Have you ever been the kind of person who writes letters, with a pen!? For the younger ones, this is how we used to send a message to someone!
Do you know, apart from those I wrote in jail, I’ve only ever sat down once to write a letter this way? That letter was to my Mam. It’s the only letter I’ve ever sent her. I’ve still got the letter, cos our kid found it in a biscuit tin, under my Mam’s bed, after she’d died. I wrote this, during a period on that path, towards the end, when I was a bit of a hostel resider. At this stage I was so poor, I’d turn my Tacchini tracky bottoms inside out to get another six months out of them!! If you’d been in my room in that hostel, you’d have seen me at a little table writing it:
Hi Mam,
Just thought I’d drop you a line to let you know how I’m doing.
This Sally Army Hostel is so much better that the one in Salford. The staff and residents are really friendly and dead down to earth. It costs me £21 a week and I get my breakfast, dinner, tea and supper, all in. And it’s the best food I’ve eaten.
Mam, I’m looking for a cheap portable black and white telly, so if you see one, for about a tenner, let me know.
I’m travelling around on my free bus pass. And I’ve asked our kid to post the cheap bootleg tobacco to me.
So don’t worry about me up here, cos I’m fine.
Love ya, Mam
Baz
PS: I bet you didn’t know I could write letters, did you?
As you can probably see, I was stuck on that broken path. Then, God reached down and took me off it! And so, my days on there were done!
Listen: that broken path can have an end point!
Paul, out of the Bible, was on that path more than once during his lifetime. He said of all the difficulties: ‘God rescued me from them all’. (2 Tim 3:11)
What about you? Are you on there? Because you’ve been damaged in some way? Maybe you’ve wound up on there recently. Or it could be that you’ve been stuck on there for some time. Listen: however long you’ve been on there, or even if you’ve been on there more than once, God can take you off that path. Same as he did with me! See, that broken path can have an end point!
Barry