'It's been a bad day'

By Sam Tomlin

'It's been a bad day.'

It's 10.20am. Luis tells me he has already lost £120 on the machines in the small Betfred betting shop on Camberwell High Street. Like many, he arrived fairly soon after opening a few hours earlier.

'I've got nothing else to do, although I do have a job interview later'. Behind the apathetic exterior there seems to be a desperation for something once lost that exists with many who tell themselves they're 'ok'.

I suggest there must be some positive aspects of living in this area - he's been in London for 45 years, there must be some kind of network or family.

'Believe me mate, when you get to a certain age you know you will be alone in life. I'm 63, I've been around a while. I know some people but I don't want to bother them with my life.'

In a city of 10+million, one of the most densely populated in the world, with people walking past you every day, it is still possible to feel completely abandoned and alone.

Our God knows what it is to be alone and forsaken. Hanging from the cross, left by friends and even seemingly from the rest of the godhead, the Christ enters into the depth of human pain and suffering.

It was such a scandalous idea that God could suffer that many early heretics either said Jesus was only pretending to suffer or that he wasn't really God. How could God 'dirty' herself by becoming human & experiencing all these awful things?

But this became the defining orthodox teaching: God loved the world so much that he emptied himself and took the role of a servant. She took on flesh so as to identify with human hell on earth and redeem it through the resurrection.

So Christ is with Luis in his loneliness. But he desires his church to 'be' and embody this presence to a greater degree, inviting him to see the world with new eyes rather than waiting helplessly to arrive at death.

When God pours out his spirit, it says in the book of Joel, even 'your old men will dream dreams' and see the world as it could be - and this will be a sign of the coming of the Kingdom.