garlic bread ?!?!?

“Garlic Bread?  Garlic... bread?  Garlic?  And bread?  Am I hearing you right?  Garlic bread?”  Bolton comedian Peter Kay’s stand-up routine about a family having a holiday meal in a pub and being offered “garlic bread” has entered comedy folklore in this country.  The man’s utter shock and bewilderment at this encroachment of “foreign food” in our British way of life was admittedly hilarious.  The joke went on to appear in Kay’s TV sit-com “Phoenix Nights” when the lead character says: “Garlic bread – it’s the future, I’ve tasted it!”.  It was voted the best one-liner in TV comedy history.

Strangely, it’s a reaction I’ve encountered when talking to people about intimacy with God.  “Intimacy with God?  Intimacy….with God?  Intimacy?  And God?  Am I hearing you right? Intimacy with God?”  Stranger still is my own response to that reaction – “Intimacy with God – it’s the future, I’ve tasted it!”  I wonder if that will be voted the best one-liner in pulpit history??
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A friend of mine seemed to take an emotional and psychological step back when I told him about my new journey of intimacy with God, as if I’d just told him I was suffering with a lethal and highly contagious disease.  “I can relate to God as a Master and as a Father, but how can you be ‘intimate’ with the divine, transcendent creator of the universe?” he said.  Good question.

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