Mrs Prim: Memoirs of a Shop Assistant

It’s Wednesday night, 9.30pm at Promise House (the community house in Coventry where I live). Actually, it’s been a really hot day and we’re all winding down; the guys have been out evangelising on the Foleshill Road and have come back rather excited because of their encounters and the praying they’ve done on the streets. Then the conversation turns: one of them in about to clock in on his nightshift and he’s dreading it as a guy he’s working with has got that sort of attitude that would wind any of us up; he wants to be the boss when, well, he just isn’t. We all know that type - superior tone, condescending remarks – and he’s only a workmate!

 “I just don’t know what to do. What shall I do?” the conversation runs.

So I tell him my story. I used to be a shop assistant in a busy health food shop in Leicester. We had all sorts come in, old, young, wealthy and not so wealthy - anyone seeking a healthier alternative.
 
Mrs Prim (not her real name) used to come in to buy her expensive,

not-so-healthy cheeses.  I couldn’t like her and her approach gave me that sinking glad-when-you’ve-gone sort of feeling which leads to a show of forced politeness.  She was a sophisticated lady, a member of that class bracket when you are used to telling people what to do. I could happily spend the time of day with many of our customers, chatting over the counter about the ordinary things of life – but not her. Her presence made me feel uncomfortable. Perhaps she reminded me of an old schoolteacher. And I can never forget those startlingly-red high-heels ...

This afternoon was no exception. Mrs Prim was approaching the cheese counter where I stood. Then, it happened, one of those moments, flashes of revelation that comes in a moment and shatter all hitherto preconceptions. With my inner eye, I saw Mrs Prim, the child of a different era, a young girl, well-dressed, well bought-up and well-to-do but conspicuously surrounded by – the absence of friends, alone, isolated, lonely because of her aloof attitude. That’s how she had always been. My heart gasped inwardly and the thaw was instantaneous. I rose in myself to greet and serve her. I looked at her with different eyes. I wanted to serve her. I wanted to somehow reach out and touch the unloved bit, the un-befriended part.

I saw her a few more times. Each time I had the same response. In a flash, an instance, something had happened. She had not changed; I had. I had been given a gift; I think it is called compassion. 

My night-shift friend, I hope my story helps. Insight, revelation that comes, to the inner heart and eye, can’t be forced but sometimes it just arrives – a little miracle.

Mrs Prim, you were the means of turning my water into wine, the very best vintage, on that otherwise mundane and long-forgotten afternoon. I wanted, yes yearned, to serve you!

Joined at the Heart: Bonds Across Cultures

A few years ago, I remember my late grandmother, in her eighties and having lived through two world wars, turning to me with a troubled face and saying that she never recalled seeing anything more horrific in her whole lifetime than the plight of the Iraqi Kurds.

Iraqi Kurdestan, an autonomous region of north-east Iraq, has had a troubled history, particularly under Saddam Hussein, the President of Iraq from 1979 -2003. During the Iran–Iraq War (1980 -88) the Iraqi government used chemical weapons against the Kurds and thousands died. The large Kurdish town of Qala Dizeh (70,000) was completely destroyed by the Iraqi army.

There are around 200,000 Kurds living in the UK today (these include Turkish, Iranian, Syrian as well as Iraqi Kurds). 

The story below involves two Iraqi  Kurds, Siti and Silan  and a French Angolan, Alexandrie who attend classes at Coventry Jesus Centre. (These are not their real names).

Siti looks lonely this afternoon. That’s because her 'daughter' is not with her. Her ‘daughter’ Silan, is an adopted one because her own daughter is far away, in Kurdestan.  

Siti and Silan are inseparable. 

Silan is better at English than Siti but I can’t put them in different groups. They are inseparable, tied at the heart. But today Silan is not here.

Siti tells me she is missing Silan.

Alexandrie comes in; she is smiling, smiling all over, like she always does. She sits next to Siti and helps her because the spelling is difficult today, difficult for them both and usually Silan helps her.
 
Siti is a Muslim and Alexandrie is a Christian but that doesn’t seem to matter. Today Alexandre has decided to treat Siti like mum. She helps her with the spelling. At the end of the class she gives her a big hug. 

