Real Hope: A Connected ChristmasSample

Scars That Qualify

Recently I gathered with other leaders to hear some incredibly talented CEOs talk about ‘Leadership through Crisis and Chaos’. I was honoured to attend, but I realised that I already witness outstanding leadership at Wayside from people who’ll never claim to be experts.

One morning outside our building lay a young woman who had overdosed. A few people were there begging her to stay awake and to fight to live until the ambulance arrived. Beside her was her boyfriend who’d also had a shot and was beginning to panic about living in a world without his girlfriend. He produced a needle and claimed he would take a second shot so they could die together. Some of our Wayside angels demonstrated more leadership than I’ve ever contemplated in any think tank. Two staff quietly took him aside and gently helped him imagine a better day than this one. I’ve never been to a seminar that taught how to harness the imagination of someone whose imagination has all but died. It was a powerful moment when he saw something in their faces, dropped his needle, and became responsive to the loving people around him.

Those who helped him were the most beautiful and unlikely of people who had been in similar stark holes with past addictions. God has a habit of calling the ‘wrong people’. Moses felt unprepared when God called him. Our scars don’t disqualify us but are sometimes the very things that qualify us. Where we are broken is the place we are also blessed. Just ask Moses, the murderer who was one of our greatest Bible heroes and who liberated a people from slavery.

written by JON OWEN