Dear Inner Circle,
Last Friday, on Valentine’s Day, we hosted a morning tea at Kings Cross for people who have pledged to include Wayside Chapel in their Will.
It was a beautiful day meeting so many people who wanted to leave a legacy that will ensure Wayside will still be here, doling out the kind of love that our world will need for another 60 years and beyond.
It was also the day I’d somehow agreed to wear a pair of underwear over my clothes for our annual Valentine’s Day fundraising campaign. Strangely enough, I received no strange looks in Kings Cross — though I did hear one our street angels call after me, “Hey Superman, you know only Indians can run faster than trains!” — but I certainly did in North Sydney where I started the day speaking to a room full of businesspeople. Feeling like my get-up was quite the risk itself, I posed this thought to them: “Love is the biggest risk we will ever take in our lives”. But could there be a greater reward?
I recently had the honour of speaking with Ted and Margaret Noffs’ grandson, a man who carries the charisma of our founders within his bones. We spoke of the great legacy of love that was created by the Wayside, the lives forever changed by an extraordinary couple. We then spoke of the risks and price of this radical love, of a life cut short and the years Ted lay incapacitated by his stroke.
All he could do in those final years was say two words, words he would repeat to everyone who would visit him. He would beckon them with the remaining strength in his fingers that still moved, look them in the eye, and muster through tears, “I’m sorry”. There is a cost to love, in the world Ted and Margaret lived in, that continues to this day.
We hear of how love builds up, abides all, has patience, but it also confronts and interrupts injustice. We saw it in the Freedom Rides of the 60s, which left from the front door of Wayside, to the work we do to help women and children leave homes ruled by fear and control today. The call remains the same as does the price.
Love costs us our complacency, but it is a price always worth paying, because it changes the world and, perhaps even a greater miracle, it also changes us.
Thank you for being part of the Inner Circle,
Jon
Rev. Jon Owen
CEO & Pastor
Wayside Chapel
