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2007

9th July
Smells

2nd July
Smile

26th June
Waterlogged

11th June
Plans

6th June
Letters

21st May
Friends

May 9th
Stereotypes

May 1st
Broken

April 16th
Climbing hills

April 9th
The Three Trees

April 2nd
Small but deadly

March 28th
Toby the SuperDog

March 19th
Mountains

March 4th
Lone Daffodil

February 26th
Working hours

February 19th
Memory

February 12th
Piercings

February 5th
Patience

January 29th
Surprise

January 22nd
Wind

January 15th
Honesty

January 8th
My Car

January 3rd
Happy New Year

Happy New Year

Happy new year! I’m generally not a fan of the new year – not in any morbid way, just it feels like a bit of an anticlimax. There are New Year parties and special events, everything costs more in pubs and clubs, and everyone going out has the sole purpose of getting very drunk and seeing the new year in with a snog! The alternative being to remain at home and stay up to watch the count-down (to midnight, not the channel 4 quiz show!), after which you just go to bed. It’s like every year there’s an expectation that something will happen, something will change miraculously, but it never does – so I always feel a bit let down and like I missed something as I crawl into bed on new year’s eve / day.  

So this year a group of us decided that it would be fun to actually go into central London to watch the fireworks and see the New Year in with 350 thousand other people. We braved the cold and stood on Westminster Bridge with a magnificent view of the awesome fireworks on the river and coming out of the London Eye. The streets were filled with cheering and celebrating and 2007 certainly came in with a bang for us! Then came the tricky bit…it seemed that these 350 thousand people were wanting to get home at the same time and from the same tube station!  

I’ve been in big crowds before but I now know how herded cattle must feel! It was scary, it was kinda fun (in a terrifying way!) and it was very, very squishy. As we moved towards the tube station, which the police had shut without telling anyone, my friends and I were all split up and carried off by the crowd. Some people tried to go against the flow, but it didn’t last long as they realised there was no where else to go. People pushed. People shoved. People trampled. We were incredibly lucky that no-one fell down as I have no doubt that they would have been walked over. At several points I could have lifted my legs and still been carried along without dropping to the floor. It was quite funny until I lost my arm as it was being pulled off  in the opposite direction to the rest of my body (not actually – I still have all my limbs attached, but it was touch and go for a time!). Then as I thought we were coming out of it and some of us had managed to re-group, I found myself being turned around. I mean I was walking forward but the movement of those pushing and shoving around me, propelled my body round so I ended up walking sideways like a crab and then backwards! I am happy to say that we all came out of it alive and in one piece (not in some morphed together way…but in our own singular piece!). 

As we were being forced on that particular pathway, there was a high police presence, but they seemed ineffective. The stood by quietly as we were herded past. One officer stood on the top of a van pointing the way, but didn’t tell us why we couldn’t get into the station or where the alternative route home would be. No-one was telling us anything – we were being treated like animals.  

The life of a Christian is often described as a journey along life’s path. We are said to skip along to our hearts content with pretty flowers and rolling hills either side of us. Sometimes we encounter mountains and so have to walk uphill for a bit, but I’ve never heard of this road going through a capital city on New Year’s Eve. Yet is it not more real for life to be likened with that scenario? There are pressures pushing us in one direction. There are responsibilities pulling at us in another direction. There are the things we want to do, the things we know we should be doing, and the things that everyone around us is doing – all of them clamouring for our attention and for us to follow. It can be overwhelming and confusing and it can feel like we don’t actually have any choice in where we end up. And then there’s Jesus… He holds the key to the right path, He knows the directions including station closures and alternative routes, and possibly more importantly He knows how it feels to be in amongst the crowd. But is He like the ineffective crowd controlling, policeman, standing on the sidelines vaguely pointing the way with little interest? I’d like to think that in fact He’s there with me (and everyone else – how cool is that?!) as my arm is being dragged away and He’s there holding me afloat so that when my legs go out from under me I don’t get trampled. I’d also like to think that in this epic journey He’s showing us the way home by walking with us, sharing in how it feels to be pushed and pulled, to be tempted and challenged, to know loss and pain. I think that He might also do the odd bit of crowd surfing as well – there have to be some perks to being the Saviour of the world!