street wisdom

For most of the children here in the local community it's still holiday time.

Some go back to school tomorrow, but most are off for the whole of this week as well.

I met some tonight just outside the house of some folk I was calling round to see. I had my Bible in my hand since the folk who were gathered there were there to learn from the Bible.

The children came running along the street when they saw that it was me. The nearest I ever get to celebrity status, I guess! But they always like to stop and talk and there are a hundred and one different questions they have to ask.

Here's a random sample. In no particular order - since there's no particular logic to the order in which they were asked.

Why have you got a Bible?

Which country do you come from? You come from heaven, don't you, since you don't have a tan? (I'm afraid I still don't get the rationale behind that one!)

Can you speak Italian? (The girl had just come back from a holiday there, I think)

If the Bible teaches you all you need to know, does it teach you maths?

Are you God?

Do you want to play tig with us?

What's your favourite colour?

How long is God's beard?

And in amongst it all, this one - Did you know my Dad's in the hospice 'cos he's going to die?

They'd been playing 'tig' and the speed with which the questions came out was a bit like the running around they'd all been doing in playing the game. A barrage of questions.

Children are great that way. They're so completely natural. They speak what they think and say what they see.

And that little evening episode afforded me another telling insight into where, I'd guess, most folk I meet are coming from and what our following Jesus has to look like in these days.

So here, then, are some lessons that we all do well to note. Not in any order!

It's out 'on the street' these conversations happen. It was a cul-de-sac, I should have said, so relatively safe. But it's there on the street, in the midst of their running around, that encounters like this take place.

Not in the formal setting of some 'sacred', special building, at a time and place arranged in advance by myself.

Being able to ask the questions is always more important than getting definitive answers. Which sounds strange, I suspect, to many, but is how this growing generation tends to see things in the complex and uncertain world in which they live.

Listening becomes as important as any sort of lecturing skills I might have sought to cultivate. Befriending folk and giving them the confidence simply to 'pour out their hearts' is as good a way as any of conveying the truth to which all of the Bible points - Trust in the Lord at all times, pour out your hearts to him.

The barrage of questions is simply the outflow of all of the 'stuff' in their hearts. Being free to raise the questions means they're able to be themselves. Just as they are. Warts and all. Questions and doubts and all.

It's an experience of grace.

There's no distinction in people's minds between the 'secular' and 'sacred'. Life is basically one. The good and the bad, the stuff about God and the stuff of our day by day lives.

It's all bound up together. And I guess they're looking for something which is at heart coherent. Seeing it all together and holding it all together.

They haven't the time for some abstruse, intellectual message which is all just so much 'theory' and doesn't really take to do with all the many down-to-earth and hard-to-bear misfortunes which they face.

Does your coming from heaven do me any real good when my Dad's in the hospice and dying?

Truth is found in relationship. They see that very clearly. And they're right on the button, since Jesus himself underlined exactly that. I am the truth.

Truth is a person. Discovered and known in relationship.

They're not going to meet this Jesus in a book. They're going to meet him on their street. In the likes of myself. If Jesus is really in me.

To know him, they'll need to experience him. Relational experience will be as important as any intellectual understanding.

I was late for the time of study.

But I don't really live by the clock at all. The time out there on the street was study time.

And one way and another, every day, it's there 'on the street' each day, in those random, 'providential' close encounters with so many different people that I have - it's there that I do my learning and it's there that I do my teaching.

And it's there that the Lord is found.