He came to us in 1992, sad, battered and bruised. He’d pastored a church and been roughed up, mugged and left for dead. God’s people can do that. In the pain and bitterness of the experience he threw himself into his new job at the council. Maybe because it was so all so raw, he allowed his walk with God to drift and looked nostalgically back to happier days. The wounds were slow to heal. As a young pastor he sometimes gave it to me in the neck. He could be warm and gentle but sometimes critical and censorious. It felt hard. Just when it seemed we got the records of the past neatly sorted and ready to file, a gale would blow through his flat, scattering the memories and stirring bitter thoughts. Who would break the cycle? The man had once been a spiritual hero.

He had a knee replacement operation. He spent many hours in bed. His convalescence was going well but another recovery was taking place; the movement was returning to his soul. There seemed a light, a warmth, a wonder I’d not seen before. He spoke of the Lord with such evident pleasure and joy. You would have thought he’d caught a glimpse of Jesus and he had. He said ‘the only way to get a pig to look up is to lay him on his back.’ And then he was gone. The Lord took him home.

So what was it all about? Why the years with a difficult sheep? Why bring to us a man with so much baggage? Why the many prayers unheeded and hours of counsel barely heard? Now it all made sense. The Lord brought Him to us to bring him safely home. The local church was a protective bubble to keep him from greater harm. It was the envelope of His love to keep him from falling out of the Christian life. And then having been brought safely across the wilderness, those last days were spent within sight of the Promised Land. Unknown to us he was already breathing that heavenly air and then in a moment, long prepared by the Chief Shepherd, this sheep was brought swiftly into the everlasting glory. Safely home. ‘Being confident of this very thing that he who begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ.’