opportunity to think about Frank and hear stories from others who had known him. Frank had been married to his wonderful wife Pam for 52 years. That in itself was a great testimony to the kind of man Frank was. Frank will not appear in any history books, he won’t be in the news, and nobody will erect a statue of him or put a plaque on a wall. But Frank truly was salt to the earth and light to the world just as Jesus said we should be.

The world tends to look up to famous people of great intellect, people who have invented or discover things and people who have changed the way society thinks or behaves. But I would rather honour Frank than a thousand famous people. It’s Christians like Frank who make a real difference to this world.

I common thought that ordinary people, myself included, have is about what difference we can make to this world. Well, individually it might not seem that we can do much. But together we can do a great deal. The collective effort of Christians like Frank being salt to the earth and light to the world makes a huge difference.

What the world needs is not famous people but more people like Frank.