I badgered the government about cancelling Haiti’s debts, you can read their response here and the actions of the UK government here

“I felt I wanted to write and say many thanks to you and Soul Purpose and to other kind friends who helped to arrange such a Happy Christmas Day.I’ve had ninety-six Christmas’ and the one Soul Purpose invited me to was one of the best I wasn’t looking forward this year to Christmas without my dear husband but you helped to take some of the sadness away. I thank you all for giving me a happy joyful time to share with others and for the hard work and hours of preparation to give so many lonely folk such a great time. A Happy New Year to you all. God Bless”

I nearly cried.

The Movement of One Day’s Wages from One Day’s Wages on Vimeo.

Amongst all this trouble are stories of hope. Igor is a pastor and a friend and recently he bought a car with a dollar loan. It’s the only car in his church of 80 people and the first one they’ve had in the congregation in 9 years. Our congregation is slightly smaller but we probably have 30 times as many cars. It’s a new definition of a one car family. Since the financial crisis his repayments have nearly doubled. The greed of bankers in London and New York is having a profound affect on this Ukrainian pastor.

Unable to make the repayments Igor has become a taxi driver. For four days each week taking home about £10-20 for a 12 hour day Pastor Igor ferries his passengers about. Passengers like 24 year-old Irina a prostitute, who offered herself to Igor for just 10 Grivna, or about £1. Her life and body had become virtually worthless. Igor pointed her to the one who thinks she is of great value and worth dying for.

What’s our response to a pastor who works an 80 plus hour week because he lacks £100 a month car repayments? What would the apostle Paul urge me to consider? What is my response to a woman who values her life for less than a Saturday newspaper? What would your response be?

Dinner for 120 it is then. So families volunteered on mass and we began asking people who would otherwise be on their own to come and join us for dinner. And nearly 30 of them did.

It’s always a personal challenge to speak at these things, especially on the above topic. After all, when are you ever an expert on that? There are times when I think what I’m doing is compassionate and it turns out not to be, other times it’s the other way around. Sometimes I don’t feel love but I do the loving thing, sometimes I don’t want to do the loving thing because it’s hard. So thinking about mercy has been encouraging and as soon as I get an audio or link I’ll post it up here along with my brief powerpoints.

But I’m not there yet, so how would you answer the question, ‘how do you lead a mercy filled life?’ I’d love to hear your thoughts

To see the range of projects Newfrontiers is involved in, watch this short presentation

But I left with the feeling that despite my best efforts, the message I unwittingly communicated was “DO MORE” when I was passionately hoping to communicate “LOVE MORE”. Sometimes in order to love more we need to DO less.

Fortunately, as the main speaker in our church I have another opportunity to correct this misconception and I’ll be attempting to unpack what it might look like to follow Christi in a busy, harried and hassled world with a talk titled, “Generous Living”.

What this means is be willing to open up our lives to the presence of another. Most of us open up to people we love, partners, children, close friends – our nearest and dearest. Christ calls us to love our enemies and to head to the byways and alleys of our world to seek out the crippled and the lame and invite them too the banquet of the king. Where I live those translate into single mums abandoned by yet another responsibility averse male, teenagers and young people who literally have no ambition, no drive, no aim in life other than to claim dole and then drink it and many others. Loving those people isn’t easy, extra grace is required and I don’t think I can do it on my own.

Yet to be able to even try, I need to make room first of all in my heart and then in my diary. If there’s no space to be with someone then there’s no way to love them. Programmes can help but they can’t hug. Sometimes those ‘others’ are in a foreign land but they hold our hearts, babies with HIV, the orphans and widows of this world. Sometimes those others are across the street.

Generous living makes room to include others into our lives, to do what we are doing, be it washing the car, walking the dog or watching a film. There may not be room for everyone person in your life, which is why it takes a community to reach a community but if there’s not room for the least of these is there really room for Jesus?

This has caused me some discomfort and is my reason for the slow progress I’ve made blogging recently (it’s also one of the busiest weeks of my year). I couldn’t honestly describe the process as thinking, it doesn’t seem as clear or as defined as that, instead something much more elemental has been happening, and the best word I can think of to describe it is stewing. It’s been simmering in my spirit, bubbling away under the surface, doing something in my soul but it is neither finished nor complete, other things need to be added in order to produce something nourishing or satisfying.

Firstly, I take a mercy filled life to be one of compassion and when necessary forgiveness. So I’m asking myself, do I live that kind of life? As best I can in the place I live with the people I know, do I extend compassion, hospitality, love, forgiveness, acceptance, mercy?

The problem I think I’m having is that on one level I can answer yes, but it seems programmatic when what I want I something relational, personal, flowing from a heart that has been changed by the ever-flowing mercy of God. I don’t want a scheme (although I accept that organisation may need to come) I want a heart that doesn’t just put difficult people in a separate home but puts people in my own home.

What distance was there between Jesus and the lepers or Jesus and the prostitutes or Jesus and the tax collectors, zealots or poor? None that I can see. He touched them, broke the barriers down.

What’s my biggest challenge? I’m comfortable and by definition that makes the thought of moving from that place uncomfortable. But that makes me think that in that case I’m valuing my lifestyle or whatever above people, above following Jesus when the going gets a bit tough or risks the safety of my middle class environment.

There are people I know right now, who pose a challenge to me, who I’ve avoided because they’re difficult, because they’re needy, because they’re sinful, because they’re dirty and smelly and a host of other reasons but something needs to be done and I’m not sure God wants to send someone else to make my life easier, he wants to send me to make my heart better.

I think the next few months are going to be very challenging.