We are now into the second week of Advent – a time of reflecting and anticipating God’s arrival as a baby and his return as the Prince of Peace. At the same time I am also preparing for Friday’s wrestling match! I would never have thought I would be bringing those two things together or that wrestling might become part of my ministry, but God has an amazing way of doing things that are always surprising!
You may know that Kingdom Wrestling has caught the attention of the media recently, especially after it was in the Times a few weeks ago, it has then been on different news programmes and then ‘Have I got News for You’. This Friday, the wrestling will be filmed by French and Japanese TV companies, and then later in the week Look North want to come and interview Gareth and myself…what an opportunity to share God’s love and hope with people who perhaps are more surprised to find God in the wrestling ring than me!
Advent is a time to remember that we are walking with Jesus who is the light, even when the world is still a place that can feel and be quite dark and difficult. It is a time to reflect on the difficulties and look to see where we might find the light and how we might share that light. Wrestling, I have come to discover, is all about the story and drama of life, and it is in these stories that we realise that the good guys do not always win. That even though we want our heroes to win out-right, we find that through devious means the ‘baddies’ triumph. They may be betrayed by an ally or let down by a team player. Those who we feel to be the most deserving are the ones who lose out. It doesn’t feel fair. And so we shout and boo at the baddies and call out to the ref’s to make it right.
And so it is in ‘real life’ when we cry out to God when we see and feel the pain in our world. When we watch with horror the things that are going on in our world and long for justice and peace to reign. So please pray for Friday night, pray that people can see the hope that is proclaimed through the gospel. That through the fun of wrestling they can understand that Jesus shows us a radical way of doing things, a way that does not involve squashing someone (quite literally in wrestling!) but rather is all about building them up. That the light of Jesus will always conquer the darkness in this world – because the light shines in the darkness and the darkness will not overcome it.
