Cutting Across the Borders

Book excerpt: An extraordinarily vivid rainbow arced over the morning horizon, its ends pressed down into fields of sodden maize. It surrounded us; it dwarfed us; it mesmerised us. It seemed that this particular rainbow just would not fade. We packed our vehicle and left the village and, as the bus carefully dipped and splashed its way through deep red puddles of African mud, I stared quietly out of the window. How did the miraculous events of last night actually happen? My repeated boyhood dream had, quite literally and specifically, been played out before my eyes, with 3,000 people looking on. Why now? Why here? Yet again I was forced to reflect on the overwhelming faithfulness and spectacular promises of God and how, despite my limited abilities, my questionable confidence and the sheer harmlessness and normality of my life, He had steered me to so many amazing places, introduced me to such extraordinary people, and done such magnificent things for me. Whatever the boundaries, borders and limits I had set up for myself, God had pushed me through them all. My story leads you through my nervous but rescued childhood. It opens a door into the intensive community lifestyle that I lived in my twenties and thirties. And it tussles with the pain, betrayal and disasters that I encountered during my forties. And the rest is geography. I invite you to journey with me on the relentless, unusual and often extreme global adventures of my fifties and sixties. It's a story of people, of places and of relationships; a true and radical tale of love and passion, of vulnerability, determination and betrayal, of rescue and grace, hope and faithfulness.