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Good
news, bad news …
At
last it really seems like it is going to happen!! After a great deal of
time and effort, it finally seems like the planned trip to
Guyana
is really going to go ahead. As I write this, enquiries are being made
about the availability of tickets, and if all goes to plan four of us will
travel to
Guyana
for 10 days in early November.
I
have to admit that there is a slight sense of disappointment, because the
group is smaller than we originally intended to take. We hoped to take a
group of 7 or 10 people, and a group that size would have meant that the
sports coaching that has always been at the centre of the trip would have
been a lot easier then it will be with 4 of us, and we would have been
able to work with far more young people.
But
we have still achieved a massive amount – the kit that we sent over will
make a huge difference to some very under-privileged young people and will
be a huge encouragement to those already working with them. And the 4 of
us are committed to doing the best we can to coach the young people we
meet (and their coaches) in the hope that this will help them to stop
being dragged into a gang culture that is centred around crime and drugs.
That really excites and inspires me – it is no exaggeration to say that
this relatively small project of ours could make a massive difference to
the lives of some of the poorest people in the world.
But
at the same time I have to admit that I am worried – no, actually, that
is a lie, I am afraid, genuinely afraid of the flight to
Guyana
. I really, really hate flying – it absolutely terrifies me – and the
thought of 8 hours or more on a plane just makes me want to forget all the
time and effort and hard-work I have put into this project and not go at
all.
Isn’t
that stupid? It doesn’t make any sense to me whatsoever – I know that
my fear of flying is completely illogical. And my fear of flying doesn’t
sit easily with my faith, either. I am God’s and He is mine, so who (or
what) shall I fear? And my fear of flying doesn’t sit comfortably with
my belief that God answers prayer – on a number of occasions people have
prayed for me to be set free from this fear, but still I am afraid of
flying.
So
why am I telling you this? Simply because I think that God wants to remind
me – and maybe you as well – that there is always more for Him to do
in our lives. No matter how long we have been a Christian and no matter
how God has used us in the past there is always more for Him to do in our
lives, and there is always more for us to discover about God, and there is
always more for us to experience of God. Sometimes – particularly if we
have been a Christian for many years – it is easy to think that we have
nothing more to learn, and that God has done all that He wants to do in
us. But that is just another lie, another trick of the enemy. This side of
Heaven each one of us will always be a work-in-progress.
Jon.
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