Ten years in to pastoral ministry (and 34 years in to life) I am ashamed to admit I still dread seeing a sleeping bag protruding from a doorway as I walk through town. That out of place fabric evokes in me an all too familiar swirl of emotions. Guilt, fear, compassion, heartache, frustration, uncertainty and much much more. How is it possible that I am both judgemental and compassionate in the same breath? How can I be compelled to empty my pockets and to look the other way simultaneously? This is a tension I find myself in daily, maybe not in this scenario but in others like it. This is the tension of a broken, selfish heart, in the all too slow process of being redeemed. I don’t like this tension but I need it; it’s tension that keeps me in the place of growth.

When we set out to serve the city I was enthused to be tackling poverty, it was even in our tag line – “fighting food poverty from the heart of the city”. It sounded manly, almost Braveheart esque. Let’s go pick a fight with poverty. It was tangible, it was measurable, it required much from me in terms of action and time and resource but it required very little of my heart. Which was great because the truth is, I was hiding. Hiding behind measurable activity to avoid the tension building on the inside. The tension of a heart that wasn’t sure it could cope with the pain of really engaging with the unseen things of our city. Somewhere along the way we realised that fighting poverty wasn’t enough. We relearned that people are more than the issues they face. We began to remind ourselves as often as we needed (which is often) that everyone in our city deserves to know they are seen and loved and celebrated. The difficulty is those things can’t be done from a distance, they require a proximity which is often beyond my comfort zones.

When St Paul was released to take the message of Jesus beyond the early Jewish believers, outside the religious and cultural boundaries of the early church, he was given freedom by the Apostles to contextualise the message. To strip away the stumbling blocks so that all people could step in to life with Jesus but they were very quick to add a caveat. The one thing these early church fathers wanted to insist upon, recounted by Paul in Galatians chapter 2, is that wherever he went he would make sure that those who were claiming the name of Jesus would remember the poor. Not that they would simply fight poverty, but more than that, above and beyond that, they would remember the poor. That it wouldn’t be about issues but that it would be personal. Name and face personal, conversation and embrace personal. It’s hard to remember those I’ve never met. It’s hard to call to mind the faces I’ve looked the other way to avoid.

Mother Teresa famously said “It is very fashionable to talk about the poor…unfortunately it is not as fashionable to talk to the poor.” Left unchecked, this is true of my heart. I believe this is the very thing the early church wanted to guard against. A faith expressed more in action than in connection, a love measured more by output than by proximity. They were clear, as was Jesus before them, that really loving our city means embracing those we see as other to us. Poverty isn’t always financial and the poor aren’t always in doorways but wherever I feel the tension in my heart, the temptation to withdraw from the other I’m trying to resolve to lean in. To pause and to connect.

I can’t change the vast majority of the circumstances I find people in, I can’t easily stop my heart from the internal somersaults but I can resolve to see people. I can seek out connection. I can lock eyes with those who share my city and stop and ask their name and offer mine and choose, in the meeting, to remember.

Marathon Training Update
Runs this week – 2
Miles covered – 7.52
Average speed – 8.33 min/mi