Beginnings

The hours I spent in that room.

It was at the top of the house, three stories up.
Smaller than the other bedroom on that floor,
which my sisters occupied like possessive lionesses.

Twin beds, an ottoman, a chest of drawers
and a wardrobe, only just concealing the alcove
which was all that remained of a fireplace.
Far and away, the best hiding place in the house.

The years I spent in that room.

I remember stories with dad,
and listening to him shushing my baby brother to sleep
in the next bed.
I remember delirious nights there – swimming in and out of a haze while mum kept vigil at the bedside.
I remember clambering onto a chair and opening the skylight.
Getting a birds eye view across the other rooftops,
all the way down to the local park.
Or sitting there on wet days
listening to the raindrops drumming angrily
off the window’s curved plastic.

I remember hours spent hunched over home computers,
or reading books;

discovering the kind of music I liked,
discovering writing.
Discovering girls.

And then, at the age of 18,
I remember discovering God.

I’d been in the church all my life.
Knew the books of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation
and most of the stories in between.
I’d been to Sunday School, Children’s Church and Bible Class,
I’d belted out the choruses, rhymed off the catechism, and sat through the sermons.
I’d spoken about God, sang about God and read about God.

The years I spent in that church.

And then, at the age of 18,
after all that hand-me-down belief
and reluctant dutiful attendance,
I discovered God for myself.

Not in a holy building,
or with my nose stuck in the Bible.
But outside under the stars.
with friends around a campfire.
A night of laughter, food and chat;
love even.
God was with them, somehow,
those young Christians.
And suddenly I knew that he wasn’t just with them
He was with us; with me – right at that moment.

The unseen guest who’d dogged my dreams
and haunted many a waking moment
with the ghost of his possibility,
was there among us.

And the shivers I felt
weren’t just from the chill September air.
It was the finally knowing that God is.
And the understanding that with that truth
I would have to change.

But you know what?
In those moments, that scarcely mattered.
What mattered more
was the realisation that my world had changed.
My world had always been too small;
but from that point on I had a bigger canvas to paint my life on.

And here I am, 22 years later.
Older.
Maybe a little wiser.
And a professed servant of the one
whose spirit moved among us
that autumn evening,
in the firelight at Glenariffe

22 years of chasing him, following him,
losing him, denying him.
22 years of all the wonderful, maddening foibles
of life in this thing called church.
And my heart is still not at rest,
Because the spirit won’t rest
until God has finished his work in me, and in you;
and brought us to the place
where that fleeting sense of his presence
stretches out to fill all the time we will ever know.

That encounter
set a fire in my heart
that still smoulders.
A desire to know this God;
and be known by him,
and make him known
in a world shorn of wonder.

The hours I spent in that room, from that day onwards;
poring over the Bible I liberated from my sister’s bookshelf.

I remember the smell of the pages,
and the old-fashioned look of the print.
I remember learning from the apostles,
the prophets, the psalmist. the evangelists.
Hearing their words, Gods words,
as though spoken directly to me
for the first time.

Come to me all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest.

Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart and you will find rest for your souls.

See, I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live, and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him.

Those words came to me like a long lost letter
from a Father I’d never known.
Or the wise counsel of a new friend
who spoke as if he’d known me for years.

Suddenly I had a direction to my life.

And suddenly I had a community to call my own.

Church became more than a duty –
it became the place where I could meet with other folk
who were making the same journey.
People who’d caught the strains of God’s song
and were trying their best to hum the melody.

I remember going to University with a newborn faith, weeks old,
and finding a whole group of people
who were singing this particular tune.
And I found a home among them.

I remember the different churches,
each demonstrating some new facet of this vast God
whose household I had stumbled into.

The church in Sutton,
a milder offshoot of the Brethren movement,
where the congregation brought prayers and readings and insights from their daily living
into the place of worship.
No clergy in sight.
Just the fellowship of believers
sharing their experience of walking with God.

I remember the Afro-Carribean church in Handsworth,
the exhuberant worship
and simple thanks
that flowed forth from the lives of those big hearted,
wide-girthed women in the choir.
All dressed in yellow one week.
All in blue or lilac the next.

I remember the struggling wee church in Saltley.
Trying so hard to work out how to be good Christians
in a neighbourhood where 70% of the residents
were of a different race and religion.

I remember the meals, the discussions, the debates;
learning how to pray; learning to respect the vast diversity
of Christian experience.

I remember those formative years with great fondness.
And though I paint them with a rosy glow,
I wouldn’t change a thing about them.

For they laid the foundations of what I’m giving my life to.
The pursuit of God.
And the honouring of him
in the midst of this rag-tag assembly of broken but becoming people
that we call the church of Jesus Christ.