I saved a man's life for £8. What had been the price on his head?

A few weeks ago I blogged about how I saved Jay's life for £8 (here). I recently heard a bit more of his story about how he ended up living on the streets.

Jay is bright and articulate, but does have a major drugs issue and also mental health problems. When his benefits failed to materialise one week he had no money to pay the rent. This prompted a computer to spew out a letter demanding that action would be taken if his arrears were not paid. Jay, not being able to comprehend what was going on, simply walked out of the flat fearful that he would end up in jail. And there he remained for 2 years, living in a tent, eating when he could, hiding from those chasing him for the money. Haunted by his current predicament, hunted by his fears.

And how much did Jay owe? £37.

Apparently I, like every citizen of this country, paid £40,000 to bail out the banks. Jay had two years taken from his life. Two years living in misery and sight of death - just for a lousy £37.

Unbelievable.

The Hardy Scots

50F(10C) degrees
· People in southern England turn on the central heating
· People in Edinburgh plant out bedding plants

40F (4C)degrees
· Southerners shiver uncontrollably
· Glaswegians sunbathe on the beach at Largs

35F(2C} degrees
· Cars in the south of England refuse to start
· People in Falkirk drive with their windows down

20F(-6C) degrees
· Southerners wear overcoats, gloves and woolly hats
· Aberdonian men throw on a T-shirt and girls start wearing mini-skirts

15F(-9.4C) degrees
· Southerners begin to evacuate to the continent
· People from Dundee swim in the North Sea at Broughton Ferry

0F (-17 7C) degrees
· Life in the south grinds to a halt
· Inverness folk have the last BBQ before it gets cold

Minus 10F (-23 3C) degrees
· Life in the south ceases to exist
· People in Dunfermline throw on a light jacket

Minus 80F (-62.2C) degrees
· Polar bears wonder if it's worth carrying on
· Boy Scouts in Oban start wearing their long trousers

Minus 100F (-73 3C degrees)
· Santa Claus abandons North Pole
· People in Stirling put on their 'long Johns'

Minus 173F (-139C) degrees
· Alcohol freezes
· Glaswegians get upset because all the pubs are shut

Minus 297F (-182 7C) degrees
· Microbial life starts to disappear
· The cows in Dumfriesshire complain about farmers with cold hands

Minus 460F (-273 3C) degrees
· All atomic motion stops
· Shetlanders stamp their feet and blow on their hands

Minus 500F (-295.5C) degrees. 0 degrees Kelvin. Absolute Zero!
· Hell freezes over
· Scotland win the World Cup

Always one of my favourite lists.

I saved a man's life for £8.

Jay came to our Tuesday Kitchen some 6 months ago. He had been referred to us by Compass, the local community drugs agency, and he showed the classic symptoms of heroin addiction. He was living in one of the local woods under a tarpaulin for cover. The only tent at our local camping shop was a cheap one but I thought it would do, so we bought it for him and also gave him a few things such vests, hat and gloves. We also gave him one of our Army surplus sleeping bags which had cost us £8 when I bought them from a contact I had made in our local market place. These sleeping bags are brilliant - very warm and robust. We may have seen Jay twice since then, but that is often the way it is with these guys. They don't keep diaries.

So it was nice to see Jay turn up on Tuesday braving the last few weeks of sub zero temperatures. He was still living in the same tent (which he complained about! "Its only a single layer so the condensation makes you wet at the start of the day"). But he tucked into his meal, read my copy of The Officer (he was very impressed that we had risen to the rank of Captain so quickly) and he managed to warm up a little. He was articulate, funny and good company.

We gave him a better tent and some other stuff and then he told me "That sleeping bag you gave me - it's brilliant. It saved my life. I hope that you understand how grateful I am for everything - without that sleeping bag I would be dead!"

I am constantly grateful for our Tuesday Kitchen where we can meet guys like Jay. They show me why I am a follower of Jesus who asks us to serve mankind not only for the sake of those in need but, and I am more convinced than ever of this, for us to find out what it means to be human. It seems to me that Salvation is a process of becoming truly human which begins on earth and has its completion in eternity.

Perhaps that is two lives saved for the price of £8.

Moments.

I have decided that I am a 'Moments' person, certainly as far a spiritual development is concerned.

Some people can feel close to God through regular prayer and bible meditation. There is a potential downside in that it is possible to be dragged down by the routine or made guilty by getting behind. But most people find that this gives them the right structure to maintain a relationship with God.

I have moments. Usually in worship, it comes in a song, a phrase or scripture. And God breaks through. I cannot predict or manipulate these moments, but they fuel me on for another slog back at the coalface of ministry.