Siti is someone who shines, shines with the smile and heart of a mother. She draws people. Alexandrie, too, the sun shines from her and when the sun shines, there is cheer. Even a darkened soul lights up; even a tired, tired Friday afternoon. 

.

Jesus Is Still Offering Living Water, By The Water, in Trafalgar Square, Today.

Jesus sits down by the well, alone. It’s midday, it’s Palestine and it’s very hot. He’s weary (and hungry) from His journey and the disciples have gone into the town to buy something to eat. He’s thirsty too but the well is deep and he hasn’t got any means of drawing water. A woman arrives and she’s equipped with suitable utensils and he asks her for a drink. It’s free - and it’s customary for women to draw water.

Customary? Yes.  But this is no ordinary scene. You see the woman is that kind of a woman. I mean, one has to ask the question, what was she doing here at noon? Usually water was drawn at sundown, in the cool of the day. Was she trying to avoid someone? Or some people? Was she, in some way, ostracised by women in her social grouping? As the story unfolds, we find out she’s led a loose sex life, she’s had six partners ...

So, Jesus, what are you doing? You’re a Jew after all and you’re asking a Samaritan for a drink of water? I mean, have you forgotten that you can’t drink out of Samaritans’ buckets or utensils? They will make you defiled. But you don’t seem too bothered. And then, your disciples come back and wonder what on earth you’re doing because you’re talking to a woman, a Samaritan woman at that, on your own and in public. Whatever is happening here? These things really are not done.

But is all leads to a revolution in this despised-by-Jews Samaritan town. Jesus offers her the gift of God, free living water, and she takes up his offer – as do many in her town. He even ends up staying for a couple of days. Such a thing is not done.

                                                  *

He sits there, by the fountains, in Trafalgar Square, breathless, uncomfortable. It's hot, very hot. He keeps on dipping a finger into the water and wiping his forehead.

“Do you want some water?” I ask (hoping he’s not going to pass out).

We find him a bottle of water and he offers to pay. Of course not.

We get talking about this uncomfortable ailment and find he's got whooping cough; he’s had it for months and the doctor has told him to travel to warm climes aboard as this will be the cure but he can’t because of commitments. But there’s sunshine in London today alright and he’s out, soaking it in, uncomfortable as it is.

We offer to pray for him and he accepts. He tells us every reason why he doesn’t believe that Jesus is God incarnate. Yes and we find out that in the past some of his family have been, one can only imagine, rather too law-abiding, religion-upholding Christians - too much for a young man and he reacted. 

We listen. We tell him about Jesus. We pray.

Jesus is still offering living water, by the water, in Trafalgar Square, today.

Destitute, Homeless, The Baked Bean Trail

It all began last night actually ... slicing bread. Two black bin liners full of leftover unsliced bread - kindly donated by a sympathetic bakery. I thought we’d finished till my friend, Ann, announced there was still another bag to slice!

Our drop-in at Coventry Jesus Centre is called the Bridge; here lonely and destitute people, mostly men, come for free breakfasts; that includes asylum seekers whose application has failed and who, for very good reasons, cannot return to their own country; they have no access to housing or benefits and no right to work. But the destitute does not just include asylum seekers. What about the penniless young woman from France looking for work, whose application for benefits has, for the moment, been turned down?

I’m on, you see, today: the baked bean trail: baked beans on toast for 20-30-40? Not sure how many. 

Now, let’s open the first tin but, alas, me and anything but the simplest gadgets don’t usually get on. And yes, this is no exception. Can I work out how this new super-design tin opener works? No. How on earth ...?  I’d better pop through into Bev’s kitchen and borrow the good old-fashioned sort. I can manage those.

“Are you ready?” team-leader Connor calls through the hatch. “It’s 9.00am.” And in they come ...

I soon realise I’ve not heated NEARLY enough beans. I mean, NOT NEARLY enough. Quick, open another three tins.
 
The first customer prefers white toast.  Well I’ve only toasted last night’s brown cut-ups so - I’m sorry - you’ll have to wait.

 “On the toast, please.” 

“On the side of the toast, please.”

 “I prefer unburned toast, please."

