Generosity

Walking along towards "Life" on Saturday night about 2.00 a.m. we were stopped by a couple and asked the inevitable "What's a Street Pastor?" - so I got into conversation with L. She described herself as a 'wild child' and whispered to me what she does for a living - she's a stripper; and she talked so lovingly about her godly grandmother who "goes to church all the time" and has obviously had a huge impact on her life, she clearly just loves and accepts her granddaughter as she is and the impact of that love was obvious. L clearly admires and loves her very much. We got into a conversation about the feeding of the five thousand (L raised the issue) and she explained to me that how she saw it was that Jesus had something when other people had nothing and that he shared what he had with the people who had nothing. The whole story was about generosity - living life and never seeing someone else in need when you can help them with what you have. As she talked I became aware of God saying to me - "she's amazing isn't she, look at her heart, she's so lovely - I really wanted you to meet her because I knew you'd love her". I know that sounds a bit crazy, even maybe to some, pretentious, but in that encounter, I kind of got why Jesus hung out with "tax collectors and sinners" and how he feels about us. God doesn't just put up with us, tolerate us, accept us - he really does adore us, everyone - even, in fact especially, the people that the church might not normally "approve" of. We see Christ in the 'least of these'.

As if to underline the theme as we walked back about 2.45 we bumped into some young guys who had bought a whole big pizza and found that they weren't really that hungry, so they asked the SPs if we'd like a piece. So we munched pizza and blethered to them for a bit. Then the owner of the pizza place, who I guess is Muslim, came out with a box of pizza and handed it to us and said - "you help when you speak to people outside our shop so we wanted you to have this". So we took the pizza back to the other SP team back at base.

So I guess, whether you're a godly grandmother, a wild child, a street pastor, you never know the impact you'll make on someone else's life by being generous whether it's with your time, your attention, your love or your pizza!