love thy neighbour

We are no strangers to loss or theft. Three times in the past year and a bit, myself and my housemate Mark have been victims of theft. This time it was a securely locked up bike which was stolen from outside the eden office in Fitton Hill. As we opened the door at the end of youth club Mark, who had finished late at work, stepped outside to find his bike gone, the lock securely fastened around the bars of former police holding room for an office.

We both got home, I was dismayed, gutted for mark that life could be so cruel - to be a victim of crime again in such short space of time. He naturally felt persecuted - who wouldn't in his situation. Urban estates are fast moving places though.

Faith told me to leave the back gate open tonight, and not lock and bolt it as has become my custom, allowing a safe and anonymous back garden return. Common sense prevailed, but I still believed it would be returned overnight. We sent out a text with the description, and waited and watched a dodgy show on e4 about youtube clips! It's funny how you not only lose your appetite when bad things happen, but sometimes your taste as well.

At 10:10 this evening, our neighbour knocked on the door with a couple of his mates. And that wasn't all. Leaned against our garden wall was something that looked suspiciously familiar. "You've no idea what a mission we've been on to get that bike back", he told us, reliving the recovery story.

The words of Jesus ring in my ears: "love your neighbour as you love yourself" he teaches, after saying that the greatest commandment is to Love God. It's funny how sometimes the best person to teach you is not Jesus (don't burn me at the stake for that comment), but the lad who lives next door.

I have this immense sense of victory inside of me. Not my own, but one for the Kingdom of God.

breaking through the skin

Not for the first time in my life, I realised this week that I share something in common with a 10 month old baby (no cheap shots please!) As the picture suggests, I'm currently teething. The pursuit of wisdom can frequently be a painful experience.

It seems that these times shape us. As I mentioned in my previous blog, we were broken into a couple of weeks back. They've come and put a new back door on now, but it doesn't look as safe as the last one. I was a little concerned. However, I'm also really conscious that I do not want to live in a fortress. My view is that too many people want to shut the world out, and live a nice little life in a laboratory, utterly secure from natural interferences. It's the sterility that came two weeks previous that I want to avoid in my response. Jesus never asked us to pursue quaintness.

So I vowed never to live that way. I hope I can model surrender to Jesus, without ever resigning to less than God given circumstances. Part of this adventure is that danger lurks around some corners - it's how we rebalance ourselves that determines our fate through this jungle. So I'm asking God to enter again (as if he ever exited!), and make this a safehouse. A place of peace for all who enter in. Jesus was not stolen. And he never will be. So I'm praying that out of my mouth bursts a new and relentless forgiveness and passion. That he heals those wounds, enabling me to sit at his table in confidence.

Dig for victory

The provocative mantra of the second world war rang in my ears today, as Ste and myself sheared, mowed and dug for victory in my little slice of urban paradise. Tanked up on bottles of coke, chocolate and a cream cake at the end from my wonderful neighbour, we fought back the weeds in the battle for my back garden. At the risk of this becoming A Friday night on BBC2, I wanted to share some interesting observations from both myself and others, as we grafted away against bind weed.

Bind weed strangles things... it's really nasty stuff that was growing through from next door's heap of dug up turf. This menace was strangling my attempts to plant a hedge at the back, and soften the concrete wall which rises in front of the scrub land at the back of my house, soon to become a health and community centre.

Today I planted my first new item in the garden: some grass seed. Granted, it was wierd buying something God had created in a smart price branded box from ASDA, but it was the cheapest I could find. I was determined to plant it before the rains came. In a way, I felt a little bit like Elijah, waiting for rain to come and renew this bare and patchy corner of my garden, previously occupied by unwanted settlers (brambles and dock leaves!)

I'm really excited about my Garden. It has potential to be a beautiful space where people can be entertained, community can be fostered, and new life brought into being. There is opportunity for it be a place of family, community, laughter and friendship... exciting hey?! As unglamourous as it is, redemption is flipping hard work - now I'm going to collapse in bed.

Rediscovering Eden's Garden

My parents came up this weekend and we set to work on my ex council house garden. We've spent the time weeding the borders, ripping up brambles and cutting back bushes. We've cut the grass and I even cleaned out one of the drains!

The grass was getting pretty long, and although it was cut about a month after we moved in, it was great to really get our teeth into it (not literally, I used gloves and tools like other normal humans...) My Mum and Dad heroically pulled up a bramble bush and cut up everything small enough so we could take it to the tip. It was fantastic to know that we had removed the weeds, and I even rediscovered some shape and some beauty. It was quite amazing.

There was something redemptive about the whole thing. By this I mean that I felt involved in the act of changing something, being involved in the growth of other things, helping and nurturing something back into its fullness of life and helping it to find its potential. I might sound like a hippie, but I don't care: my garden is a place of life and somewhere with a fresh start now. I hope I can contribute similiarly to the people we work with.