Not knowing

so I´ve been thinking. As you know I´ve been working in a girls prison, trying to share a bit of God´s love with them (cliche - but you know what I mean). I keep saying that it´s great to be doing real youth work again -- but it´s also completely different. Normally with a youth group, there's feedback - young people respond to the activities and discussions, they argue and disagree, they hang out and chat, they have opinions.

With the girls in the prison, there is virtually no feedback whatsoever. With rival gang members in the same group, none of them are going to respond to discussions or share their personal thoughts. The rest just seem passive and hardly respond at all - perhaps wanting to keep their heads down and out of trouble. As they all have to file out together at the end of the session, there´s no time to hang out with them or have a more personal conversation with one or two of them. And the more I hear their lack of response, the more I realise how much I want to know. I want to know what they think. I want to know their response to what we talk about, the activities I use to try and explain and demonstrate God´s love for them. I want to know if any of them have faith, if they want to seek God, if they want to change their lives.

And I realise that I actually have no right to know. No right at all. I realise that my desire to know their response is just the same as the big campaign evangelist who needs to know (and publish) the numbers of converts who have arrived at the front of the auditorium - and it always seems to me that that is all about boosting their own ego rather than ... rather than what ... actually I can´t even think of why else you´d need to know numbers like that (does that prove my point?). No wait... of course it´s cause we want to celebrate what God is doing in people´s lives .... but actually are we really celebrating God and praising him for his work.. or are we celebrating our own acheivements - and patting ourselves on the back???? Somehow we need to know that we are making a difference, that our actions are worth something, that someone is listening to what we say or reading what I write!.  (Did you know that there´s a thing on this blog that lets me know how many people read each post!)

And the more I think about it, and the more I go to the prison, the more I realise that I am not responsible for the girls response to what I do. And my job isn´t to create results or certain responses -- but simply to obey what God is leading me in. The girls response does not validate my work or my life even. Of course this isn´t an excuse for being insensitive or offensive but having no response from the girls makes me pray more, to listen more to God´s leading whilst I´m preparing sessions, and to pray for the girls inbetweentimes. The success (or not) of my work in the prison (-and whether or not I know which it is), doesn´t make any difference to how God accepts and loves me. I don´t have to earn anything or prove anything. It´s OK to not know.