The boats were breathtaking.
Well when I say boats, I mean small ships really.
Really expensive small ships.
White, with their backs open displaying lavish decks with flat screen TVs, Abundantly ladened oak dining tables, with people dressed in the finest clothes smothered in the finest array of gold, silver and diamonds I've ever seen.
Then.
There was the Sports cars and prestige cars parked along the curbs of the tight streets. Cars that cost hundreds of thousands of pounds.
Then.
There were the onlookers.
Packed in their thousands.
Gawping in at the wealth of it all.
People who do not have the financial clout available to keep up with this level of extravagance. Staring at the rich and possibly famous eating their amazingly exotic food and sipping their very expensive wines on their ludicrously expensive gleaming white boats.
Dawn and I had been brought to this lavish Spanish town near Marbella for a meal.
I should have been happy.
But I felt a heaviness in my heart that kind of broke it.
I have no gripe with people who aspire to be rich. I would not want to judge them at all. Definitely not.
In fact my heart went out to those who are saturated by the wannabe spirit. And to those who have everything materially possible. I sensed a different kind of sadness there, but that's maybe another discussion for another day.
But.
As I wandered through these streets that seem to be awash with gold?
I kept thinking of the nights and days I've spent with those who have nothing. I just couldn't help it. Those who are desperate just to get a food parcel off the Salvation Army. Those who I've literally had to give shoes to so they won't suffer. Those who are trapped in the most hostile of worlds, the world of drugs, sex and crime who cannot get out of it easily. I think of the night I sat with a homeless guy and he was crying because the cold had gone right through his skin and penetrated his bones. I see the garage where a group of homeless were sleeping, a lock up with no running water or services, where they had to light a fire to get warm, with a sharp smell of urine and vomit lingering in the air. I thought of a prostitute I'd met and the pathetic sadness that engulfed her whole being, the shame, the guilt, the repulsion of herself. I pictured the time when Dawn sat with a young drug addict who was crying for her mother who had long abandoned her. I saw the dead eyes of a guy who had died, homeless, lonely and freezing. They seemed to stare pleadingly at me as I walked among the white boats in the blistering night heat.
But in them moments I at least knew where my heart lay.
I pictured in my hearts eye a massive lavish banquet. With Jesus sitting at the table. All those needy people I've ministered too so far were there, happy, wanting for nothing, receiving, sharing, eyes wide with the wonder of it all.
And in that moment I knew.
I have to be round that table too.
Forever.
I desperately want the privilege of sitting around that table.
Whatever happens to Dawn and I in the future regarding our ministry, the one thing we both know with an assurance that can't be broken, is that we want to be where the most need is.
To see those desperate dead eyes awake with life, to see the shame and guilt leave those girls, to see the cold man warmed with the love of a Saviour. To see the hungry have enough food to eat. To witness the releasing of those on captivity to a very different world. Freed in their spirit. Released from their chains, the chains of injustice and indifference.
Free at last.
It's where I belong.
