Godliness and Cleanliness!

Every Sunday the car park at the former Dunn's Store on the Crumlin Road is full of people. There are so many cars it can be hard for people to get parked. It would be nice to think that this was because all these people were wanting top come to our church, which is situated just across the road but that is a mere pipe dream, they are at the weekly car boot sale. In that car park you find a veritable united nations of people, all enjoying the social occasion of buying and selling their wares.
if the Superstores of Britain and Ireland are the new cathedrals then this is one of its parish churches.

Rather than let this go unnoticed and without a Christian response we have decided to offer to pray for the needs of the people. We set up a table and make our ministry of intercessory prayer available to anyone, just for the asking. I usually go over after church to allow the person who is on duty, during church, to go home.

This morning I was watching as the people did their business and some merely ambled round looking and interacting with each other. I was amused by the reactions of a woman across on the opposite side as she watched a couple of Chinese have, what looked like, a bit of a row. It was impossible to tell as they were speaking in one of the 300 Chinese dialects, I guess! She smiled at me, as if to say, I wonder what they are arguing about. Every week the mess that is created after the market is appalling, as it remains like that until someone comes along to clean it up. I saw person after person throwing litter down and even tripping over cans and bottles and other bits and pieces without bothering to lift them. Later in the day I was talking to some young boys who were throwing their empty bottles onto the road and throwing bits of food at their mates in the park. That got me thinking about that old saying, "Cleanliness is next to Godliness" and wondered if that is true. On reflection I think it is not far from the mark. I say that because it is a reflection of an untidy thought pattern, it suggests that when I am finished with my rubbish all that is important is that I throw it away, out of my space and how it affects other people is no concern of mine.

Being tidy and thoughtful of other people will not mean, necessarily, that I am a godly person but it will mean that I have come to consider other people and that is a Godly consideration. It's not just a middle class thing but it is something worth teaching our children to be a value worth holding. None of us are individuals who need no one, no man is an island. We need each other and we have been created to be most satisfied and completed when we are living and working together, we are social beings and that means we will want to consider one another.