Today at church. We thought of God, the Ultimate Social Activist.

He upholds the cause of the oppressed
and gives food to the hungry.
The Lord sets prisoners free,
the Lord gives sight to the blind,
the Lord lifts up those who are bowed down,
the Lord loves the righteous.
The Lord watches over the alien
and sustains the fatherless and the widow,
but he frustrates the ways of the wicked.

(Psalm 146:7-9)

To be godly, is to walk in his ways. To share his concern and compassion for those on the edges of our society.

We read Liverpudlian poet, Stewart Henderson's powerful piece below. It makes me cry. It makes me earnest to give my life to serve with the church those around us who are the vulnerable and broken.
Tonight at church #2, I brought along "B" a destitute asylum seeker who has nothing. He sleeps on a shop floor. The little he did have was taken from him by thugs working for a government supported housing provider.

How I long for such people to experience church as a foretaste of the land flowing with milk and honey. A place of refuge and welcome for the exiled and excluded. 'Though glory may not seem apparent, a place where Jesus lives and breathes'. Now that's church.


Is this the land of milk and honey,
the one for which this city gave
conscripted youth to war’s dark waters,
woodbine battalions of the brave?

This city of abandoned vehicles,
bankrupt stock and playtime crack,
a promised land of little promise,
a gaunt consumer cul-de-sac.

When we were young Orwell, Priestley,
chastened us with postcards home,
writing of a TB kingdom,
a cloth-capped land of monochrome.

And as for their HP descendants,
cocooned in space with satellite,
not knowing of the word ‘redemption’,
owned by the loan shark’s knock at night.

Is this the land of milk and honey
where birdsong seldom cleans the air
and all around is glass confetti
and only strangers pause to stare?

Absorbed into the local spirits:
demons of despondency;
souls and bodies soaked in debt,
crying out for jubilee.

Yet heaven lingers in these side streets
amidst the metal shutter shops
where lethal games played with syringes
have long replaced kids’ spinning tops.

And heaven lodges in these side streets,
feeling each tormenting pain,
counting out each tranquilliser,
visiting the barely sane.

This is a land of milk and honey
and perpetual alarms,
full of light and sawn-off menace,
a daily paradox of psalms.

This is a land of milk and honey,
bereft of bud and bursting leaves;
though glory may not seem apparent,
a place where Jesus lives and breathes