This Is One For The Good Days

My experience of serving God over the years has taught me one significant lesson. That when significant things are witnessed or accomplished during that act of service, the euphoria, reinforced faith and sense of excitement at seeing God in action in people's lives is too often short lived.

This is mainly because reality often hits and I end up like a partially inflated balloon released in a room, spiralling and flying without clear direction before landing some distance from where I was a few seconds earlier.

But having returned from serving 200+ young people and their leaders alongside an amazingly talented and dedicated team of people this weekend, I want to make sure that I put down a marker so that the story of the weekend is not reduced to an insignificant time in my head, simply because of the looming shadow of real life creeping back in.

It was truly amazing to see salvation arriving into young lives, and great to have so many people come to a workshop I was involved with trying to get to grips with how we can be better ambassadors for our faith in the situations in which we live.

There's always hope. And God is at work. On the ground and in our communities, in real life situations, He is at work.

And that is worth remembering and looking out for. I don't just want to be someone who hears the stories of what God is doing, I want to be a part of it.

I hope I still feel this way tomorrow, and don't revert to feeling cynical and hopeless about the state of things.

My Nominee for Young Theologian Of The Year

Those of you who have read this blog for sometime will now that working with young people has been a feature of my life for a considerable chunk of my life.

It's a great privilege that I take very seriously, although my default role in any youth team appears to have something to do with being the group clown and setting up and taking part in various silly games.

One of the best things is when I come across a comment of such profound truth out of the mouth of a young person, that I'm reminded that children and young people often have a far clearer grasp on issues of faith and theology that I do. Jesus even said as much.

All of this has been by way of build up to my favourite piece of youth related theology that I've heard this year.

Rachel was recently teaching a lesson in a school in Bristol, and I went along on my day off to support by being assigned to work with the most unruly child in the class.

The previous lesson had seen Rachel exploring the teaching point that we are made in the image of God. When asking if they could remember what this teaching point was from the last lesson, a hand shot up and the following gem was spoken:

'God's got a picture of us in his imagination'.

I like that. I get excited at the prospect of being someone who is made in the image of God, and that God has a picture of me in his imagination. That He sees and imagines the crazy and amazing things that we could be and do.

It's great to work with young people. I often think that I am working with some of the most profound theologians and they don't even realise it.