Harley Davidson's Mains ...

Saturday 19th August 2006. Remember the date. A day we got some snapshots of the future.

Most snapshots recall the past. These revealed the future. Vivid, exciting, almost bizarre; some people even said ‘surreal’.

But the future. The shape of things to come. The colours and sounds of the way it’s going to be.

Some folk blinked and had to take a second look. Some folk had to pinch themselves. Some folk thought they must be dreaming.

And some folk maybe hoped that they were dreaming too! Because, please, I mean this was hardly what we’re used to here, not the way it’s always been.

I tell you, this was all a little bit confusing and a whole lot more disturbing for those tidy, blinkered minds that like the status quo.

Snapshots of the future. God’s future: the way it’s meant to be: the way it’s going to be. ‘You want to know just where I mean to take you as my church?’ the Lord enquires: ‘well, take a look at this!’

It was a ceilidh (I’ve got to ease you into this gently! And I know the very notion that the church might be a ceilidh is itself perhaps a stumbling block to some. But if it is – well, maybe you should simply shut your eyes and click the X and not read any more. It gets worse! Or better, depending who you are!)

It was a ceilidh we ran for the girls and the boys of the African Children’s Choir. Not just a stunning splash of colour, but a sometimes quite chaotic clash of cultures too: kilted Celts and eager, young, kaleidoscopic kids from far off lands, combining like the waters where two currents cross – a dancing mass of movement that was often one big mess!

Our jigs and reels may well be second nature at a gathering of the clans. But they haven’t much in common with your average tribal dance (except, of course, the rhythms of the music and the rolling, mirrored movements which ensue).

If you move your ceilidhs out beyond the confines of the clans .. well, it all gets rather messy. Enormous fun, a bag of laughs – but, let’s be clear, a mess!

Which is strange. Because it seems as if the God who brought such order to the thing we call the world is quite prepared, and even rather keen, himself to live with such a mess!

And it gets worse.

Or better – depending again how you feel about the picture of our future which God gives.

For the children arrived from the centre of town on the back of some big motorbikes.

Harley Davidson bikes: complete with their laid-back, stubbled riders, resplendent in their armour of the road. Loud, noisy bikes. The real thing.

Their engines revving and roaring, music thumping and pumping out sound: headlights blazing, horns sounding. I tell you, they arrived in some style!

A convoy of twenty or more, streaming down the Main Street of our quiet suburban life, then riding down the little, sloping lane towards the church. And tucked behind each leather-laden biker was a beaming, dark-skinned child.

And there they were, dismounted at last, these riders from a very different world, joking, smoking, all at home and quite at ease, the blackness of their leathers somehow blending with the darkness of the children’s skins to build a sort of bridge between two vastly different cultures which in any other place could simply not exist at all.

And the multi-coloured clothing of the children, in their turn, gently merging with the brightly coloured garments of their kilted Scottish hosts to weave a whole new tartan of their own.

A messy sort of shepherd’s pie of bikes and blokes and smiles and smoke and kilts and Celts and heather and leather and … well, you name it, it was all there.

A teeming mass of cultures, with a heady mix of very different gifts.

The bikers with their down-to-earth and hit-the-road-with-rubber style of goodness as they met some very basic needs and got these orphaned children on the road.

The locals with their warm and ready welcome, so hospitable and kind – with food and drink to satisfy the hunger and the thirst these people had and make it clear that what we see as being so much our spiritual home must always be, in every sense, an open house.

And the children with their stunning gift of song. They stood on the steps in the evening sun and smiled and sang. A blessing. They invoked in their song the blessing of God on the bikers who’d brought them thus far.

And these tough men, their leather kit bedecked with metal badges so suggestive of the hard and rocking culture whence they came, being touched and moved by music from a very different world that bathed them, head to foot, with sounds so soft and pure they’d melt the hardest heart.

No shuffling around of nervous feet. No knowing little glances to their pals. No hint of any yawning, bored disinterest. The bikers simply stood there. Silent. Transfixed. Gob-smacked.

Blessed.

A snapshot of the future. The way it’s meant to be.

Messy? Sure. For those who like things always neat and tidy this is not the place to be! But, if like God himself, you can revel in the mess this mix of cultures will involve – then stick around and strive to see these rich, prophetic snapshots being fulfilled! Join the party!