Today is the day! We’ve been planning and praying and today is our first day trip of our Roamin’ Holiday. About 20 of us will descend on New River Beach and the home of our friend Cathy. We’ve been scrambling the last few days to arrange transport as more people call each day to sign up. The numbers are higher than I expected but it looks like a really nice group will venture out on our first trip.
We will walk on the beach, sit around and chat and maybe some of us will take a dip in the cool (an example of Canadian understatement) waters of Fundy. For others a heated pool awaits back at Cathy’s along with a barbecue. I expect the whole trip to be full of laughter and I am looking forward to some good and holy conversations.
I grew up with summer holidays on the shores of Lake Huron and at the time I didn’t know how blessed I was. I sometimes spent the entire summer sleeping outdoors and enjoying a relationship with creation. It is my hope to give some of these folks a taste of the banquet I grew up on.
This is our last summer at our community garden. The land will be used to build new affordable housing units, next year. It has been a tremendous learning experience for us over the past several years. My chiropractor may be sad to see this chapter end because the last few years my back has loudly complained about the garden work. It is perhaps time to move on to other things. Our unofficial motto at Threshold is “Be ready to: preach, pray, or die on a moment’s notice.” I think we might add “and change”. Ministry must always happen in the present. Many Churches lose their mission focus because they continue with “yesterday” ministry in today’s world. At Street Hope we are small and so we can ‘turn on a dime’. This is the real advantage of what I think of as ‘intimate group’ ministry. Being small we scramble for resources and sometimes for attention but our very smallness enables us to sense the ‘winds of God’ and make changes. I don’t know what might replace the garden, if anything, but I am confident that there is no lack of creative opportunity. The needs are great and the Gospel is so vital and we will never lack challenge on this earthly plain.
Over the years, first at Up Town and then in our Home Church, we have been praying with one of our group for her father. While our friend struggles with some very real issues of her own she has a simple and beautiful relationship with Jesus. For years her chief prayer concern has been for her dad. It was with great joy that we heard that he had recently been baptised! I know our friend is ‘over the moon’ about this, even as she struggles with her own serious difficulties. An answer like this encourages all of us to keep praying and not give up.
God is at work! He is at work in our community and in our lives.
P.S. I decided on the fiction.
Hope & Reedemption 