.
.
I just dislike the recent song from
Sophie Ellis-Baxter
the lyrics go like this
"I won't change you and you won't change me"
two fingers down the throat time ..................
It is a terrible song anyway. Sounds just like words have been spread like lumpy jam all over mouldy bread.
And then the issue of change! ...... the most locked in people I know are stuck and scared of change. I groan.
The book I am reading today, the film on tv with James Nesbitt in it, the music I listen to, Greenbelt, the people I call friends, the work I do, faith lived out, the dvd 'the rabbit proof fence' .......... all these are about the very purpose of CHANGE.
I want to change. I must change. I must peddle my bike or I fall off it !
It seems to me we need to so 'live' change that it becomes normal and just like breathing.
When I was a Youth Worker running a club for hells angels and rockers, I had a visit from the local Vicar
(Joan me and Joy lived above the club just after we had left the Approved School job. Ann had not been born and she is 31 now!)
The Vicar told me a story, intent on making a message.
'There was a woman who took three men to the bottom of her garden because she wanted to employ a driver. How close could you drive my Rolls Royce and me to the edge of that cliff?
1 said ..... three feet
2 said .... . two feet
3 said ....... he paused and considered and said ..... I would not go near it!
He got the job.
The message then, dear youth worker looking knackered and stressed, stay away from all the works of the devil. Stay well clear of all these dangerous things and God will bless you'
I reversed the whole story.
On the edge is where I want to be.
Risk is the only way if you are working with those on the edge. In the margins.
Where there is dirt and brokeness and broken people is the place for Christians. Where there is upset, anger, hurt and violence ...... that is the place to pitch our tent!
I see in the Bible a Jesus who mixed with the ones who others saw as the worst. The publicans and sinners. I see there a Jesus who reached out and touched a leper ....... and I weep because I feel I am there. I want to feel the pain and know the reality of life in the city, in the concrete treeless housing estates.
That Jesus was the one who helped me work with those who only had one shirt. Dirty.
Only had one parent, sadly,
only had one place of acceptance ................. that back street club which opened until 2 am and was filled up with Christian volunteers and love.
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"Some want to live within the sound of Chapel bell
........................ I want to live within a yard of hell"
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