What does it take to quit?

One Roma mother is preparing for baptism on Easter Sunday.  This is a life and death matter for her, something she's been longing to do for years.  Inseparable from her decision to be baptised by full immersion is her determination to quit smoking.  I have never known anyone so desperate for deliverance from an addiction.  As her faith and confidence in God grows, so her hope that his "power will be made perfect in weakness".  Her first smoke-free day came when we went to the "stop smoking clinic" and got professional advice.  Now every day she is £2 richer.  Every year she will be over £700 richer.  That amounts to one month a year living rent free!  But the most powerful motivation comes from feeling the power of the Spirit redirecting her life in the narrow way that leads to life.  There is no room for any of my finely nuanced theological niceities.  It's black and white.

Other Roma have been deeply skeptical and resistant.  But this mother's steely determination to go against the flow has had just the effect I believed it would.  One Roma guy, penniless, hungry for God and desperate to eak out an existence in Luton with his family, has told me he's going to follow his cousins' decision and quit too.  On Monday we'll be at the clinic.

I'm praying that the story of these two Roma quitting smoking will open the eyes of others to the reality of a God who is poised ready to deliver.  "kon si amaro del?"  "Jesus - amaro skepitori!"  "Who is our God?" "Jesus - our rescuer!"  This we sang triumphantly as it blared our over my car speakers the other day.  God brings people out of slavery, EX - ODUS (out of - the place).  The Roma know all about longing for liberation from bad places.  My friends ancestors were slaves for centuries in Romania. And just last Saturday we attended International Roma Holocaust Day in London and remembered the 500,000 Roma who the Nazis exterminated.  But if God can do the impossible and rescue just one person from deep nicotine addiction - often the only solace in seemingly hopeless circumstances - then maybe he can rescue a whole people and bring them into a place flowing with milk and honey.