My heart is still pounding...

My heart is still pounding. My head is still spinning. My throat is still in my mouth.

Walking back form a pastoral visit I hear the shouting first. Then I see two men fighting on the floor outside the post office. I Jump over the railings, across the road. I take it all in quickly. Looks like a mugging. The muggee? is fighting back.

I run to the local police station in the market. Shut. No-one there. Seems even the police have retreated! I run back. The shouting is worse. The violence is getting out of control. People are just watching as three or four men are pounding the mugger. I see his panic. His eyes shoot at me, pleading. "Just sit on him" I say in an attempt to slow the blows. His jaw looks broken. His jacket rips. His drug debris spills onto the pavement.

I make it obvious that I am calling the police. I cut through the question after question routine "...look this is kicking off - hurry". The blows turn into swearing and abuse.

The muggee decides to let him be and he walks off out of the market - Sirens are now in the distance. The police arrive. The party is over. He's gone.

Ro 8:19-20. All creation is waiting for God to show who his children are is... waiting to be set free from decay to share in glorious freedom of his children…

Yep - I'm pretty certain we live in a fragmented society...

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A bit of sally bashing....

Came across a good bit of Sally bashing over at salvationsoldiers I have to say we try and make sure that everything we raise goes into projects that build local community in Poplar but hopefully if you read this blog you get that sense anyway.
Read more

Lost Voices of Mission...Fred Brown

Image
Along the world famous Oxford street in London's Westend; nestled in among the classy frontage of designer shops there is almost an unnoticeable, unimpressive wooden door. It is more or less alongside The Regent Hall's main entrance onto the busyness of Oxford Street. People pass the wooden door oblivious to the equally unimpressive wooden steps that go up three storey's to what was Regent Hall's youth club. When I was 10 I played on these bare wooden steps totally unaware of the significance behind and upon which I played. Many years later I discovered a university youth work course - as an induction to Youth Work - stopped outside this insignificant wooden door to point out that Youth Work as we know it in the UK started behind this door. ...whether that be the surbanite flower people that flooded the Westend to express their free love; or the hard core drug community this unimpressive wooden door became the 'portal' that blurred encounter between church an...
Read more

Types of Christian Spirituality...

Image
It is easy to think and to limit ourselves to a single approach to Christian spirituality. A 'if it works for me it should work for you approach' tends to narrow our appreciation of other ways which actually impoverishes our experience of spirituality. Urban T. Holmes has developed a means of exploring spirituality and helps develop an appreciation through discovering links between spirituality, temperament and predisposition. The diagram illustrates his ideas together with potential inherent dangers. The vertical continuum speaks and helps us understand our relational orientation to God. This ranges from engaging with God through understanding and theological process to a more emotive response. Horizontally speaks of a persons preferred means of pursuing the spiritual life. Kataphtic speaks of affirmation and the need of something tangible in an individuals spirituality- this may take the form of worship, art, even imagination with the use of metaphors, symbols and images play...
Read more