What to do?

Those frequently occuring words of Faton Berisha, seem to grow louder as we encounter more of life here and the struggles of reaching out to help.

Here's just a few examples:
- What to do, when you take your rubbish to the skip and a little girl takes the bag from your hand as soon as you get out of the car cos she wants to search it for anything useful.
- What to do, when you're staying on Gypsy Street and the kids are sitting on the wall trying to talk to the crazy English people.
- What to do, when you talk about road names being a curse. Yes burgler road has a problem with theft, who'd have thought.
- What to do, when you try to support the needs of a church reaching out, try to build on what they have, try to enable them to do more and try to get them to own things so that when we're gone it won't flop.
- What to do, when an English team of 25 people come to get involved, yet you know the interaction can't possibly be on a level as deep as when there is only 1, 2 or 3 people.
- What to do, when you see a pastor walking the tight rope between encouraging people to get involved yet preventing them from doing so in order to keep the church true to christ and in line with the bible.

What to do?

We just spent the night down on Gypsy Street in the church's building there, praying, reading and some of us sleeping, It was a great experience; roughing it, setting up the camping stove for a cup of coffee, being mocked for having a petrol stove, a petrol lantern and generally being prepared and mulling over and re organising thought's that have been circulating for a few days.

Last night I re-visited a book I read last yr, It was written by Pete Greig and it's called God on Mute. In it Pete talks about prayer in terms of Easter, using Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday to grapple with the questions of unanswered prayer.
He says. 'Holy Saturday is the no-man's land between questions and answers, prayers uttered and miracles yet to come. It's where we wait - with a peculiar mixture of faith and despair - whenever God is silent or life doesn't make sense.'
I think I spend most of my life around Good Friday and Holy Saturday, screaming questions at God, needing answers and God saying nothing. Yet although God is silent and our questions are unanswered there is still a deep sense that God is there. Occasionaly God seems to speak and something shifts. More often tho, it seems we muddle through desperately hoping that God would have said something if we'd gone too far wrong.

Tell me I'm a heretic and that God speaks to you all the time and Guides you in your choice of Sock. I'll answer with this thought. I'm 22, if my parents told me what socks to wear there would be something very wrong, as I grew up and became an adult I made more choices for myself, yes I still refer to my parents for advice but I don't need them to guide every step of the way. I think God's parenting technique is similar, If we have been following christ for many years and still require our nappies changing something is very wrong.