There is a community. It consists of a few dirty streets, terraced housing and youth on every corner. Rising out of the small patches of grass and the broken cobbles is rows upon rows of people stacked high in council flats. People, real people, with desperate stories of life not turning out how they expected, living amongst the cracked paint and the closed doors tarnished with the brush of hopelessness. But there is hope. Look beyond these flats, look deeper, scratch the surface, meet the people and there you will see the beginnings of the kingdom. There you will begin to see not just the stories, not just the labels, but the individuals.
His skin was olive and in his hands he held a shiny beer can. Not unusual for 3pm on a Wednesday afternoon. His sunglasses covered any emotion that could have been playing in his eyes. His five year old son, with unruly black hair and a mischevious smile playing on his lips, raced through the area around the football cage. As I sat with him, I wondered how he had gotten the scar that spanned his face, but I was more interested in what he had to say. As he took a sip from his can he began to chat about his ex partner, his struggle with his son, how hard the last years had been but how he was just getting his life back on track. With genuine interest he reciprocated the friendly questioning and I began to share how I came to be in Gillingham. Such a blessing to enter into these peoples lives. As he greeted everyone by name that passed by and began to tell some of the youth that he used to drink in the pub with their dads I began to realise his roots here were deep and when life caved in, he came back to what he knew, Gillingham. This town. He began to tell me of how his ex-partner had been a 'bible basher Christian type' and when I mentioned that I also was 'one of those' he replied with respect.
As the conversation moved on to normal day to day musings, and I began to soak in the surroundings from the bench I was on, I was hit with the realisation that I was catching glimpses of Gods kingdom right where I was. One blink and I would have missed it, earthly eyes and I would have just seen community kids playing football and a man drinking beer on a bench. But there were people, meeting together, talking, sharing life and Jesus, being open to opportunities in the dismal surroundings. And joy began to surge in my heart. The kids, scruffily dressed, playing football but with positive words, a sense of community. And in my heart I knew that Jesus was there, this place was soaked in Him, and as the kids came over and chatted there was no doubt in my mind that there is HOPE, that these kids will know truth and be brought up in the knowledge they are worthwhile. In earthly terms, this stuff is a pittance. But in heavenly terms, seeing these things with fresh eyes, huge ground for the Kingdom was taking place. Walking past, it could have just been any old bunch of youth on any given day, but there was far more. God was there in our midst, oceans of HOPE flowing and glimpses of heaven on earth were everywhere. This is what my heaven will look like. What an honour.
There is always hope. Oceans of it. No one or nothing is EVER completely consumed. There is never anything, no matter how dismal or ugly, that is void of this little word. HOPE.
It's a tough one. Seeing hope where there, at first glimpse, seems to be nothing. defying everyone esle's thoughts and ideas, and REFUSING to let hopelessness consume people and places. I refuse to believe that people are past the point of it and that there is nothing more. There is always hope.
When everything, taken at face value, seems to scream despair just scratch the surface, go deeper, meet the people and you will come to believe that there is glimpses of hope, glimpses of the kingdom in places that people who don't have the eyes to see, simply miss.
I desire to fix my eyes on the unseen. HOPE. The things that God is doing in these areas. The glimpses of the kingdom that, once your eyes are opened to it, appear. The conversations seasoned with words of truth, the stories of people that have had heartache and are broken, but the joy that rises in the heart when a community begins to move, when a community begins to see Jesus, starts to capture the vision. In this place there is no room for hopelessness. It has been replaced by hope.
Praise God.
