Jack and the Beans Talk

Once upon a time there was a poor widow who had an only son named Jack. Jack was a hair stylist and worked at Goldilocks, in Stiltskin’s Retail Park. All they had to live on was Jack’s earnings which didn’t amount to much, and he had quite a bit of credit card debt. Still living with his mother in his twenty-second year wasn’t ideal either, but needs must.

Every Sunday, Jack took his mother to the church on the hill in his Vauxhall Corsa. Each week he winced as she put their contribution on the plate during the service, for they had so little to spare, but he was too afraid to tell his mother. Jack had been reckless with money when he was a boy (something to do with selling a cow) and it had taken years to regain his mother’s trust. His mother was serious about contributing generously to church funds because she was a big believer in sacrificing things dear to her as an act of faith, reminding her that God is sovereign and everything is really His. Jack struggled with this, being rather too fond of money to happily give it up.

Today Jack didn’t feel like after-service coffee so he left his Mother to chat with Mrs Hubbard and he took a wander around the cemetery behind the church. He wanted some space. He hadn’t gone far when he met a funny-looking old man, who said to him: “Good morning, Jack.”

“Good morning to you,” said Jack, and wondered how he knew his name.

“Well, Jack, and where are you off to?” said the man.

“Nowhere really, just wandering.” Jack sat on a bench under a giant tree and absentmindedly checked his phone to see if he had any new followers on Twitter. He hadn’t.

The funny-looking old man, who had a crooked nose and crooked legs and crooked stick, walked straight up to him and sat beside him on the bench, sucking in the cool morning air. A moment or two passed in semi-awkward silence. The old man broke it by slapping his thigh and exclaiming,

“Oh, you look the proper sort of chap who’s concerned about this and that,” Jack looked up from his phone. “Tell me about your giving.”

“Excuse me?” said Jack, taken aback. What a personal question, he thought. Who does he think he is? I always attract weirdos. I must have a sign on my forehead that says “Talk to me if you’re…”

The man interrupted his train of thought.

“Your giving. What do you give? How do you feel about it?” said the man, and as he did he offered a brown paper bag to Jack. It was full of assorted beans coated in chocolate, salted caramel and icing sugar. They looked delicious and expensive. “Here you are, Jack, help yourself,” and he presented Jack the paper bag.

Jack paused, irritated and a bit unsure of accepting sweets from strangers, which he was fairly sure he’d been told not to do, but he could see they were from Thornton’s and the packet was newly opened, so he picked a few out and popped them into his mouth. He crunched on his beans and his irritableness seemed to disappear like the fog that had been lingering in the cemetery and was vanishing in the weak sun. With his mouth full, he asked the old man, “So, what do you want to know?”

“I want to know why you find giving hard,” said the man.

“We’ve hardly got anything to give,” he mumbled, still chewing on the beans.

“Yes, thought so,” said the old man looping strands of his wispy beard around his forefinger and staring in the distance. Jack took another handful of beans. He couldn’t help himself. This one was gingerbread flavoured.

“When we give our money to the church, I’m worried we won’t have enough for ourselves.”

“Giving is always an act of faith Jack. But more so when you have little to start with. You show great faith by what you give. But what if I told you about a very special gift? How would you like to give something away and still have just as much of it?”

This man’s insane, thought Jack. But he was curious and he wanted another gingerbread bean. He reached into the paper bag and took another handful.

“Whaddya mean?” spluttered Jack, showering his lap with gingerbread bean crumbs.

The old man emptied what was left of the bag of beans onto the bench and counted them. Twelve beans. Jacks eyes widened. He’d eaten at least a dozen beans, possibly twice as many. But the small bag, which, Jack was very familiar with by now, couldn’t have held that many. Yet here they were on the bench. How could this be? Was it a trick? He’d eaten so many beans.

As Jack’s stared in disbelief, the old man scooped up all the beans, popped them back into the paper bag and slid them into an inside pocket of his tatty jacket.

“Never mind all this beans-talk Jack, let’s talk about the greatest gift you can give.”

Jack didn’t feel like he had any great gifts at all, apart from styling hair. The old man went on, “You have a great gift dear Jack, but you keep it all to yourself. You fret and you worry about giving, and yet all the while you are hoarding great treasure.”

Jack was irritated by this strange man and his beans and his talk of great treasure that Jack was absolutely sure he did not possess.

“So what’s this great treasure I have then? How can I give it away and still have it? What are you on about?”

“You can give it away and not just have it, but have more of it. It grows!”

This is exactly what happens, thought Jack, when you talk to strangers in cemeteries. He’d had quite enough and unless this man was going to open that bag of beans again, he was off. He got to his feet and was about to go but the man leapt up and implored him,

“You have a gift Jack! You have faith,” he pointed his stick back towards the church. “You have the greatest story ever told. You’ve heard it since you were a boy and yet you never share it with anyone. It’s treasure Jack. You talk and talk all day at work but you never share the story of your faith. This is the gift you have Jack and when you share it, you don’t lose a bit of it. You give it away and you still have all of it left. It’s the most special treasure of all. In fact you don’t only get to keep what you started with Jack, but your treasure grows. Your faith gets stronger.”

Jack was stunned. He didn’t know what to say.

“You’re not poor Jack. You’re rich. And you can give it all away without worrying about bills. Give away the story. Tell all your friends. Tell your clients. Tell your neighbour’s dog.” Jack still wondered how this man knew so much about him. “And the Good News is that it’s for ever and it’s for everyone.”

