BBC Scotland has its very own soap opera.  I know it isn't aired in England because whenever I mention it to my friends down south they say 'what?'  I'm not a soap fan, but every now and then I watch the odd episode of something to remind myself what I am not missing.

River City is set in a 'close knit community in Glasgow' and after watching about four episodes, Shieldinch seems as dysfunctional as Walford, Weatherfield or any other soapy place.  But it's fun spotting the accents which reveal the odd interloper from 'Riversaid' where coal is delivered in secks, a few for whom subtitles are almost needed and even the odd stray Sassenach!  Some actors are household names, others are not.  There is a self-deprecating humour that only cities can manage, and although it tackles some issues, it doens't take itself too seriously.

It is good that Scotland has its own soap opera - just a shame no-one south of Carlisle is likely to see it.

Of course here, just off Sheepfold Street in the Summit area of River City, life is nothing like soap-land, but is every bit as diverse and far more fun.

Hard to credit it, I know, but there are two Mephibosheth's referred to in 2 Samuel.  There is the better known one, the one I learned about as a child, the crippled son of Jonathan, to whom David shows great kindness.  And then there's the one born to Saul and Rizpah, who I'd never noticed until I read a wonderful poem for Rizpah in last week's Baptist Times.

It must have been cold there on that hillside

Sackcloth coarse on your skin

Rain chafing, but barely noticed

Mother's grief savaging your heart

Shroud of loneliness as real

As the one denied your sons.

Your lonely vigil the last loving task:

Protecting them now, a last dignity,

Holding them to your breast to soothe and comfort,

No comfort to be found now, for them or you.

I have never heard a sermon on Rizpah.

She joins so many forgotten women.

Stories eclipsed by the 'more importnant'.

Yet I see her face reflected

In daily newscasts of places

We would like, in our comfort, to forget.

Where mothers again hold sons, or daughters,

Where no comfort will be found

But only a hope of dignity in death

As they are wrenched away

By war, famine or greed of others.

And yet again

God's Mother heart is broken.

Jeannie Kendall

Reading the accompanying Bible extract, I felt I had to check a real Bible to make sure there wasn't a transcription error - two Mephibosheth's in as many verses, one who is shown mercy and compassion the other who is slaughtered simply because he is who he is.

2 Samuel 21: 7-10 CEV

David had made a promise to Jonathan with the LORD as his witness, so he spared Jonathan's son Mephibosheth, the grandson of Saul. But Saul and Rizpah the daughter of Aiah had two sons named Armoni and Mephibosheth. Saul's daughter Merab had five sons whose father was Adriel the son of Barzillai from Meholah. David took Rizpah's two sons and Merab's five sons and turned them over to the Gibeonites, who hanged all seven of them on the mountain near the place where the LORD was worshiped. This happened right at the beginning of the barley harvest. Rizpah spread out some sackcloth on a nearby rock. She wouldn't let the birds land on the bodies during the day, and she kept the wild animals away at night. She stayed there from the beginning of the harvest until it started to rain.

The poem focusses on Rizpah and her 21st century contemporaries, obscure women who tend to the mortal remains of their loved ones whose deaths are the result of human inhumanity.  But I am also struck somehow by the two Mephibosheth's, related by blood, separated by circumstance.  The seeming random nature of 'fate' and the mystery of a silent God loom large in these few short verses.  To read on, it does seem that David made provision for a decent burial for Armoni and Mephibosheth, but that doesn't quite make up for what went before.

There is, so I discovered via a web search on Rizpah, also a Tennyson poem called Rizpah here evidently inspired by a newspaper account of the execution of a young man.

Makes you think:

• How little of the Bible we actually know nowadays
• How little we really learn even if we do know

And it just makes you think..