Apple Cricket and Luna Lovegood

I’ve spent the last few days with my girlfriend, Rachael, stationary shopping, and pottery painting, and blackberry picking, and praying, and baking things that were supposed to be jam tarts but were actually a kind of cakey-biscuity-jam-fusion, because I (ignoring Rachael’s gently expressed doubts) used self-raising flour. And before that I went camping with a few mates in the back garden of someone from my mate Harvey’s church – and we walked places, and drank tea, and overcooked bacon, and miserably, hilariously failed to cook sausages on a campfire (“Urm, Naffy, the grill you’ve fashioned out of sticks has now, actually, caught fire…”), and rode on the outside of Harvey’s car, and talked about God and our lives and what we were scared of and prayed for each other, and played cricket with windfall apples and large pieces of plastic tubing (I highly recommend this game, the apples explode in a thoroughly satisfying manner).

And I had an immense amount of fun. But thinking about it, almost none of those activities would have been particularly enjoyable alone. Definitely not the pottery painting. That would just have been weird.

Things are just better done with other people. I saw two kids cycling around their estate aimlessly the other day. And I remember doing that with my mate Ralph – it is, bizarrely, quite fun. Together. It’s why we go on holiday together, work together, play sport together, it’s why I wanted to play the guitar instead of the violin so I could be in a BAND, it’s why Jesus invited a bunch of random people to live and work with him for three years even though they were all, by their own accounts, pretty much useless from start to finish. All the good stories are about people going on quests together. Imagine Harry Potter without Ron and Hermione (or, more importantly, Neville and Luna Lovegood). How rubbish would Lion King be if it was just Simba, and not Timon, and Pumba, and RAFIKI? How much more awesome is the end of Lord of the Rings because Sam is next to Frodo, going “I can’t carry it for you, Mr Frodo, but I can carry you!”?

Anyway, I’m going on this rant because I was praying today for some people I love, who are going back to uni about now. And I was thinking about what I really want to happen in their lives. And for almost every single one of them, it’s the same thing. I know it sounds like a stupid thing for me to want, but hear me out. I want them to be part of a church. Because probably my favourite thing about my life, especially while I was away this year, is that for a lot of my mates, I get to actually be church. I get to be the place where they come to ask questions, to wrestle with stuff, I get to go on adventures with them and climb mountains with them and listen to them, and stare at sunsets and talk about the meaning of our lives with them. I get to be the place where they hear the truth that they are loved like they’d never believe and there’s nothing they can ever do to change that. I get to be the one that gives them a massive hug to prove it. I get to laugh and cry and pray and sing and do stupid dances with them. (Which reminds me, I really need to show you all my new move, ‘The Typewriter’. Curious? You should be.)

But moving on, (although honestly, it’s a beautiful move), what’s really gutting is that for pretty much every one of these awesome friends that I’ve had, there comes a point where it ends. Where one of us goes somewhere. And that’s when I find myself praying. Praying that they will go wherever they’re going and find a bunch of people who love them and want to do all of that stuff with them like I did – ideally better. And usually better, because one of me was never really enough in the first place. Praying that they will find church. 

I keep saying ‘they’ but to be honest I’m hoping that some of the people I’m praying for are reading this blog, that’s the only reason I’m writing it, so I’m going to start just saying ‘you’, just in case.

I am praying for you, that you will find a bunch of people who love you and love Jesus. A bunch of people who will ask questions with you, and wrestle with you (perhaps literally) and play apple-cricket with you, and stare at sunsets and talk about the meaning of our lives with you. A bunch of people who you can do good things in the world with. Who you can laugh with and cry with and climb mountains with. Who can remind you, with a hug, that you are loved like you’d never believe and there’s nothing you can ever do to change that.

So, yeah. This is me pretty much getting down on my knees and begging you to go and look for these people – they are looking for you I promise. And I know there are some dodgy people out there, and some dodgy churches, but there are some awesome ones too. And if you do watch the video – it’s beautiful, and there are thousands of churches all over the world trying to be like that. And if you’re not sure where to look I will honestly ask people and google it and do my best to help if you want me to. Because you have no idea how happy I was on the day I drove past my mate Tom on a big country road near Alcester, and when I facebooked him that night to ask where he was going, he told me that he was walking to his church, and they were awesome.