Cloud and Fire

Well, I don’t believe anyone has asked me that before. I had stopped for lunch at the small Ulster town of Moneymore, and I was eating outside of the local Spar. I felt a little out of place and wondered if some hard man was going to come and have a laugh at my expense, or say something vulgar.

Firstly, my fears appeared to have come true when a young man with a hard face and a fast car pulled into the car park and jumped out to speak to me. I was pleasantly surprised when he asked me about my journey and he said he loved cycling and admired those who traveled over many days as I had done. After a brief chat he disappeared off in his car again.

Similarly, an old guy rocked up in his old red van and tells me he used to be a keen cyclist and so we chatted about traveling on the road and the off grid lifestyle. Brian (not his real name) doesn’t have a telly doesn’t care for bad news, and enjoys the simple life. When he finds out my last job was as a pastor, he has two things he challenges me on.

He sees people who are church going rogues (in other words hypocrites) and when the minister takes their funerals they are described as angels of light, in short the minister lies. I said I wouldn’t do that but Brian was a little skeptical.

Then he asked me, ‘do you believe you have been saved?’. ‘Yes’, I replied, ‘not because I am a really good man, all of us have done bad things, stuff we don’t tell anyone about, but God knows it all, and I believe he has forgiven me so yes I am saved’. As we spoke on about the hypocrisy that can exist in church, he asked me, ‘why don’t you just plant your own church?’ Brian seemed to indicate he’d come to my kind of church. He left me with this thought and a few others, but my thought for YOU is just this one, if someone asked you, ‘do you believe you are saved’, just what would you say?