On Saturday evening I attended a festival to celebrate the 85th Birthday of Ray Steadman Allen.In 1982 Rosemary (Ray’s daughter) and I got married at The Salvation Army’s Training College in Denmark Hill in London (UK).
Sadly, as with so many things in my life at the time, the marriage ended in failure and we divorced in 1991. However, Rosemary and I have remained good friends. We had two children Ben (23) and Caitlin (20).
On Saturday I took our children to their Grandpa’s birthday bash and sat with the grand old man, his wife Joy and their other daughter the Reverend Barbara Steadman Allen (an Anglican minister) in a box at the Fairfield Halls in Croydon.
I wore my Captain’s uniform, the badge of my calling, while my ex-wife sang in the International Staff Songsters. There was a moving and humbling sense of both reconciliation and forgiveness accompanying the proceedings. There was a definite nailing of the past, a restoration of the years the locusts have eaten and a warm feeling of love, forgiveness and mutual respect in the air (the sort that sometimes only seems to come with age).
The highlight for me was the playing of Ray’s masterpiece – Romans 8. Featuring the tune associated with the words
“In the cross of Christ I glory,Towering o’er the wrecks of time;All the light of sacred storyGathers round its head sublime.”
After an excellent and inspiring evening I went home to my new life with Tracey and marvelled at the wonderful grace of God that can draw life out of death and make all things work together for good.
Then to top off a truly wonderful weekend 5 people knelt at the mercy seat at Dartford in an act of faith in the future and in a spirit of re-consecration.
Sometimes God takes the most promising things in life and subjects them “to frustration…” in the hope that “they will be ‘liberated from bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.” God has certainly done this with my life and I give him all the glory.
I cannot think of a time in my entire life when I felt more content or more at the centre of God’s will than I do now.
Love and prayers
A
1 comment:
Andrew,
It's been good to be in conversation again via another Salvation Army forum. I linked here from there.
When I saw your name come up my mind went back to my days as a teen and the times I came to visit you and your then young family at Hatfield Peverill and somewhere else I can't remember the name of. They were special times for me although I probably never told you.
Thanks for this post. I found it helpful.
Grace and Peace!
Marcus Mylechreest
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