Between January 1995 and September 1997 I lived and worked in London in three Shaftesbury Society homeless hostels (Kilburn NW6, Camberwell SE5, and Bermondsey SE1).
Although I wasn’t paid much, I loved it. As an assistant group worker, I was paid around £40 per week (that would be around £80 today, given inflation), until I was promoted to group worker after my first few months. From that £40 I needed to buy myself a zones 1 and 2 travelcard which ate £13.80 deeper into my weekly budget. I worked with some great people, got to explore a lot of central London on foot and with my travelcard, worked a crazy nine-day shift pattern and got a ton of life experience.
Some of those experiences have remained with me, like one memorable evening’s walk home.
I had been in central London visiting friends and decided to walk home. I never used to worry about walking home in the dark—I’m six-foot four and Scottish, which usually kept me safe—and on this particular evening around 22:30 it was balmy and clear with the moon rising in the sky.
I crossed Southwark Bridge onto Southwark Bridge Road and paused beside a staircase leading down to a road beneath. I had two routes home in my mind. One took me along Southwark Bridge Road towards Borough tube station; the other dropped me down to a lower street where I could wind my way through familiar backstreets past Guy’s Hospital and up the A2.
Which way should I go?
I had been out with some Christian friends and we had been talking earlier about the importance of asking God for direction in our lives, even in the small matters. So I threw up a quick prayer.
“Lord, which route should I take home?”
I immediately felt a hunch to drop down to the lower lower streets and wind my way through the back roads of Borough.
Off the main road now, the streets were narrower and darker. I walked from one pool of streetlight to the next. The roads were deserted. It was like a scene from a film, and not a particularly cheery film either.
Suddenly, I spotted a shadowy figure in the distance, a few hundred meters ahead of me. He was walking slowly and lugging what looked like a heavy bag.
As we got closer to one another, he crossed the empty street towards me.
I tensed myself a little, ready to run at the first sign of trouble.
“Excuse me,” he said in a rather frail voice. “But you wouldn’t happen to know where I can find…?” and he mentioned the name of a local homeless shelter.
I smiled a broad grin beneath the orange, sodium streetlight.
“Actually, I do,” I said. “Let me show you.”
I worked in another homeless hostel in Southwark, a couple of miles away on Crimscott Street SE1 and was now quite familiar with the other homeless services in the area.
“Can I carry your bag?” I offered and pointed down the street in the direction we were heading. He wasn’t actually that far off his destination, but in his tiredness and upset he’d walked past it.
I accompanied him to the homeless hostel front door, lowered his bag to the ground and rang the bell.
When the hostel worker answered the door, I introduced myself and my companion and explained why we were there. Shaking hands with and wishing my new friend the best of luck, I turned and trotted home smiling a broad smile.
I looked up at the clear sky above. “Thanks!”
It may have been a coincidence, but I’ve found that when I pray coincidences happen more often. It felt like God was looking down on this placid evening scene in central London and spotted a young man who was a little lost and not too far away another young man who could help him — if only he was open to listening.