BEFORE YOU GO! You are very welcome (and indeed encouraged!) to use these blogs in parish magazines or as content for Home Groups etc. 
Please cite the website so others can find their way here. 

Cold, wet and penniless in Leeds

This is a true story about two people who were sent to a city for 24 hours by their lecturer, with only an envelope containing two return train tickets. They weren’t told where they were going, were given no provisions and had nowhere to stay. They had to rely on their faith in God and the generosity of strangers.

One of those people was me. It was part of a module I was studying called Mission and Evangelism, and the other lucky volunteer was my course mate Simon Grundy, who is training to be a priest. We are both studying Theology, Ministry and Mission at Cranmer Hall, Durham University. It was said that we were prayerfully chosen, but we think we were picked for being two of the few ‘locals’ at Cranmer, both being born and bred in the north East, and therefore would be well suited to the harsh weather conditions we faced. Simon considered wearing just a t-shirt as it was only November, but in the end we both went for jackets.

We opened the envelope and saw we were headed for Leeds and wondered what was in store for us. We had been given one bit of advice, “Find out what God’s doing and join in”. That was our mission. We were essentially to share something of God’s love and Jesus’ mission with the people we met in Leeds. We tried to steer clear of planning too much ourselves in case our own desires crowded out the inspiration and guidance of the Holy Spirit. So with excitement, curiosity and a fair amount of bewilderment, we stepped off the train at Leeds at 7pm into an almighty downpour, and looked at each other and thought, ‘Well this is it.’

The full story of what happened in those 24 hours, including being turned away three times from a homeless shelter, the many attempts to find suitable benches, and a very disturbing encounter with an aggressive man on drugs in McDonald’s can soon be found via this link to my personal blog site: https://frontlinefaithfulblog.wordpress.com/. What follows here is just one story of what happened on the mission.

The most profound and surprising thing we experienced on our mission in Leeds was the generosity of strangers. We had no food with us* and had both eaten our last meal at lunchtime. It was now the evening and we had no guarantee that we’d eat again until the following night. If we were going to eat or drink at all in between, we’d have to trust God and the generosity of strangers.

One of the first places we felt called, was to a bar in the centre of Leeds. Partly because it was raining torrentially, and partly because it was opposite the Catholic cathedral where we had just said a few shivery prayers and so was in our line of sight. Inside, whilst Simon ordered us two glasses of water, I spotted a middle-aged lady sitting on her own at a table of four. Rather than asking if I could take the chairs if they were free, I asked if I could sit at her table. A bold move as Brits like their personal space, but if we were going to get anywhere in the coming 24 hours we were going to have to step out of our comfort zones. She obliged and told me she was waiting for her husband. We got into a conversation and soon enough she asked what I was doing in Leeds. I told her that my story would sound strange, but would tell her if she wished. As I was telling her about our Christian mission and our situation, Simon and the lady’s husband returned. We got on to talking about religion, how we each came to faith, and the things we had given up to follow that faith (Simon’s well paid career in the private sector, my career in the Army) and how we came to be studying Theology together (Simon is training to be a Priest, and I’m trying to figure out if that might be what God is calling me to do too).

The couple were very friendly and engaging. They briefly explained why they no longer go to church; they had met a number of ‘so-called Christians’ who turned out to be hypocrites. They had lost their faith in the religion and didn’t have a relationship with God. They seemed very interested in our mission and asked us lot of questions, particularly about how we’d survive for 24 hours with nothing. When we explained that we were relying on our faith in God and in people, they immediately invited us to have dinner with them, there in the bistro/bar. They told us to order anything on the menu, and soon we were all eating enormous gourmet burgers and chips and sharing our life stories.

When it came to paying, we thanked them again and again for their generosity, feeling a mixture of deep gratitude and something else. What was it? For me it was the faintest whiff of embarrassment and awkwardness at our situation. This couple were spending a substantial sum of money on two people they had never met before. I had to keep reminding myself that it was a blessing for them to give, and that they did so freely and spontaneously. And yet, not being used to hand-outs, and being heavily influenced by my own Money Story, I found being in a position where I couldn’t offer to give them anything in return, really quite hard. But then Simon reminded me that there was something we could give. He leaned forward and, despite knowing their history with the church and their feelings about it, he quietly asked if there was anything we could pray for.

Nobody spoke. They just looked at each other for a long time and then the wife began to cry.

Her husband put his arm around her shoulder and they told us, through their tears, that yes there were some situations they would like us to pray for. It felt right for me to put my hand over hers and so I did whilst she shared with us a particularly sad situation in their lives concerning ill parents, and a recent death. The four of us sat there at that table, bonded together in our shared experience, knowing none of us would ever forget this night; the night we experienced the spontaneous and liberal generosity of strangers at the very beginning of our mission, and for them the night they met two Christians and felt moved to buy them dinner, and request prayer.

We didn’t share contact details. We didn’t need to. When we got outside into the cold and wet night, they walked with us for a while. I naturally fell into step with the wife, and Simon walked with the husband. They pointed us in the direction of the homeless shelter and we parted ways after a tearful but hope-filled embrace. Simon and I prayed for them when they left. We simply prayed that when they got home, when they went to bed and talked about their evening, that they would be moved by curiosity to start asking God if He was listening. We prayed that they would begin to pray.

*We were given £50 ‘danger money’ that we could use in the most extreme of 
circumstances. Such circumstances were not explained so we decided from
the start to act as though we didn’t have it at all.

BEFORE YOU GO! You are very welcome (and indeed encouraged!) to use these blogs in parish magazines or as content for Home Groups etc. 
Please cite the website so others can find their way here.