I don’t know why but i really felt i had to write something about strays tonight. It may be very late but i read something very interesting on my Netvibes page that got me pondering, especially after having such an interesting day. Greg asked me on the way through Piccadilly how i managed to get involved in so many things and i just told him blankly that they just happen. And it happened when he was there. I had run out of time so i simply told everyone who i was due to meet to meet me at the same time as it was the only way i could see them all.

It was a surreal few hours that featured a visit to the glamour and glitz that is Sony Pictures’ HQ in Golden Square, past the sordid Revue Bar in Soho, a gorgeous afternoon with Amy in the sun who wants to interview me for her book because my emotional entanglements are fascinating and explaining how Ideafeed is due to be in Broadcast Magazine next week and how Zai Bennett (Controller of ITV2) was looking through it last night.

Somewhere, somehow, Stef got talking about how she was working with a Kent-based charity for terminally ill children and looking to do some marketing and fundraising for a new facility they were expanding into. How morbid, you might say. But no. I thought about it for a second and looked for a positive angle. What i came up with was “if you knew a child was going to die, what would you want them to know about this world, and experience why they were alive?”

The answer was very interesting. As Stef suggested, why not take them to the Big Cat Sanctuary (also in Kent) so they could stroke a lion and/or a tiger? And so it was. We’re not taking a whole hospice of children to see lions in October, and filming it. Piers start talking to John and told him he’d hook him up with the charity he’d been working for that takes on homeless people who need a career start. I looked at Greg and said “see, that’s how these things happen.” John gave me a glow-in-the-dark Catholic rosary.

I’ve come up with this project for my 30th year where i’m going to make a short film for my grandchildren. I’m not saying too much as its going to take a long time and be a special journey explaining how i grew as a person and who i was. I’ve been working through everything i want to put in it and all the major events in my life timeline so far.

I am surrounded by good, smart people.

This is what was in my inbox.

“What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he loses one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness, and go after the one which is lost until he finds it?”

It’s not enough to be with smart, good people, even if they are blessing. We need to go and find the ones that are lost and bring out the best in them. It’s not enough that they can do it; they need to believe in themselves and believe that they can do it. If they don’t believe they can do it, they’ll never do it.

It got me thinking about how the Father uses the most unusual of people – in fact, He always uses the most unusual for the greatest tasks. And that’s why we can never discount anyone. A diamond can be found in the rough anyway, and when they graduate to diamond it’s very dramatic. I started thinking of all the people i’ve discounted, and what they could be. Some people live on the fringe, forever outcast, thinking they will never get anywhere, be anyone, or belong in any way. We need to find them and show to them that it’s not the case. Not tell them, show them. By accepting them, encouraging them and building them. We need to share our good fortune and let our prosperity flow out onto them in spirit, feeling and the practical ways.

The world has only ever been changed by one person. Not because they are special in themselves, but because they become a figurehead – someone who represents something and becomes its face. In the Bible, the greatest people were the most unlikely, the most rejected, the least qualified and the most unsuitable and unacceptable choices imaginable.

Moses was a murderer. David was an adulterer. Joseph was a weak runt thrown in prison for decades unjustly. Saul was a genocidal persecutor. Mary a teenage virgin presumed to be adulterous. Christ was a poor carpenter from a shanty town who associated with lepers, tax collectors and whores. The disciples were illiterate peasants. All of them fell short. None of them thought they could do what they were called to do. All were unusual. All were rejected. All were criticised. All were presumed heretical and outcast away from everyone else because they were “wrong” and didn’t fit people’s expectations.

But God always breaks the rules, again and again. He always picks the most unusual, and the most surprised are the people who He picks that couldn’t ever see themselves as worth it or able to do it. Everyone else wrote them off too, and they wrote themselves off.

If you love, do you not leave the 99 and go after the one that is lost out there somewhere, alone and helpless? The one that is caught up in a hedge or trapped in a ditch, scared and lost? Isn’t it right to go after the 1 because it shows the other 99 they are all individually valuable and you’d do the same for you? You don’t talk to them; you just go out and find the lost one. You notice they are missing. You wonder where they are. You are prepared to make the effort to bring them home because they matter. Each one matters. Sometimes they can’t find their way on their own and need help, even if they are stubbornly in that ditch and determined to find their own way out.

