Mr Wilson is a little bit sick this week. His body decided to celebrate its 27th birthday with an inuagural outbreak of eczema (on his hands), combined with a rather nasty chest infection.

I attended a very helpful conference in London last week, hosted by the Refugee Highway Partnership. Lots of helpful teaching, networking and hearing how others are ministering in their own contexts. I also had an encouraging meeting today with a Christian Counselling Institute in the city who seem willing to offer counselling to a small number of refugees whom we refer to them.

Other than that, I have been pondering an issue that came up at the drop-in today. It's easy to help some people; they're nice about how they ask and they are very grateful for the help that you give. They ask in a way that you find acceptable from your cultural frame of reference. It makes you feel useful to help them (generally warm and fuzzy) and once you have done what was asked of you, they leave you alone to enjoy feeling good about yourself. Others are not so simple. They get in your face, they phone repeatedly, they're demanding or downright rude and seem less than grateful for what you manage to provide....you get the picture.
How often have we decided to help those whose way of asking was more acceptable to us, to ignore that person who has an annoying way about them and to deem them less deserving or less in need because they are less grateful? It seems to me that God's grace must reach to those who are annoying, demanding and harder to help, that it has extended to us when we have approached him in a way that closely resembles the hard to help. Not that we simply pander to demands but that we seek to remain in relationships that by God's grace may prove to be transformative, that our patience does not run out and we do not write people off because they make us feel less good about ourselves. It's a challenge. I'd rather help those who say please and thank-you, and don't phone me after 9pm. But somehow I don't think grace and mercy are limited to those with nice British manners.

- Emma