Tuesday 14 September 2010

This is just for fun - GETTING YOUR HAIR DONE

Getting your hair done

Black people in my church community, well to be more specific, the black girls, tell me that I need to understand that getting their hair done is:

·         Expensive

·         Takes a very long time to do

For years I took this on board as fact and sympathised with the money they shelled out and the hours they spent sitting in the hairdressers.  One morning I woke up and thought, ‘today I’m going test this fact out, I’m going to take my white man’s hair to a black hairdressers.’

Lunch time came around and I left the office and headed to the local black hair salon.  Now I must confess that it was a ladies salon, but that did not seem to bother the hair stylist when I popped my head round the door and asked, ‘can you fit me in for a hair cut?’ ‘Yes darling, come in and take a seat,’ was the willing reply. 

It was 1pm


I was ushered to a seat by the basin and my hair was washed quite quickly, then, with a towel wrapped round my head I was offered tea; then cake and other goodies appeared and after quite some time I was placed in a chair in front of the stylist who began to scrutinise my hair.  She pulled it this way, and then that way, and then back to how it had been, and then it started all over again.  All the while chatting away and telling me the local news, the music soothed me, and the cutting and styling went on.  And on and on.  And on.  Eventually it was done, and done very well I must admit.  The cost was not that high considering all the food and drink and time spent based on an hourly rate.  Being of the male species I’m not sure I want to spend so much time on getting my hair done, I gave her a generous tip and went on my way.

It was 5pm.

Now, when the girls say, we are black and our hair takes time and money.  I reply, ‘You can’t kid me, I know all about your hairdressers!’

Adrian Hawkes
For Adrian’s Blog
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Editor: A. Brookes
Just for fun - on hair www.adrianhawkes.blogspot.com

Wednesday 8 September 2010

A Strange Story

Strange story


Some years ago I was invited to speak at a church meeting.  My theme was ‘getting involved’, Pauline was with me and she also spoke along similar lines, emphasising the need for people who call themselves Christian to ‘get their hands dirty’ and care for God’s world.  James 1:27 (NIV) tells us, ‘religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and keep oneself from being polluted by the world.’  I spoke about the shortage of foster carers in England and Wales, another 10,000 are needed.  The people in this community responded in a positive way, and quite a few became foster carers and adoptive parents.  10 years on it’s encouraging to see the fine results that those people have achieved.

I got to know one couple very well, and when I went to visit them I was struck by how small their house was compared to how large was their willingness to get involved. I said, ‘you need more room!’  We sat down and looked through their finances, and they said they couldn’t afford a bigger house.  I am an eternal optimist when it comes to such things and so I said, ‘I think you can, but that’s just my optimism, let me send you a financial advisor to see if he agrees with me.’  They agreed and my financial advisor went to see them and came to the same conclusion as me, he even arranged a mortgage for them.  All that was needed now was to find the right house and sell their small house.  Eventually they found a house and when we saw it we were staggered by the size and the extensive land that surrounded it.  The price was a stretch for their finances, but after we had prayed together it seemed that this was the right place and would help this couple to achieve all that was in their heart.

Offers were made and accepted, their small home sold quickly and we were just getting ready for celebrations when there was a twist in the tail.  I received a tearful phone call from the couple telling me that their house was sold, the contract signed, moving in date arranged, but the large house they wanted to buy was no longer available, the seller had called them to say he was removing it from the market.  Instead of celebrations, commiserations; instead a large house, homelessness.  No wonder there were tears and prayer requests.

The next few months were very tough, the couple and their permanent lodger moved in with a relative who had a house almost as small as the one they had sold, they were living a nightmare and didn’t know what to do next.  Then one day the wife did something very weird and even to this day she has no idea why she did it. 
  
Her husband cycled to work every day, and she strapped a large sack of salt to the back of the bike, her husband assumed that it was to help him to keep fit, as he was having to push those peddles very hard to propel himself and  the huge sack of salt. (It was impressed on me how enormous the sack was).  At the time she said she had read in the bible somewhere that people who are followers of Jesus should be salt in his world.  A rather mumbo-jumbo interpretation of that concept, but because things were so difficult and stressful at the time, the husband decided to humour his wife and kept on cycling every day, with the sack of salt in tow. 

The months went by and then I received another phone call, the wife told me she thought she had heard God speak to her, she thought he told her to take the sack of salt that her husband had been towing around on his bike, go to the house that they had wanted to buy and pour the salt all around the house (outside the property boundaries of course!).  To avoid people thinking she was a ‘nutter’ she and her husband drove to the house at around 1:00 am and quickly poured the salt out as they thought God had said they should.  The next morning they received a phone call from the owner of the house saying he had decided to put the house back on the market and were they still interested, if they were they could have it at the price they originally agreed.  With joy in her voice she told me, ‘He wanted it to happen quickly, we signed the same day and we are moving in.”

I told you it was a strange story, how can anyone explain that!  I went to the house warming celebrations, and over the years joyfully watched their many adopted children growing up in a warm, loving and nurturing environment. This story remains a mystery to me, I don’t begin to understand the ramifications, I only know that sometimes when we are a ‘follower of the way’ God asks us to do strange things, and we do well to obey his instructions.  I don’t think that gives us an excuse to be weird and off-the-wall, I think perhaps there are enough people around who are like that without you and me joining them.  But the moral of the story is how good and pleasant it is when a follower of God is obedient to His request.





Adrian L Hawkes
For Adrian2526 Blog:
www.adrianhawkes.blogspot.com
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Editor: A. Brookes

Tuesday 7 September 2010