Alan Bradley's Tram

It was 35 years ago this week that Coronation Steet villain, Alan Bradley, was killed by a Blackpool tram. Although he had an unfortunate tendency to try and murder fellow character Rita Fairclough, he at least attracted those gigantic eighties’ viewing figures of nearly 27 million while trying to do so. I recall a ten-year-old me watching, goggled eyed, as the bad guy got his comeuppance. Yet in real life, disagreeable individuals and unsavoury fellows seem to flourish, do they not? Gold plated pensions, successful businesses, presidencies of major nations: the wicked prosper. Yet be wary of suggesting this is evidence of God’s laxity or failure to respond. In the third of Malachi, God’s people have tired the Lord their God with such talk:

You have wearied the Lord with your words;

Yet you say,

“In what way have we wearied Him?”

In that you say,

“Everyone who does evil

Is good in the sight of the Lord,

And He delights in them,”

Or, “Where is the God of justice?” (NKJV)

There are plenty of Alan Bradleys who do not have an appointment with an urban transit system but still have one with a holy God, which ought to give them shudders and tremors if they truly knew how dreadful the ordeal. In this life, the righteous seem to suffer while the wicked thrive, but in eternity, the opposite shall be the case. Pity the Alan Bradleys who go to Blackpool without having the wisdom of a tram knocked into them.

A senseless man does not know,

Nor does a fool understand this.

When the wicked spring up like grass,

And when all the workers of iniquity flourish,

It is that they may be destroyed forever.

But You, Lord, are on high forevermore.

-Psalm 92:6-8, New King James Version

I have been slightly nervous of Blackpool trams ever since December 8th, 1989, but not of a holy God, since December 1st, 1987.