pear-shaped

What a strange phrase that is – everything has gone pear-shaped. We know it to mean when a plan or scheme goes wrong and we say it has gone horribly pear-shaped. The phrase can be traced back to the first gas (hot air) balloons of Victorian England, referring to the shape of the balloon when it lost pressure. Gas balloons are spherical due to aerostatic pressure (air pressing in on the balloon from the outside), but when they leak, the gas rises to the top of the balloon and the neck bunches up, causing the balloon to look like an upside-down pear. If you are in an air balloon on a tranquil summer evening, gliding serenely over the countryside, and your balloon starts to leak gas you might agree that your flight is going a little pear-shaped! It is almost exclusively British in use. Margaret Thatcher, very much the present topic of conversation, used it in a speech in the USA when Reagan was president and the American media didn’t know what she was talking about!
We all love to have perfect moments. Pop Larkin in The Darling Buds of May says that things are ‘perfick’. Unfortunately we know that they so often have a habit of going horribly pear-shaped! When God created the universe and everything in it and set it on its way, shielding it and guiding it with His words of sustaining love, it was perfect. However He gave room and space for rebellion, for He knew that if freedom was not granted, if mankind and angelic beings were not granted freedom of choice, then creation would have become robotic, imprisoned and incapable of experiencing true love and joy.
Giving in for the first time to the subtleties of temptation, Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden fruit (not an apple – not even a pear!) and their eyes were opened. Instead of choosing freely to love God they set themselves up to reign and rule without Him. We all have these moments. We choose to satisfy ourselves, to put ourselves first and to set ourselves up to rule our own little private worlds where we try at all costs to keep God out and make it on our own.
In Revelation Chapter 3 v20 we have the picture of God in the person of Jesus knocking on the door of our lives. ‘Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.’ William Holman Hunt painted this scene from the bible. He put no handle on the outside of the door for it is only us who can let God back in to our worlds and to begin to restore to us all that has gone pear-shaped. Why don’t we let Him in?

Geoff Lawton, 19/01/2012