Last night I watched “Marvellous”, the…err…marvellous BBC drama about Neil Baldwin.

I can only agree with the Scottish Herald in saying it is the best thing I have seen on telly all year (if you didn’t see it, do yourself a favour and watch it on BBC iplayer before it’s too late).

The programme had me in tears with its wonderful portrayal of the beauty of people and life.

Neil Baldwin is someone who in times gone by might simply have been labelled as an eccentric, while today he would be labelled as someone with learning difficulties.

But Neil refused to live a life defined by such labels – at one point in the show after a scene in which Neil had been subject to some verbal abuse by a Stoke City footballer, the fictional Neil Baldwin (played by actor Toby Jones) turns to the real Neil Baldwin and asks “Didn’t you think he was picking on you because of your difficulties?” The real Neil simply smiles and replies “What difficulties?”

Marvellous offers a lesson not only to those such as Richard Dawkins who would claim that people with learning difficulties have less of a life, but a lesson for all of us on how to approach living.

He saw no limitations in what he could achieve – be it becoming a clown or playing for his beloved Stoke City – and as a Christian I can’t help but see in Neil a freedom that we are all called to live by, but few of us rarely achieve.

Early on in the show, having returned home after leaving the circus, his mother is worrying about what he will do for work and how he will be able to afford to live. Neil simply replies by quoting Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel:

Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.

Neil doesn’t allow the small things like bills and shopping get in the way of the big things like his dreams.

He embodies the child-like trust in the Lord and other people that Jesus calls us all to have, but again so few of us manage: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 18:3

A child marvels at the wonder and beauty of life, trusting rather than distrusting the world. We should do too, knowing and trusting that life is marvellous.