The Talk Show In The Sky

I was on my way home from a concert late one night, I had the car radio on, my ears perked up when I heard the presenter of a phone-in show talking about atheism. He said he was an atheist and that day in a UK newspaper a famous TV magician named Paul Daniels had said something about the miracles that Jesus did were the same tricks that any modern-day conjurer could do. Paul Daniels was also famous at the time for wearing a wig. I thought I'd like to phone the show, so as soon as I got home the first thing I did was telephone the radio station, there was about two minutes to go before the show finished at 1:00 am but they got me straight on air, not having a lot of time I said, “If Paul Daniels can do the tricks Jesus can do, how come he can't make any hair grow on his head?” Then the news came on.

A few weeks later I happened to have the radio on in my bathroom while I was brushing my teeth, the same presenter began to talk about a vacation on a Mediterranean Island he'd been on. He said that late one night he'd been on the balcony of his hotel when his eyes began to look up at the stars and suddenly this feeling of wonder came over him, he said he didn't know what was happening to him but felt awestruck in the middle of it all. I'd never been in the habit of phoning radio chat shows but felt constrained to do so once more. So I got on the phone to the radio station. I wanted to tell the presenter that what had happened to him was what Psalm 19 explains quite succinctly. "The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge. They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them. Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard." I had to wait a while before they got me on the show but this time I had more time to talk with the presenter.

The next day I thought about the presenter of the show and decided to buy him a book that would help him in what had happened to him. I thought a good book to buy him would be C.S.Lewis's book ‘Mere Christianity'. C.S.Lewis had once been an atheist and wrote about his thoughts now he was a Christian in the book. So I sent the book to the radio station hoping it would get through to the presenter. A few days later I was listening once more to the show as I got ready for bed. Suddenly I heard my name on the radio, the presenter said that he had received a book from me; he explained to the readers that I was the guy who phoned up before. He promised he would read the book. Shortly after that, the radio station put a halt to the late-night talk-show. I'm pretty sure that I didn't have anything to do with that decision. But I was happy that I'd done what I thought I should. The fact is that not a lot of people know the scriptures and when we have something that we can share, we should. There is a time to speak and a time to be quite, as the bible says. When we speak at the appropriate time, it's like apples of gold in settings of silver, as the bible also says. Plus we will have helped someone on their journey towards the light.

Paul Poulton