Well, this is when I discover that what I call ‘burned’ isn’t the same as someone else’s!  I turn the toaster’s heat settings down and the next visitor says he really likes toast properly done. Well, can I win? But, no hard feelings. Would you ever think there could be so many VARIATIONS on beans on toast?

I hear raised voices: the visitor waiting for the white toast is getting involved in heated debate. Distraction is the answer so I call him over to collect his breakfast. He comes eventually ... sorry, my friend, your beans on toast are a bit cold now. 

“More coffee needed, more sugar please  ...” comes the cry at the hatch. Yes, yes, I’ll be as quick as I can. 

And yes, help! We’re running out again. .. I really did not heat ENOUGH beans.

Meanwhile, the washing up is piling up in the hatch as the guys bring their empty plates and cups. Sheka comes to my rescue. He’s a good sort. Multi-tasking on this scale, at this speed, is not my sort of thing. Remember, I’m a teacher, not a multi-handed chef. And you need at least three pairs of hands for this job anyway!

10.00am. I’m the proud presenter of 30 breakfasts (I have to thank Sheka for this great accomplishment).

11.00am. My penniless friend from France arrives. She’s managed to acquire two tins of baked beans; she pulls them out of her bag with a cheerful smile and we place them at the front of our church, along with other tins people have bought for the drop-in, to see us through another day.

Does it remind you of another story? A poor widow, 2000 years ago?

Later, I spot my Nigerian friend Alice; she’s all dressed in her African attire and looks beautiful today. She’s tells me she did 42 breakfast, single-handed, last week with no help. Easy? Not for me.
 
Who knows how many are destitute, living on the fringes of our society? You can’t count them, so many have gone ‘underground’. And how many have been left in poverty and without a home in these tough financial times? The huge rise in people using food banks in the last few months tells some of this story.

But a few beans, from a poor, penniless French woman, can make a difference.

For an article on homelessness:
www.jesus.org.uk/blog/theology-and-social-comment/life-streets

One Small Giant Splosh: A Young Man's Baptism

It’s a quiet sunny Sunday afternoon in June – idyllic actually. The white waters, swollen with late rains, race under the old mill bridge; speckled sunlight breaks through upon the swirling waters. 

The grassy slope leads downwards to the mill stream; we line the bank; a brave young man, with earnest face, clambers down the slope and wades into the water, waist deep, and others join him.
 

Passers-by lean idly over the old bridge to take a better view of this unusual Sunday afternoon spectacle in this quiet and scenic spot.

“I baptise you in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit ...”

I hear the sudden splosh as he is plunged downward, under; somehow that single, brief sound resonates in my ears; it feels alive, electric, purely natural but of great eternal significance – and now he’ s up again, dripping wet, worshipping, trembling with the cold - and clambers out.

A watery death ... down and up ... alive with resurrection life ... to follow Jesus. One small splosh, one giant act, of enormous significance. Here heaven and earth have met, a wonderful supernatural-natural fusion.

 Young man, my friend of many years – you have a single-eye for all that is of God – many a battle fierce awaits – remain surrounded by the strong and stand solidly upon this act, this fact, ‘I’ve died

and risen; everyday - my resurrection day!’

Christian Community: Reflections: The Extra Mile

I will sacrifice a freewill offering to you;
    I will praise your name, LORD, for it is good.
Psalm 54:6 (NIV)

If you have been living in community for a while you find yourself slotting into the structure: meals, house-family meals (when we share and discuss community matters), celebration of birthdays (when we value the person whose birthday it is and bring them directional words) and gatherings (for worship and mutual inspiration). We need structure in the same way as our bodies need a skeleton!  Indeed, to be part of the community, we have to follow this structure. We sign up for it as a voluntary act but, once in, some, at least, of the structure is mandatory. 

Fair dues, no moans, this is what we signed up for.

This structure is important but it does not make community. 

Within the mandatory there must be the voluntary giving of ourselves and that’s about the choices we make; structure is an aid but it does not ensure community – far from it. The most valuable things that build community (as opposed to a hostel or paid-for living quarters) come from within, our free choices. If structure is the skeleton, our free choices are the blood, the heart, the pulse, the throbbing, pulsating life of the community. 

