I’m quite used to seeing some strange sights in Gloucester city centre in the evening. Through my experience of doing Street Pastors and now the weekly soup run I have come across a number of unusual situations and unique characters. I thought I had seen it all, that was until Wednesday evening.
It was our corps’ turn to do the soup run and we were well into our route around the city centre. It was around 10:00 pm and our minibus came from the car parks around the back of the cathedral into Westgate Street. There, parked up on the left hand side of the road was a tourist coach and all the passengers were disembarking into Westgate Street. They clearly were visitors from overseas on a sightseeing trip of the UK. It was a bizarre sight – Westgate Street full of East Asian tourists all with cameras in hand filing into a deserted city centre at 10:00 pm! Surely this was not a Harry Potter picture shoot in the cathedral? If so, they had been misadvised over the opening hours. Where were they going? What did they expect to see at 10:00 pm, midweek, in a quiet city centre like Gloucester??!! All I could think was that they were heading for their overnight accommodation, though I can’t imagine where!
Many people followed Jesus around during his ministry. Some were curious onlookers, others were devoted disciples hanging on his every word, others were desperate folk looking for healing from affliction, and then there was another group – the Pharisees and Sadducees, the sceptical troublemakers. They were always around seeking to catch Jesus out, desperate to point out the flaws in his living and teaching. They were always looking for the heresy and not seeing the reality. They sought to discredit, when before their eyes he lived a life of beauty and integrity that spoke for itself and demonstrated beyond doubt the life of God in their midst. I often wonder what they expected to see in his life and wonder why they couldn’t see anything other than godliness personified in a human being.
There is still a great tendency for our society to discredit the work and actions of God’s people rather than look for the many evidences of where God is working. Even in the church we tend to focus on what’s not working and how it needs to be fixed rather than on what is working and how we can do more of it. If you have been following the 40 Acts Lent series (http://www.40acts.org.uk/) that I spoke of a few weeks ago in our evening meeting you will be daily having opportunity to do good works in God’s name to show His living in your life. What do people expect to see in the people of God, I wonder? They expect to see the character of Jesus. We need to show them what that really means and entails. May it be so, Lord!
Every blessing,
Major Adrian