Today poverty will be on the agenda of many.

The chidren have gone to school today with funny noses, gelled hair and wearing various shades of red. So has Sarah as she is teaching today. I am the odd one out – not much point if you are sitting in the study alone all day! I guess I could go to the mirror and laugh at myself; but I do that regularly anyway.

I love and hate Comic Relief. Love it because it raises loads of money to make a difference. Hate it because it always makes me wish I could, and believe I should, be doing so much more, and quite often reduces me to tears. Both Joe and myself seem to have this ‘thing’ that if we see people crying on telly then we start to cry too.

I have found myself struggling a little recently with who and what I am ultimately called to. Maybe this started with Nouwens take on The Prodigal. I am a YFC worker and I do passionatly want to see young people become Christians. I have wanted to see them come in their hundreds for years, and still do, and the passion for this still drives me.

But I am noticing another passion that has always been there but maybe oppressed by my evangelical upbringing. I am noticing a new passion for the lost, a new passion for the poor and a new pasion to see poverty eradicated. I have a desire to make a concrete and practical difference in the lives of others.

This is hard to explain, it has always been there but it has always been accompanied in my mind with the beoming a Christian ‘thing’. The difference is that now I want to show God’s love without expecting any response back.

I wonder if that is very poor and un-evangelical of me? Wanting to help others and seeing their commitment to God as secondary to the relief of their situation. I do ind myself wondering, though, if this is not how Jesus acted?