Around 1587 Queen Elizabeth 1 passed a Beauty Law ; it ruled that if a woman trapped a man into marriage by embellishing her natural looks ; she could be tried as a witch and, if found guilty could be executed. How things have changed!

And changed for the better, albeit in exceptional circumstances, Isabelle Dinoire, has received the first face transplant… the first in the Face Race but even this may be now subject to a witch hunt by the medical ethics committee in France.

In a rather obscure way Genesis Chap 1 talks of another transformation. It says that the earth was formless and empty, it was chaos then God created light, land, sea, sky plants animals and us.. So out of the chaos He created the cosmos, from which we get he word cosmetics.
Creating something nice out of not very good beginnings!
On Monday on my way down to London I went to see Gerry, our God daughter. I've known her some twenty years, she finished her chemotherapy the same month I finished mine.
She came over to Bunbury from Runcorn in July and proudly announced that she would be at work by October, competitive me said I'd be back in September..

I needed to see her quickly because she ‘phoned me on Sunday to say that on the Tuesday (29 th November) the doctors had told her she would not be going back to work, the cancer had spread and she might just live to see Christmas.

As I sat next to her holding her hand, I noticed how opaque her skin was I could see the very fine capillary veins, I stroked her thin arm, where the skin seemed too loose and didn't really fit any more. Both arms were blue with bruises where the nurses had tried to get needles into her.

But her head, that was lovely, the tight skin with little dark patches of hair. And her eyes sparkled as she firmly told me she would be here at the New Year. And would I be sure to visit her again as soon as I could

As her skin held her together I held her, to keep myself together. And so we hugged.

Her skin carried all the horrors, and pain of the organ destroying cancer, but she lived within that skin.

Skin is strange and romantic stuff isn't it.
It's what we see when we meet someone.
It's what we feel when we shake hands or kiss.

“Ah, you look so well” but perhaps under the skin we are trembling with fear or churned up with excitement.
Skin, flesh is so intimate, to be skin to skin with someone means we are really very close.

Have you not seen how many adverts promise to wipe away your wrinkles, smooth your skin & make you look like someone else?
Billions of pound and dollars are spent every year on keeping the skins of males & females young looking.

Many are obsessed with looking radiant, with having the perfect, blemish less skin.

I think I now understand why.

Skin is our first and final boundary.
It introduces us to our first lover our first job, and will ultimately be our final mask
And then the last verse I read from John 1 vs. 14

“The ‘word' became flesh and made His dwelling amongst us.. and we have seen Him….”

God became one of us, God in Christ wanted to be intimate with us, He clothed Himself, limited Himself by containing the Godhead within skin, so that He could touch the leper, the Aids victim, the dying, the poor. Bless the children, the young couple. He wanted to be more than just ‘skin deep' with us.
I guess there is a problem here, and it is that most people do not want God that close.

Because many have a problem with intimacy, with attachment, wanting to belong but not knowing quite how to achieve it, think that they would rather have God at a distance. To long after Him, but too frightened to commit too Him, so they keep God contained within ritual and at a distance in His place, but not personally present not skin to skin.

I have some sympathy with their intellectual position. After all how can God be God if He is like me!!
Well all I can say is that, we are created in the image of God, but the image has become so terribly distorted. God became a man to restore that image

I believe we all have a longing for genuine intimacy. The difficulty we have is that intimacy requires some form of surrender of the things that protect us from being vulnerable. And being vulnerable means to surrender into someone else's' hands our most precious gift, which is … YOUR VERY BEING, the ME , and have to trust them not to do any harm.

And the greater the surrender the greater the risk.
So the question I need to ask myself frequently is
“Can I trust God enough?”

All that can be very scary.

However on the positive side, if our trust is not miss founded, If we are willing to take the risk with God, then we shall be over whelmed with the greatest love and safety that He can afford.

You can place your selves into the very safe keeping of God who adores you, who unconditionally loves you, who has always loved you, even at the hours before your attachment to your mothers womb, even then he knew you by name.

So in this season of Advent we await, again, the arrival of God wrapped in flesh and swaddling clothes

Geraldine Ireland died on Wednesday 7th December at 8pm.

Rick Gates