Small town girl goes to the city

My friend Joan lives in Kings Cross and when I asked her if she had any stories, told me about how she's got to know a young homeless woman who begs for her living. Until I attended the SIM training course early last year, I hadn't formed any firm ideas on how to respond to beggars. Now I think that unless you do get to know someone, you can't tell if they are trustworthy or if what they are asking for is actually going to help. So it's pretty foolish to proffer significant help to a beggar you don't know. But buying them a taxi or train fare, going with them to a motel and paying for a night, or buying them something to eat can all be good things to do if you have the time and money. I've known this for a while but still I don't do it, so I asked Joan for some advice. She said that what she does is to:

1. Be prepared. Have some smaller order money set aside in a purse, so you're not riffling through your hundred dollar notes ;). I've also heard of people who keep a stash of bus tickets handy.
2. Regard them as human. They might be interrupting your day or behaving rudely, but they are actual people doing that. If they're rude, it might be most dignifying to politely have nothing to do with them, as you would any other rude person. Whatever the case, they deserve to be looked at, spoken to and to have their request considered. 

It's not just beggars with me though, it's shopkeepers too. How can I hope to engage with a beggar if I'm too shy to even mention the weather to a shopkeeper? *sigh* I pray that living in Santiago will teach me these things.

Authenticity and fun

The Be Natural people have got (middle class?) Australia sussed. Here's the rallying cry on the back of a 5 Whole Grain Flakes packet:

Be happy, be real, be relaxed and be yourself!

I reckon most Aussies would see attaining those four things as a life well lived (plus enough money to have a nice house, car, holidays and generally spoil yourself - but we don't like to talk about that). Wonder what it will be in Chile?

Family dinner

For a while now Crossroads has been running a more traditional church service of a Sunday afternoon and a few 'house services' of a Sunday morning. We're changing things up a bit this year and one of those changes is to have a midweek house get-together. Going into it I knew that it wasn't so much a time for new teaching, but rather a time to 'share life together', young and old, but I didn't exactly know what that would look or feel like. It was a wonderful evening, sitting on the deck in the late afternoon sun, squeezing past people to get to our seats and helping serve one another food. Damon shared his vision for what this new thing will be. One week we will join together, adults and kids, and learn from the Bible, like a big family devotion. And the next the kids will go and play while the adults talk through living as Christians in the workplace, at home, with our mates and rellies. We'll keep alternating between the two. And we'll do all this over dinner. ♥

Jesus years

I thoroughly enjoyed Inside Bob Dylan's Jesus Years: Busy Being Born . . . Again!, an honest, poorly produced documentary. It features interviews with Bob's pastor, Bible study leader, backing singer, keyboardist, music critics, producer, and Jews for Jesus representative. It was a real joy to hear from humble, goodhumoured, intelligent, Gospel-loving Christian brothers and sisters. One thing that particularly struck me was the wisdom and graciousness with which the pastors of the Vineyard Christian Fellowship Church treated their famous convert:

At the Vineyard our approach was to encourage Bob to grow himself, grow himself in the Lord, to not... run off and become an Evangelist or... but to really let the Lord work in his life. Because the message is that God loves you, God loves Bob, God loves me, God wants to work in our lives, and what he does to us is even more important than what he does through us. That was one of the problems I think that Bob faced, was that there were a lot of people who wanted to use him and push him up to the front, put him on TV, put him on the stage and get him to say something. The people we knew, that we were close with were just saying, 'Bob, continue just to stay focused on God and the Scriptures and stay in fellowship with other Christians and grow as a person'. (Pastor Bill Dwyer)

Jeer and flout him

If you haven't read CS Lewis' The Screwtape Letters, you should. Let me entice you... (a demon is speaking)

He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand; and if only the will to walk is really there He is pleased even with their stumbles . . . . Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy's will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.
 . . .
The Enemy wants him, in the end, to be so free from any bias in his own favour that he can rejoice in his own talents as frankly and gratefully as in his neighbour's talents - or in a sunrise, an elephant, or a waterfall.
 . . .
We direct the fashionable outcry of each generation against those vices of which it is least in danger and fix its approval on the virtue nearest to that vice which we are trying to make endemic . . . . [The Enemy] wants men, so far as I can see, to ask very simple questions; is it righteous? is it prudent? is it possible? Now if we can keep men asking "Is it in accordance with the general movement of our time? Is it progressive or reactionary? Is this the way that History is going?" they will neglect the relevant questions.
 . . .
[I]t is so hard for these creatures to persevere. The routine of adversity, the gradual decay of youthful loves and youthful hopes, the quiet despair (hardly felt as pain) of ever overcoming the chronic temptations with which we have again and again defeated them, the drabness which we create in their lives and the inarticulate resentment with which we teach them to respond to it - all this provides admirable opportunities of wearing out a soul by attrition. If, on the other hand, the middle years prove prosperous, our position is even stronger. Prosperity knits a man to the World. He feels that he is "finding his place in it", while really it is finding its place in him.

gosh