Such a moment happened at councils. Singing "When I survey the wondrous cross" to the tune of O Waley Waley, we got to the final verse:

Were the whole realm of nature mine,
that were an offering far too small;
love so amazing, so divine,
demands my soul, my life, my all.

And God broke in. It is not an unduly emotional time but is somehow very profound. God seems to re-assert Himself in me despite what I am - it is an act of grace. It is also a proof of His existence for me, beyond intellectual argument. I have learned the correct way to respond to it too - I need to make an act of surrender and consecration. It is the only way that I can claim to be Sanctified.

I have learned not to demand these moments or force them but to recognise them for what they are - a glimpse into the eternal. Moments to treasure.

YSCA 09

This is one of the highlights of the Yorkshire School of Christian Arts. Using a video on You Tube (watch the original here) we did a bible study on Ephesians and the meaning of Joy. Here is our version of video.

Sunseekers and creamy moccha's.

The five of us were sitting at a round table in a coffee shop in Poole on a cold and wet evening this week. We had had a good day, some of us had gone to "Go Ape!" the treetop assault course, followed by a walk in the woods and home for chilli con carne for tea. But the evening had turned wet and a quick trip to Poole sounded good.

Everyone ordered what they wanted and we sat with our drinks - chocolate cake and Pepsi for Isabel, strawberry milkshake for Robbie, Hot Chocolate with flake, cream and marshmallows for Martha (we knew that she would only eat the flake and scoop off the cream), Mocha with cream for Paula and me with an Espresso (How come I get the small cup?). And we talked and laughed and were serious in turns, everyone chipping in, teasing and being teased. When Mum drank her cream-topped Moccha every laughed at the cream which ended up on her nose, then they were equally repulsed when I licked it off! We talked about schools, favourite places, the funny things that the kids had said when they were young; we talked seriously about how we had moved house from Tunbridge Wells to London and now to Selby, and we learned about how the children had felt about those changes and what they had liked and disliked.

I call these times McDonalds Moments, because we normally have them at the McD across the road. We simply sit round a table and snack, but these are times when we enjoy being a family. We laugh a lot but also see the serious side of ourselves. I am constantly blessed by my wonderful family and thank God that we have each other in the way that we do.

Across the water at Poole Harbour is the boat yard for Sunseeker yachts - each being a multimillion pound purchase for the megarich. I looked at them and think that I have still have the best that life can give.

Congratulations to Stewart Cinq on winning The Open golf championship.

Interesting speech and responses that he made...
'I want to thank the R&A for such a great competition' <Great applause>
'I want to thank Tom Watson' <Great applause>
'I want to thank my wife and kids' <Great applause>
'I want to thank my wife for bringing me to faith and I want to thank God for all that he has done for me' < Stony silence.>

Blameless.

In many places in the bible Christians are urged to be 'blameless'. For example - 1 Thessalonians 5:23 "May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ."

I have worked in some places where there is a blame-culture. If anything goes wrong, the finger pointing begins...no-one takes responsibility, someone else is to blame. Being blameless is making sure you don't get blamed when it all goes wrong. The result is an atmosphere of fear, mistrust and dishonesty.

Contrast that with a story I heard to do with the NASA Mission Control Centre for the Apollo 11 moon landings. Unfortunately I can't remember the names or exact words but the gist of it makes a good point.

The Mission Control room was full of highly intelligent, young individuals who had a tremendous responsibility to the men on the mission. There was no experience in the room - they were all pioneers. Each had thousands of tasks to do : - monitoring systems, watching over the health of the astronauts, measuring oxygen levels, etc etc. The mission was high risk, high profile, high cost. Just before the mission blasted off, the Flight Controller (who I believe was Gene Krantz) turned off their communication links to the outside and addressed these comments solely to those in that Mission Room:

"You all know what to do. I have every faith in all of that you that you will do your best and get it right. But know this – if there is a mistake and a tragedy occurs I will take full responsibility. It will be down to me!"

In these few words he created a team who were motivated, trusting, honest and secure in the job at hand.

"May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ."

An answer to prayer - I am now famous!

For those who care, and I know precious few of you do, I moaned in a recent blog how few people follow anything I do on the good old interweb - this blog, Twitter or Facebook (OK so I don't have a Facebook account but if there were true friends out there they would set me up an account - right?) However, on Friday, July 10th all of that changed when I went international.

Being on Twitter (follow me here) and a follower of the Five Live Simon Mayo/Mark Kermode film review podcasts, I heard that Willem Dafoe was being interviewed on the show about his new film 'Anti-Christ'. I sent a tweet that they should put to him that, having been Christ in 'The Last Temptation...' and now being in 'Anti-Christ' that he should make his mind up! What followed next is sure to make history...just click on the video below.



