What a week!

This week has really stretched me. I've experienced some pretty intense moments with some of the young people I've worked with this week, from having all their possessions being burnt by their mother, being released from the Juvenile detention centre, experiencing bail breaches due to parents lack of care. It's been a real challenge if anything to figure out how to deal with this. Band-aids are all I seem to have in my arsenal, or so it seems. I'm measured upon how well I cover up the issues and make them go away.
Encouraging true growth and resilience in all of this seems so impossible from where I stand. Yet if it's a mountain left un-climbed what have I helped these young people with?... I don't know. Building long term growth into anybodies life I think can't fit into a 9-5 program. It could be a stepping stone, but it is still very reserved and distant, it highlights that expert/novice relationship. (I wonder how helpful they are)

It's in weeks like these that the I find the kingdom of God so hard to take a grasp of. I wrote a poem about one of the young blokes I met this week.
When a whisper is heard as a voice
When a voice is seen as a face
When a face has a name
When a name is recognised as a person
When a person has space to laugh and cry
Something will be found in that space
Something that can't be defined
Or measured
Or added or subtracted
It just is
It's tasted, smelt, touched and seen.
It's sensed
It just is
Maybe that's the Kingdom?...

I guess knowing how to be Jesus on Earth isn't discovered in a week, or a month or year. So I'll let you know how I go with building long term growth into peoples lives.