40 Days To Change Our World

Our church, Hitchin Christian Centre is about to do "40 Days of Community" (perhaps we can only guarantee to offer 40 days...?!) and it leads me to share one of those great stories of prayers answered even before they're spoken...

Michelle & I have recently taken over running our home group - a group of "randoms" who I count among my best friends in this fair town of Hitchin! We were knocking the question of what is our group for around the room one week and trying to work out if it is just for our own benefit or if it is more than this - about making a difference in our lives where we are. Michelle suggested we could organise a BBQ for our street and I nodded affirmingly...

Scroll on to the following weekend and Michelle, out of nowhere, starts asking specific questions about running a BBQ in your street and gets me thinking "She really means this - this isn't a theoretical conversation - she ACTUALLY wants to hold a BBQ in our street!" It's fair to say that, despite the obvious warning, I wasn't expecting this...

The very next day I'm about the office as usual and the phone rings. It's my great friend, John, who I haven't spoken to in a while. The conversation goes something like this:

"Er, Paul, do you have any use for a big BBQ? Y'know, the kind you might use to run something in your street?!"
"Err, umm, corr, eh?" I splutter, somewhat nonsensically
"It's just that I'm clearing out at the moment and I don't think we need it. And I know that you do stuff like this with your home group and I wanted to give you first refusal..."
"Have you been talking to my wife?!" I accuse
"No. Why?"

So it looks like I can't get out of it now. Can't really argue with that, can you?! God has decreed that we will run a BBQ in our street! And what's worse is I keep telling people this story so I REALLY can't get out it... ;-)