It’s those extra three minutes we spend listening to someone when bed is calling, it’s the text we send during the working day when we know they need encouragement, it’s the time spent with someone when there is no seeming time - and very often it is the small things that weigh; it’s what we choose to do with our (treasured!) unstructured time that often counts the most. 

The Jews of Old Testament times had plenty of structure in their lives: feast days and festivals, sacrificial offerings, Sabbath keeping, the paying of tithes and so on. The Feast of Booths when they all dwelt in home-made tents (reminiscent of their 40 years sojourn in the wilderness) for a week to celebrate the harvest sounds like pure holiday time to me - family times, no work and a lot of eating! The nation would not have survived without this structure.

Ah ... but I read with interest in the book of Exodus of free will offerings given during the construction of the Tabernacle in the wilderness. ‘And the people continued to bring free will offering morning after morning’ (Exodus 35:29-36:5).  Above and beyond all that was required, the people spontaneously gave. It was the free will offering which brought splendour and beauty to that extraordinary tent in the wilderness.

 During the Feast of Weeks, free will offerings were accompanied by a mandatory instruction: “rejoice before the Lord your God!” (Deuteronomy 16:11) – hardly an irksome one!

 It is ‘free will offerings’ that define a community; it is the deeds that are not required that bring ‘spendour and beauty’ to it - as in the days of the tent in the wilderness; structured requirements only take us so far; performing the ‘ought’ does not bring about flourishing community but generosity does – and not just of material sharing - generosity of heart and time. 

The early church knew about the free-will offering. They shared meals and time and conversation together with ‘glad and generous hearts' (Acts 2:46).  

Our defining moments as communities are when we give what is not required, love when it is not our duty, give when it is not owed. I think this is what Jesus called, ‘the extra mile’ (Matthew 5:41).

Deep Divides and God's Solution: Woolwich, Rwanda

Scenes near Woolwich Barracks last week shocked us all; the sight of that cleaver-bearing young man with blood-covered hands, the astounded onlookers – all on an otherwise ordinary day on an otherwise ordinary British high street. Signs of an alarming disparity of viewpoints have surfaced yet again within our society.

My friend, Rukundo, has seen bloodshed on the streets of his native Rwanda immeasurably worse. In the 1994 genocide he lost 78 members of his family and over half a million of his own countrymen.

Rukundo spoke to us all in our golden marquee on Saturday (the Jesus Fellowship bank holiday weekend) and his message was clear: God’s solution to the deep divides of any society is in the church. All of us in some way are a part of the problem but gladly we can all be part of the solution too.  One verse in John's first letter, says, Rukundo, sums up the whole New Testament:   'And this is His command: to believe in the name of His Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as He commanded us.’(1 John 3:23)

 We are in a school of love. The first stage is when we call God my father (an important step) but this must lead to the second stage, the stage of brotherhood when God is ‘our father’ and we live as one God-family. The third stage is – ‘hallowed by Your name, Your kingdom come; not my will but Yours be done!’ This is when everything we are and own is given over to God.

For Rukundo, there is a fourth tribe in Rwanda. This is the Jesus tribe. In 2007 he founded a group called, ‘One Heart One Mind’, with the aim of bringing people together from different churches with a united message: forgiveness and reconciliation must begin in the church where both Tutsis and Hutus and the smaller tribe, the Twas  (considered primitive and inferior by many Rwandans) are called to live in harmony as members of one ‘body of Christ’, as a fourth ‘Jesus tribe’.

Our UK society is a far cry from Rwanda. But the seams are apparent and it appears that fanatical elements on different sides would try and divide us further. We need the Jesus-tribe, every much as Rwanda.

Ah, I see him now in the marquee crowd - a warm, humble, sincere, smiling, African face and the next minute he spots me and gives me a massive bear hug. One of my good friends, indeed.

Rukundo, come again, your message reaches our hearts. We carry the solution, God’s solution, in our land of a multiplicity of creeds and viewpoints and factions and in our small way can make a difference. I so want to belong to a church which together cries, ‘Our father, not our will but Yours be done' and whose heart is fashioned by Jesus, big enough, strong enough, to embrace every kind of person and overcome all that naturally divides. 

And yes, Rukundo, please bring your wife next time and little boy too and anyone else because, our dear African brethren, we have so much to learn from your experience of suffering.