an instrument of grace

In at the local primary school again, this time more informally.

I'd managed to get some reading done before I went while all was still quite quiet round the Halls. Getting in at 7.30am has that great advantage and the time with no one else around and nothing else requiring to be done was just what I needed today.

At the school it was mainly just coffee and chat, as the staff had their morning break. It's really sort of 'touching base' - and it does no harm for the children, too, to see me often there.

One of the girls in our church family here has been struggling a bit with her health, so I took the chance to ask her teacher how she's getting on: it was great to hear her say what a lovely girl she was - it really gives me quite a boost when, even as they're growing up and in the sometimes hostile (I mean to their faith) school environment, the staff can see the pleasant, courteous brightness of their lives.

The same was true much later on when I visited Ian again in the hospital at night. Before I even got to him, the nurse was volunteering - "what a lovely man he is!" (and, of course, she's absolutely right!)

Two fairly minor moments in my day, but underlining once again the impact of a person's life - young and old alike. Something about the person. Jesus, in a word! shining through in all his striking 'loveliness'.

Anyway, the school. It was more to see the head himself that I'd gone in today. To chat about assemblies and the way I might fit in. He's strong on pushing 'values' which he thinks the school must play a major part in giving to the children growing up: for many of the boys and girls, unless the school instils these basic values in their hearts and minds, they'll simply never get them any other way.

All the more pressing, it seemed, in the light of the murder last night of Rhys Jones, the 11 year old boy down in Liverpool. There's talk today of 'feral youths', a creeping sort of culture of the jungle in the younger generations growing up. As if these youths were sometimes not that easily distinguished from the wild and violent beasts which roam the undergrowth.

In the aftermath of last night's tragic murder of this little boy, such views gain growing credence.

Well, anyway, the head is keen to push his set of 'values' and I'm glad to play my part. I share with him, I guess, a vision of being able to transform this whole community and change it from the jungle which it could too easily become and see it rather grow to be a good and pleasant place where all may live at peace.

He spoke about the work that's done in London by Camilla Batmanghelidjh: to my shame I hadn't heard of her, despite her being the 'Woman of the Year 2006'. When I got back later on, I googled her name and learned about the charities she runs - Place 2 Be and Kids Company. I was struck by what I read -

she has devoted much of her life and formidable energies to working with the young cast-offs whom no one else wants to go near: teenage prostitutes, drug dealers, knife and gun-carrying toughs, crack and smackheads. And the rest. She embraces the kind of children that the rest of us avoid...

I found that pretty challenging. Not least because there's someone else I've read about who did exactly that. Like Jesus. Working with the cast-offs of society whom no one else wants to touch, the sort of people most of us avoid... And giving to these rejects of society the hope and love and life they so much want.

The head was saying that down in London where the work is based, the police have said that if the funding stops and ends her work, the crime rate will just soar. One person making a massive difference. An instrument of grace.

Am I prepared to get involved like that, engaging with the wilder side of life?

And yet we all have needs. The rich and the respectable as well. Death, not least, affects us all.

A lady with some long-time-past connection with the church here in the village had died: and the family had contacted me. So I called by to see them - very much the other side of life from 'feral youths'. But nonetheless as needy in their own sore, grieving hearts, as any other folk.

What a pleasure to meet them! And a privilege, too. I'm always so aware of that. The privilege of being welcomed into homes where there is grief and hurt and somehow bringing to their battered hearts a sense of God's own presence, love and help.

I think they had a sense of that - and that's as much the privilege as any other thing. Being in some small way an instrument of God's own healing grace.