Ok - so I may not have been mentioned personally but then God doesn't always answer prayers the way would would like Him to.

PS - I can't recommend the new film. Sounds very gruesome.

PPS - You can now catch my video broadcast here. Occurs around 1minute in!

What makes a good church?

Over the past few weeks I have been thinking about what makes a church 'good'!

Clearly church-goers define what they consider to be a 'good' church as to what they enjoy and what they believe takes them closer to God. Such things will include:

• Preach the Word of God...
• Free and easy worship...
• Formal liturgy
• Styles of songs
• Sense of togetherness
• Etc

I wonder of there is 'correct' way to do church, ie. is there a universal definition of what church should be? I think there is also a great danger that we see evangelism as being the marketing of the kind of church that we like, rather than anything else. Perhaps the problem is deeper and to do with our definition of what it means to be a Christian. I have a feeling that we have created a definition of Christianity which is marked more by how we follow Jesus rather than how closely we follow him.

The picture is the Church of Hallgrimur, Reykjavik, Iceland.

Well done Bob!

Spent today at York Minster for Robbie's Commemoration Day and Prizegiving Ceremony. He was awarded a prize for 5th form Music composition and the school English writing competition.

It was great to see him wearing the suit which he needs to wear in the 6th form instead of his school uniform. Another rite of passage passes and you realise that for your child adulthood isn't just looming but has well and truly arrived. And with it comes the pride of seeing a young man emerge and a sadness that you are needed less and less. But the success of parenthood is in realising that you are not needed, which has its rewards in itself.

I'm not sure where stories of painful teenagers comes from because I didn't start it! Robbie is no problem at all and we share a lot together.

Proud as punch.

And heaven knows...

I have recently realised that no-one reads this blog; that no-one follows me on Twitter and I have no friends on Facebook.

Nazis - A warning from history

It's interesting what you pickup on daytime TV. I caught a little of a program called "Nazis - a warning from history" a BAFTA award winning series by Laurence Rees which is being shown on the Yesterday channel.

When Hitler invaded Poland he created three regions and appointed rulers from his regime to run them as they saw fit. The most notorious was SS Obergruppenfuhrer Arthur Greiser who was appointed to administer Warthegau and did so by systematically enslaving or exterminating those who were non-German including Jews and native Poles. This approach was a decision entirely made by Greiser as other leaders of the annexed states simply re-classified residents as Germans. Griesers tactics shocked some in the Nazi military who had felt that they were in Poland to liberate Germans who had been excluded from their native land following World War I. They complained to Hitler who dismissed their concerns as a sign of weakness with the words "if you want to win a war you cannot fight like the Salvation Army"!

While doing a bit of searching on the internet I discovered more. During the pre-war appeasement attempts by the UK Government, the UK embassador, Sir Eric Phipps raised concerns about the nature of SS (Elite Guard) and SA (Storm Troopers) in 1939. Hitler assured him that they were like these troops were like the Salvation Army! (Story is here).

It would be too trivial to say "make your mind up" but I think Salvationists are not immune to have a confused approach to armed conflict. How do we square our attitudes to our own military with the words of Catherine Baird?

"We shall not lose the fight of faith,
For Jesus is our Lord,
We lay all carnal weapons down
To take his shining sword."

Can you see what it is yet?

I had a great day a recently visiting an exhibition of the work of Stanley Spencer at York Art Gallery with my friend, the Artist. Spencer was a British artist of the 20th century who often portrayed aspects of his Christian faith in the context the village of Cookham in Berkshire where he lived.

The exhibition was a great collection showing a range of his work including these self portraits, giving visitors a real insight into the man himself. I particularly liked his honesty, brutally shown at times, and the natural way in which he saw the spiritual as part of every day life.

The Artist taught me a lot. He pointed out aspects of composition, structure and development of the artists skill which I would never have seen. I was really intrigued as he pointed out the scrapes of paint on the canvas as Spencer struggled with bits of some paintings, which told of inner struggles and of "making it work". I was able to add some background to the biblical stories and theology of Spencer's paintings but found myself fascinated by how he committed it to canvas in a way in which the viewer is intrigued and made to think.

But the picture which really captivated both of us was this one, entitled Mending Cowls in Cookham. The thing is, Spencer desribed this picture as his most spritual painting. But why? Unlike other pictures, there is no bible story, depiction of Christ, religious motifs or anything which is immediately obviously Christian!

So what makes it spiritual? Can you see what it is yet?


Thanks to Big H for a great day.

Happy 16th Birthday Bob!

