Tuesday 26 August 2014

Free-Runner-Love

Last week, I got a new family. It was only temporary – just for a week – but it was about thirty people big, so I suppose that makes up for it a bit. I was on a thing called a Falcon Camp, which is an amazing invention: basically, a bunch of Christians get together and give a week of their time (or give money or prayer) to run a holiday for kids who maybe wouldn’t get one otherwise – mainly because they’re from disadvantaged backgrounds.

I love Falcon Camp. I love Falcon Camp because while there are various trips and activities and things, fundamentally what you are doing all week is trying to love people. I suppose that’s something I like about following Jesus as well, but on Falcon it’s somehow more condensed, certainly more intense. On Falcon you don’t really expect the kids to return much of your kindness – although it’s beautiful when they do – and you know that you are there entirely for their sake and not your own.

This leads you to go to lengths of love that wouldn’t normally occur to you. For instance, Rachael spent half an hour every evening dressed up in an overcoat, a fake moustache, comedy glasses and a bald cap so cheap and rubbish that it was pretty much just a misshapen condom, playing silly games and talking in a West Country accent in the hope of providing some evening entertainment! My Dad ‘fell’ into the swimming pool fully clothed on the last night because he thought it might be funny. My mate Julie spent about two days patiently combing knits out of the girls’ hair. My mate Elly went through most of an evening sitting and listening and comforting each of the girls in her dorm as they cried for various different reasons. But to be fair, it’s not all about the impressive stuff. I was on the coach with the kids when they went home, and one girl was crying about how amazing camp was and how sad she was to leave, and she explained to me through her tears that my brother was so lovely and so kind, and how he had just sat with her in the lounge one time and he had just listened to her – he had just listened to her – and no one ever listened to her like that. And that made me want to cry too.

My other favourite thing about Falcon is that we get to tell these kids that God is crazy about them, and he’d do anything for them; and we get to back that up with everything we say and do, every minute of the day. I like that a lot. It’s show and tell really – and that’s the way it should be. My other favourite moment on the coach was when a girl showed me the ‘Father’s Love Letter’ that we’d offered them to take away – a little collection of bible verses about the way God feels about them (www.fathersloveletter.com) – and told me she’d already read it five times, and she loves it, because she doesn’t even have a father but now she does.

And finally I love Falcon because it changes me. In fact, it makes me more free. Not free in the Western, couch-potato sense, or even the trippy, hippy sort of sense, but in the sense of a free runner. Because this thought occurred to me last night: in what way are free runners ‘free’? In that they can overcome any obstacle. They have trained – they have sought out the toughest challenges and gone through the hard work and the pain of practice – and now they are strong, and they are fearless. They are free in the sense that they are unstoppable. The idea of free running is that you run straight in one direction regardless of what’s in the way, and nothing can hold you back.


I want to love like a free runner. I want to have the sort of love that Jesus had – the sort of love that will not stop, that will not be put off by its beloved being unpleasant or unlovable. A love that cannot be weakened, even by rejection, a love that bears all things, hopes all things, endures all things. The sort of love that lays down its own life day, after day, after day, after day. And I think that Falcon Camp, in all its beauty, works for me like training for this kind of love. It takes more effort than normal life but that is good for me because it builds my heart muscles. Hopefully, it makes me a little bit more like Jesus. Grows in me a little more of his kind of love. Strong, fearless and unstoppable. Free runner love.

Thursday 14 August 2014

Three Blind Mice in a Sticky Situation: An Unnecessarily Pretentious Fable

Once upon a time there were three blind mice in a somewhat sticky situation.

Some cruel joker had picked them all up, and put them down on top of this strange round island; they couldn’t tell the length of the drop, but it was certainly steep and they didn’t dare to take the risk. Far better to stay where they were. Except that there was no food on the island: they’d looked – well, walked and sniffed as best they could – but there was not so much as a crumb on the whole thing, just perfectly smooth, merciless ground in all directions, all the way to the fatal edge. The agonising thing though – the true torture of the situation – was the thick, intoxicating scent of cheese. The air was dense with it. Their little mousy eyes watered with the richness of it. They couldn’t tell where their sense of smell ended and the sensation of longing began. It was like their tiny, fragile bodies were on a rack – one end anchored mercilessly to their imprisonment, the other pulled out endlessly, stretching them towards their hungry desire.

So they decided that whatever it took, they would find some food. They would be satisfied somehow. They climbed onto each other’s backs so that they could reach up high; and staggering, moved their furry tower to and fro on the island, hoping to bump into something above them. They looked rather ridiculous, and found nothing. Martin, the youngest of the three, walked gingerly to the very edge of the island. He turned. He told the others that he was seriously thinking about taking his chances over the edge. Oswald began to cry. And Oswald crying made Bartholomew cry too. After a while, Martin couldn’t help but join in. And so they sat there, three blind mice, gently sobbing, each tear that ran down their furry faces making them feel a tiny bit more painfully the emptiness inside. They sat there for what felt like several days. And all the time an anger was bubbling up inside Bartholomew – a desperation. It had to be better than this. Things had to be better. It couldn’t be, it surely couldn’t be, that there was all this hunger, all this desire, and simply nothing to satisfy it. The joke would be too cruel. It couldn’t be. It couldn’t be. And into the days-old silence he let out a startling roar of rage, smashing his little paw with all his furied strength into the ground beneath him.


And it went right through.

Underneath the smooth surface, the ground was soft, almost gooey. And that savoury scent – redoubled in intensity – flooded once again into their noses. Bartholomew drew his closed paw out from the ground, and lifted it gingerly to his lips. His tiny tongue crept out and tasted. New mousy tears moistened his furry cheeks. Sure enough. The whole island, was a giant wheel of cheese.