on the edges

The rain poured down, then slowed, then started up in new squalls of fury. Buckets of water streaming down from the dark night sky.

Our neighbours had planned a small party. On the terrace of our appartment building. It was quickly clear that the unusual October deluge had washed away the evening's preferred venue.

Instead we were down in their flat. After the cake was cut and the song was sung the main entertainment began. The men took over the living room and the ladies hovered in and out of the kitchen and clustered in the bedrooms.

The bottles were brought out and poured. I found myself surrounded by members of an extended family who have all done very well for themselves. The elder generation were architects and decorators - the younger were into clinical research, big pharma and human resource management for large retail chains. They nursed their beers with studied determination. The odd shot of whisky (from a bottle labelled 'For Defence Personel only" - and not a fauji in sight) mingled with the even odder hand clutching a glass of black fizzy water (mine).

"Social service, eh?" The conversation was polite. But not much traction. I did the asking about them - there was not much coming the other way.

And in the middle of all were the invisibles. Silent. Noticably darker skinned. No gold. The odd young man coming in and carrying some item of food. Being ordered to clean up the dirt left from having shifted the TV into the corner.

I was in the kitchen when one young man carried in a tray adorned with empty glasses and bottles. "Take it outside" said one of the hosts. The young man looked blank. He had just been ordered to bring it into the kitchen.

We ate and left. Having kids offers a polite excuse to leave with some decorum. Their term exams were the next day so we were able to exit without seeming too rude.

As we crossed the foyer and took out our keys to open our door I looked up the stairwell. There, splayed out over the bright red plastic chairs which were to have been put up on the terrace, were three figures. Silent. Exhausted. Asleep.

These men are the men at the margins. We have outsourced our slavery. Who they are, where they live, what the structure of their lives is - are the least of our concerns. We order a product (in this case the chairs/lights for an evenings entertainment) and how it is provided is not our business.

None of us want to admit it, but we are in a colossally cruel world. The path most of us take is to suspend our feelings - to sequester and push away anything that disturbs our day to day feeling of niceness.

I don't have many solutions - but one thing I know. Each person is precious. Growing up the the same brutally inequal world that I now live in, I have seen some steps to bridge the chasm between us rich and them poor. I have seen it through my father's kind and person-affirming heart. The three sleeping figures could have been at least served a meal. I have seen it in his generous and open manner - and in the way he talks to people in a way that radiates their value.

Dad - with all his human limitations - embodies so much of his friend-of-the-poor Master - our Lord Jesus. He who sculpted the galaxies and upper structures of space - stooped down and was enfleshed as the son of a mistry, a rude labourer who made door posts and ploughs - and whose family had only enough money to buy a pigeon to sacrifice at his naming.

Who being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. Phil. 2.6-7.