I found myself praying/shouting this week “if this is how it is God, then I’m done!” Not the most holy of divine conversations but the honest frustration of my heart as I wrestled through what seemed like another “1 step forward, 3 steps back” scenario. I was in the midst of new found, hard won freedom being lost as another friend spiralled back into the cycles of poverty that had held them captive for so long. I felt powerless to help and foolish for believing that people could really change, could really get free. I felt cheated and let down and guilty. I didn’t think my heart could handle the pain and disappointment; I’m still not sure it can. It was a dark night but as real as those feelings are they aren’t truths. I long ago realised that I’m firmly in the St. Peter camp of “where else would I go?” I am ruined. Nothing else, or no-one else, can make sense of the longings and the callings deep within me. Nothing else offers a hope to the hopelessness I encounter daily. There is no walking away or being done for me, Jesus is mine and I am his, so the question becomes how can my heart endure?

Over the last ten years too often we’ve know the pain of the guy who encounters Jesus, chooses to follow him, has a genuine change of heart and then comes back the next week drunk or high or worse doesn’t come back at all. Or the woman who finds the incredible courage to finally step out from under the weight of a broken and abusive relationship only to run right back in. The addict using again, the convict back inside, the homeless young person kicked out of another hostel and back on the streets. We’ve known the pain, we’ve lived through the cycles and more often than I would care to admit I’ve closed the door at the end of a session or a day or a week and thought does any of this make any difference? Of course when I am brave enough to wrestle through my doubts and frustrations with Jesus the resounding answer is yes, it just is rarely on my terms or in my timescales.

We live in a culture that demands instant answers, instant results, instant everything (except coffee) and the most vulnerable often find themselves in the midst of a sector plagued by targets and results driven funding and the problem is, people don’t fit in microwaves! Lives are very rarely, if ever, transformed in an instant. Life change must be measured in decades rather than weeks and that requires resilience. It requires a faithful presence and the ability to endure, to dance the back and forward, winning and losing shuffle a hundred times over and not lose hope. It requires us to hold on beyond what we think we can handle, to continue to reach for the things we might never see, knowing that those who come after us will walk in that legacy. I have had to learn to choose celebration every time someone decides to get clean, not just the 1^st time. I have had to learn the significance of the 3^rd or 4^th or 5^th decision to follow Jesus. I have had to learn the biblical truth that legacy takes a lifetime to form.

10 years in we are starting to scratch the surface of some of the things we set out to see and I am so grateful for those who have journeyed patiently alongside. For those who believed in a vision that takes longer than 5 mins to fulfil. For those who continue to measure their support not on success criteria’s but on faith and the long slow investment in changing lives. I will continue to reach for something that seems beyond our grasp, to hold out for the things that we haven’t yet seen but have been promised in the assured belief that the Kingdom lies somewhere in the gap, in the wrestling and waiting. In the frustration and the disappointment and the honest shouting. In the giving up and lying down and being picked up and put back together and told go again, one more time. And if we can endure, if we can be faithful to the things He has asked we can be assured we’re in good company with “all these people [who] were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the thing promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance.” (Heb 11:13)

And for what it’s worth, this week’s dance was not what it seemed. It was 1 back and 3 forward – I suspect my heart just needed a reminder of where my hope lies. Lives change slowly and legacy, a city that is freer because we were planted in it, takes a lifetime to form.

Marathon Training Update
Runs this week – 1
Miles covered – 3.88
Average speed – 10.15 min/mi