Good Friday is perhaps not the best day to have a birthday, a 16th at that, but it happened to Robbie our son yesterday. Just want to say what a great boy he is - the best any parents could have. We love you Bob. Now get on with your revision.

God Friday

It amazes me time and again that God ministers to people despite our efforts to get in the way.

Our Good Friday meditation was a series of prayers based on the words of Jesus from the cross, the final one being "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit" . The prayer was read by Anne, who struggled with these words:

Lord Jesus, we let you go.

You cannot cling to life for ever, nor can we cling to a dying frame, nor do we grudge you that peace which passes understanding which you have promised us.

So go to heaven, where you will welcome those who die in your faith, whose death, with your death, we remember. Tell them that we love them, that we miss them, that they are not forgotten.

She stood in front of us all, her tears stopping the words flowing. But she battled through and completed her part. After she told me that her mother had died on one Good Friday a few years ago. They had not had an easy relationship and this had been the first time she had shed tears for her mother. Now that you know that, read the quote above again.

Our God is an amazing God. I only wish I could get out of the way more often.

The Story of an Artist, a Scientist and a Clergyman

An Artist, a Scientist and a Clergyman began bumping into each other regularly, although these meetings were never arranged.

The Clergyman met the Artist first and they became friends, talking about politics, war, religion, society and, particularly, art. The Clergyman then met a Scientist and they talked about religion faith and, particularly, science.

The Artist and the Clergyman shared their own expertise with each other, shedding light on the others' passions. The Artist explaining about the great artists and their styles, the Clergyman explaining the scenes of religious paintings.

At thier first encounter the Scientist challenged the Clergyman about beliefs in God in the face of suffering. The Clergyman admitted to also being challenged by such thoughts but said that faith is not always about knowing everything. This surprised the Scientist whose profession was to know everything about everything but who noticed that there were some things which could not be fully explained. The Scientist and the Clergyman talked more and discovered a shared interest in the origins of the Universe. The Scientist was surprised to hear that the faith of Clergyman did not depend on Six days of Creation. Eventually the Scientist and the Clergyman talked about a Big Bloke in the Sky.

One day the Scientist had mentioned to the Clergyman that he had heard of an abbot who suggested to his novices that they have three books on the go at once: one a spiritual book, one a book on a hobby and the other a novel. The Clergyman agreed that this would be a great idea and accepted the Scientists offer of a book called "Physics of the Impossible" by physicist Michio Kaku. The Clergyman offered "The Secret Message of Jesus" by Brian McLaren. A matter of weeks later the Scientist and Clergyman bumped into each other and both declared they were enjoying the books that they had swapped. "Who knows", said the Scientist as they left each other "I may become born again!". The Clergyman laughed out loud.

Some weeks later another book swap occurred while the Clergyman happened to be talking to the Artist. The Clergyman gave the Scientist a novel, "The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini, which was reciprocated by a copy of a book showing how Art has influenced Science and vice versa, Cosmic Imagery by John Barrow. The Artist was naturally very interested in the latter and, for the first time, the three had an open conversation about spirituality. The Clergyman also gave the Artist the book on Jesus.

The following week the Scientist gave the Artist a book about Christian meditation with the Clergyman nowhere in sight!

Where will this story end? Who is pulling all these things together?
No idea how this story will end, but isn't it interesting how far a converation will take you.

A read a quote that 14% of atheists believe in God. And we think we're confused!

Humbling

Last night I had a chance to speak at the Churches Together in Selby Lent meetings under the topic Kingdom and Culture. In summary, I talked about the fact that being Christian had been disconnected with being Christ-like. I tried to define the problem with reference to what is generally seen to be "standing up for" Christianity, such as boycotting films like Harry Potter, Life of Brian and the Last Temptation of Christ (for which you might check this story out). My point was that we should be the ones turning the other cheek, going the extra mile, forgiving 70 times 7, etc.

In all honesty I had been worried about this talk as I had perceived the prevalent view among the audience to be "We need to make our country Christian once again...". I had noted one particular person who expressed this view by waving his bible in the air and saying "we must come back to follow this!".

I ended the evening with the act of worship which I have posted earlier today on Philippians 2, Christ had the full power of God but humbled himself as a slave. Despite my reservations, the talk was well received and this same man came to me and could not stop crying. "Thank you so much for what you have said. I have waited years to hear this, to be taken back to the Word. You made me realise just how judgemental I had become when Jesus had become so humble".

I was humbled too, that this man would recognise such an aspect in his character and be willing to put it right. I was chastened too, that I had misjudged so many - perhaps we underestimate the sheep still look for shepherding.

The Kingdom of God wins again.

Shalom Dog Millionaire