So it's one of those mad days.
Tensions were running high.
Mindsets, damaged by the virulent chargedness of alcohol, heroin, and other dark elixers seemed to be in overdrive.
Two guys were arguing over some insignificant issue. They were about to wade into each other with a menace in their eyes and a venom in their veins until I managed to step in between them.
Another guy was struggling not to vomit after downing three litres of cider before 9am. Eventually a technicolour yawn did occur!
Then another lady who has just one tooth was crying loudly because she said she had to go to the dentist for a tooth out, you do the maths!
I don't know.
There is something in the air today.
Mind you it went quiet for half an hour while the City beat police came in for some soup.
As soon as they left?
Back to Ravingmad Salvation Army Corps.
Later on, in walks Ruth, a young girl heavily addicted to drugs. We hadn't seen her for a while as she's been in Jail. Her arm was badly injured from a fall. We cleaned her up and bandaged her wound. She started to cry, she was crying for her mum, who has long lost touch with her. She cried herself to sleep and spent the rest of the day sleeping on one of our couches.
Watching her sleep, she looks like an angel.
A question rises upon my mind.
Why do these people get drawn to the Salvation Army?
When we planted Sanctuary 21, we didn't have much of strategy. We cleaned the building up, opened the door one day and prayed like mad. We agreed with God we would deal with the whatsoever and the whosoever.
Not much of a plan eh?
But here's the thing.
I honestly believe that in our DNA, the lifeblood of the Salvation Army is that we are house of justice.
A star in the East.
A champion of the whosoever and the whatsoever.
A warm breast where the poor and the needy, the outcasts an the forgotten can lay their heads.
The Spirit of God then layed this word on my lips and my heart, and I felt an incredible urge to share this on my Blog.
The Spirit of God says, get ready for an influx of the broken. Ready yourselves to do whatever it takes to embrace the poor, the sick, the Fatherless and the homeless. This is the heart I gave you. Open your hearts, open your doors, break open your Citadels. Make them houses of justice. Make ready for the whatsoever, do not sing and shout about the whosoever and then pick and choose who fits in. My Salvation is for everyone says the Lord. The Spirit of God says I put out a call to the visionaries who have been re-routed, you are down but not out. Return to the ranks, return to where it began. The march is back on. Listen up! The last will be first. The tables are set. They are coming from literally anywhere and everywhere. Get ready, return to the track, draw a line on the past, freshen the now, grasp the future. I set the Salvation Army through the vision seekers of the past. The track is set. Go immediately to the track I set. You are one with the Church, you have to be one with each other in order to fight. The Spirit of God says you are my open heart, my tears, my comfort to the needy. Get ready. They are coming. Go and rescue them in the streets, the back alleys, the low places, the ruins of a world in turmoil. Stand up and fight not with strategies and programmes, and even that which is business, but with open lives, massive hearts, brave hearts. I will give you a heart of flesh. Hearts burning, bodies willing to die to save the lost. Get ready. A wave of favour is coming. The fight is on. You will be justice fighters. An Army of freedom.
Ruth has awoke and is crying for her mum again. I watch as Dawn and one of our volunteers cradle her.
It's the Salvation Army, fighting for the lives of the broken.
It's the only way.
