Robert Kinghorn

In the years I have had a ministry to the street people, I cannot say I have cured a single person. But I do believe that with the presence of Jesus, many have been healed and have managed to get off the streets because they have received new hope and courage to fight their addiction.

It was many years ago, and I cannot remember where I read it, but I wrote it down on a tattered piece of paper, which I just came across the other day.

My favourite book is “The Wound and the Gift,” the biography of Scottish poet and novelist George Mackay Brown. His poetry and novels were written with a sensitivity that was able to look beyond the wound, to see the gift within; a gift that often contributed to the person’s woundedness.

You know something? Nobody is perfect. Now this might come as a great surprise to some of you just as it did to me.

I always admire people who seem to be able to come up with a Scripture quotation for every occasion. You know, when you are working away quietly at home and your spouse calls out, “As it says in John 16:16, ‘In a short time you will no longer see me, and in a short time you will see me again.’”

Anniversaries are for reminiscing, and “The Church on the Street” reached its 18th anniversary this month.

“Although I am a stranger, please know I hold you in my heart and in my prayers.”

I have written before of my respect for folk singers who look at the world and give voice to truths that are often hidden from our view. Many years ago, I heard such a phrase that has haunted me, and in some ways has shaped the ministry of the Church on the Street: “Truth is a story scribbled in chalk, an hour before the flood.”