Film Friday This week’s film-inspired thought comes from a movie based on the true and continuing story of Dave Fishwick and his independent bank in Burnley. With local folk struggling and unable to get help from the high street banks, successful van salesman Dave takes on the goliath of the financial system (see what I did there – Dave and Goliath). His plan is to be able to give loans and advice to the people of his community and to plough any profit into charitable causes. The suited men in the banking Leviathan are not happy. If they let Dave get away with this any old Tom, Dee or Harriet could get in on the act. Can’t have that! They have one big secret weapon on their side, they make the rules. However Dave has his own secret weapon, the diffident, cautious, shy but smart thinking Hugh. The financial adviser chap from London who’s come to tell Dave as gently as possible he’ll never be able to win. Or… hold on a minute… could there be a way?
We love David and Goliath tales. We want to see the underdog win through, we love it when the small person upends the proud and powerful. Mary sang of this in her prophecy in Luke 1, ‘He brings the haughty and the princes crashing down and lifts up the lowly,’ she sang. So too John the Baptist’s dad. ‘God’s tender mercy is breaking through,’ Zechariah proclaimed, ‘to shine light on those cornered in darkness.’
These were little people who found strength and purpose in the promises of God. Perhaps whenever we see, read about, or hear of a tale of little Daves winning through, there’s an echo in our spirits about the longing for God to win through and upend the proud and unjust; and to usher in a new age when truth, and hope, and kindness prevail. Forever. In the meantime all of us little people do what we can, in ways only we can, to lift up the light that flows from the grace of God in Jesus.
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