Admin is like Marmite: you either love it or hate it. For me, when it comes to hot buttered toast, I can't resist adding a dollop of the brown sticky stuff, but for all things administrative I am more than happy to put them off until another day.
So, after a recent bout of filing, I was surprised to find myself feeling encouraged and full of thankfulness to God. For one, my desk now looked respectable beside the desk of the girl I share an office with (who barely allows a piece of paper to stay on her desk for two minutes). More significantly though, I created a file labelled 'EN' and, as I inserted cuttings of this column from the last 18 months, saw how God has been working.
Kathy
At the bottom of the pile was the cutting of my very first 'Third Degree' column. I read the opening line: 'My name is Kathy. I'm from China, and I'm wanting to find out about God.' I paused (any distraction was welcome at this stage) and thought about Kathy, the student who had introduced herself to me at a lunchtime event at Leicester University. I thought back to her questions about Jesus - the character she had seen portrayed on films from Hong Kong, the one whose words she was attracted by, but about whom she knew little.