Stations of the cross

Lieut-Colonel Ivor Telfer reflects on passengers and prayer

I BELIEVE it was Bishop Tom Wright who used the phrase ‘colonising earth with the presence of Heaven’. The more I ponder the bishop’s words, the more I am challenged to wonder how any such colonisation might take place and what part I might have to play in that process.

Most days of my life my ministry as an officer, presently appointed to Territorial Headquarters, takes me by train from my village in Kent to the Elephant and Castle in South London. Slowly but surely ‘the 6.48’ is becoming my personal mission field.

It might be assumed that my journey provides little opportunity for witnessing, given the well-known reserve of English commuters and their traditional reluctance to chat on their way to work!

It’s true that conversations aren’t plentiful as noses are buried in books and newspapers, but I have sensed the Holy Spirit ‘nudging’ me to breach the boundaries of silence in order to put Bishop Wright’s words into practice. My reasoning is that if I am to spend an hour or so with pretty much the same group of people more or less every morning of my working week, then I have a ready-made opportunity staring me in the face. I feel it is incumbent upon me to be a ‘Kingdom commuter’.

Allow me to relate just a little information about some of those with whom I share my journeys. (I have changed their names.)

Nick is a security guard in a bank and is a great joker – the sort of person we might refer to as ‘the salt of the earth’. Each morning, Nick buys himself a cup of tea but only ever finishes half of it. The rest is used to water part of the station garden!

Ruby works in ‘a customer industry’ and lives with her daughter and her baby.

Peter is a solicitor whose three children attend a weekly boarding school. As a family, they take six weeks’ overseas holiday every summer.

Charles is employed by a company that tendered for building work at William Booth College.

A ‘city gent’ wearing a designer suit and nice glasses reads the Financial Times on his iPad.

A woman who brings her scooter with her onto the train reads from her BlackBerry.

The list goes on: a building worker, a personal assistant to the boss of a shipping company who has been married twice and owns a house in Florida, a man who folds his copy of the Financial Times into four vertical columns so that he can read it easily in a crowded train, a man who reads his Bible as he travels.

My concern is how to communicate the good news of Jesus Christ to those I meet.

Even these brief encounters indicate a wide range of social needs, differing circumstances and personal issues. One man, for example, travelled with his wife for the first 18 months of our acquaintance. Now he travels with another woman with whom he seems very friendly. His relationship(s) are not for me to judge, but they are for me to pray about if I claim to serve a God who cares.

Who knows what concerns people carry as they go about their weekday routines! What matters might be at stake as they climb aboard? What heartaches might be hidden?

I am mindful of the latter part of John 10:10, in which Jesus says he came to give us life in all its fullness. How many of my travelling companions have any idea of what it is to enjoy life in Christ? Is the concept of church in any way relevant to them? How do they regard Christians? Do they ever wonder if there might be more to life?

If I am to join in with the notion of Big Society then it behoves me to continually regard each commuter as someone for whom Jesus died – an individual who is known and loved by God, not merely a face in the bustling crowd. If I approach my journeys with that in mind, then even the mundane becomes mission!

Their business is their business – builders, financiers, telecommunications experts and so on. My business is to pray for them and to explore ways of sharing the gospel.

• Lieut-Colonel Telfer is Secretary for Business Administration, THQ