Why do you do it? Because they are someone’s child, sibling or friend; because they will pass it on and help someone else; because everyone is worth it; because it could be you; because they deserve that love and it’s your duty to give it simply because you are there and you can. But above everything else, because they need it.

So i guess what i’m saying is that you may have written yourself off, and everyone else may have written you off too. I may have written you off. Unfortunately for you, that makes you a prime choice to be the one that makes the difference. In fact, only you can. You’re it, as you said in the playground.

You may be exhausted; you may be flat on the floor, lost or hopeless; you may be nothing. You may be worthless, helpless and don’t fit in or belong anywhere. You may be down; you may be unlikely;’ you may be the underdog with no-one in your life, nothing to live for and no-one anywhere near who truly knows you or cares about you. You may be the least likely person to get anywhere, mean anything or even start out on the road. You may have consigned yourself to the garbage can of history and settled for anything you can get because you’re not worth anything.

Bullshit.

I’m not giving up on you. And i’m going to tell everyone i know not to either/ Somebody believed in me when no-one else did and i still remember that kindness now. They showed me i was worth the time for no reason whatsoever and for no reward. Living and trying my hardest every day is how i honour their memory, and then i pass it along, as you should. You can do it. You may be unlikely, but take hope from scripture. When everyone else passes you by and the world turns it back, that’s a sign you’re set out from the crowd to achieve something special. The more resistance you get, the more important you are and the closer you are getting to your time.

The sign on your forehead you can’t see but you think says “forsaken”, says something very different. It frightens people, so you make them feel better by wilting like a flower to accommodate their insecurities.

You’re not forsaken, you’re forgiven. You’re not worthless, you’re important. You’re not without purpose – you were born with everything you need to accomplish the things that are set out for you to do. You’re not broken, you’re changing. You’re not lost, you’re a call for help away from being found. You’re not meat, you are precious. You’re not wrong, you are made just the way you were designed to be. You’re not meaningless, you are desperate to find your meaning. You are not cast off, you are set free to lead the herd. You’re not defective, you’re fully equipped. You’re not damaged, you’re battled-scarred. You are not your past, you are who you choose to be from this moment onwards.

Only the good feel guilty; you hurt because your heart is bigger than your body. You were a victim, but enough time passed that made you a survivor. You hate being trapped because you know you are more; what is shame to you is intimacy to someone else. You can’t forgive because you don’t believe you deserve forgiveness yourself. You hate because you love. You cry because it matters. You are afraid because you are ready to risk. You feel lost because you can’t read the map, when it’s in your own handwriting. Love makes you perfect to someone else, even if everything is wrong with you. What is imperfect to you makes you perfect in the eyes of someone else who is equally imperfect, and you will never understand why.

You’re afraid to love in case you get loved back and you will lose it, but love lasts forever. You look through the shop window because there is a little light in you that never seems to go out no matter how violent the storm inside – hope. You take your tiny steps because you might be able to do it, then someone comes along and pushes you right back again. You can do it. You were meant to do it. You were meant to feel this so you could overcome it and be who you are meant to be. This was meant for you. This is who you are. This is your time, your test, your path and your place to be, for reasons that will only become clear later. Only you were built with the things necessary to go past it. What’s in your way is there to stretch you and promote you.

Don’t wish for an easy life – pray for the strength to face greater obstacles as you overcome the current ones. Don’t fear what was put in the middle of the road to see what you’d do with it. You have a purpose and you have a journey that is yours and yours alone. It’s up to you whether you push people off the road or help them up to get back on it themselves.

You could be in that ditch right now, away from the other 99, thinking nobody knows you’re missing and nobody is coming to find you. Nobody will know you are there unless you make a noise or show them you’ve noticed them too. If they step out to find you, you need to let them know you’ve been found by them. You need to trust they came for you because you matter.

And that, my friends, is harder than anything else.

“I’ll accept with poise with grace when they draw my name from the lottery
And they’ll say all the salt in the world couldn’t melt that ice
I’m the one who gets away, I’m a New Jersey success story
And they’ll say, Lord give me the chance to shake that hand, they’ll say”

“Big Casino” by Jimmy Eat World