One of my new favourite places to go in London right now is Leake Street. If you have never heard of it, it is a tunnel that runs underneath Waterloo Station and is one of the few places in London where graffiti is legal. In 2008, Banksy used this tunnel to, in his words, “transform a dark forgotten filth pit into an oasis of beautiful art”. Since then, dozens of amateur and established artists meet there every day, to create new stories and adventures in a dark tunnel underneath the busiest train station in the UK. Imagination is a wonderful thing. Every single one of us was born with an imagination, with stories to tell, adventures to live and pictures to paint. We were made in the image of a creative God, so it makes sense that we should create. As we live our lives, we make impressions on the things and people around us. We impact the world around us through the choices we make, the things we say, the lifestyle we lead. The story that I choose to tell with my life informs and changes the places I go and the people I meet.
It does however work the other way around too.
The people we meet, the places we go, and the things we worship impact us. We are a product of our experiences, and we have been shaped and moulded by them into the people that we are today. And of course, as we are changed and shaped, so our story changes.
My friend Josie is a great example of this; about a year ago, I was at her flat and we were looking for something to watch on the TV. After she shot down my suggestions of Doctor Who and Eastenders, and I point-blank refused to watch Made in Chelsea, I asked if she had ever seen Sherlock. She said she hadn’t, and agreed to try it out, after asking me who “Benedict Cumbercube” was. We had barely got past the pre-credits scene when Josie informed me that this was “the best show I’ve ever watched”, and her life has not been the same since. Josie is now obsessed with Sherlock, she talks about it wherever she goes, dressed up as him for Halloween, and according to her Twitter biography, she lives with him. Josie’s life was impacted by Sherlock, and now the story that she tells has been changed as well.
In the book of Galatians, Paul talks about why the story we tell is important:
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“It is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get your own way all the time: repetitive, loveless, cheap sex; a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness; trinket gods; magic-show religion; paranoid loneliness; cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper; an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and divided lives; small-minded and lopsided pursuits; the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions; ugly parodies of community. I could go on.This isn’t the first time I have warned you, you know. If you use your freedom this way, you will not inherit God’s kingdom.
But what happens when we live God’s way? He brings gifts into our lives, much the same way that fruit appears in an orchard—things like affection for others, exuberance about life, serenity. We develop a willingness to stick with things, a sense of compassion in the heart, and a conviction that a basic holiness permeates things and people. We find ourselves involved in loyal commitments, not needing to force our way in life, able to marshal and direct our energies wisely.”
Paul is saying that we have two choices in life, we can live for ourselves, or we can live for God. If we live for ourselves, then we make selfish decisions, our lives become dark, ugly and dead. If we live God’s way, then we are putting others first, and our lives are full of colour, beauty and life.
If you have been around Christian circles for as long as me, I am sure you have heard of the fruit of the Spirit. I remember growing up in Sunday school and we made a song out of it; love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. These things are the fruit that is produced when we live God’s way, they are the story we tell with our lives. I love the way that the message translation put these though. It gives us an insight into what the fruit really looks like when it is shown in our lives.
In all this we have a choice. We can choose to live for ourself, or for God. Of course, we can achieve all of these things that Paul calls the “fruit of the spirit” if we try hard enough on our own. But the point is, we aren’t meant to achieve them, if we limit this to just a list of things we need to achieve then we have legalism and that is not the point of grace. If we try to be more loving, kinder, more patient by ourself, then maybe we will achieve that. But if we focus on living life for God, if we let Jesus be the one who informs our story, then in much the same way as Banksy transformed a dark tunnel under London’s biggest station into the biggest legal street art space in London. Jesus can take the “dark forgotten filth pit” that comes we create when we live for ourselves, and transform it into an “oasis of beautiful art”.
If we let Jesus inform our story, imagine the impact that could have on the people around us? Imagine how that would change our places of work? Our universities? Our cities? Our countries? Imagine if the entire world was one long Leake Street, with thousands of artists painting extraordinary pictures of love, life and adventure. That could change the world.