the plan

So, this is my story of today. It's a good one, a long one, but a good one.

Picture the scene. I'm stressed and tired, confused and lonely, disaffected with church and Christians and needing a stiff drink.

Earlier today I am told that I will have to go on my hands and knees to get my overdue essay marked. It's unlikely that the department will refuse, but if they do, I am royally boned. To express my frustration at the world and myself, I partake in the irresponsible and highly illegal permanent removal of one shopping trolley from Tesco. Consider that an 'up yours' for not paying me my overtime, bitches. I am avenged.

Having hauled far too much shopping and our sorry freezing asses back up Mount Egham, dodging sirens and generally being furtive, I headed to the pub for some ritual sorrow drowning.

And it all gets a bit weird, and lovely. I keep having these rushes of emotion for my uni buddies, where I want to just grab them all in a giant, crushing hug and keep them all forever. Before you ask, I get that feeling when I'm sober too, so there. Tonight I'm chilling with Gaz, Sam, the other Sam and Toby. I bump into Penny, Strat, Rachel, Ellie and Wil. I love everyone.

It's rock night at the Stumble Inn, and they keep playing songs from the Ag. Suddenly, equally strong, the desire to run back to Yateley like my ass is on fire, to grab my friends there and crush them too. I want Liz, Paul, Martin, Stacey, Rob, Andy, Mike... I want them too.

And there's all these other emotions too, and I'm not entirely sure what I want a lot of the time. Least of all tonight. Gaz and Sam want to know why we get obsessed with people. I wish I could tell them.

And I discover Mini Guinness shooters, and it all gets a bit fuzzy. This becomes relevant later in my story.

At the bar, talking to an old friend from college who goes here. He the cynic, he the rampant atheist, he wants to meet up for coffee. When? Sunday? Sunday I'm busy, I'm off to church. Church? he says, I don't believe but I keep getting this urge, I really want to go. Come with me, I say, that's what we can do! I'm drunk and I think this is the funniest thing ever, that I want moral support at church and here it is, in the most unexpected form possible.

I totter back to my seat. I think, do I want to go to St Johns on Sunday? Given my tendency to walking out, given that I don't feel right there, is it right that this guy's first taste of church is a place I don't particularly want to be? I cast my mind back to an email earlier today, from a girl from a different church, how am I and how's faith going? That church...yeah, maybe we'll go to that church.

Drunk. Probably going to get more drunk. Can only get more emotional. Hullo to later opening hours. I can feel myself slipping into a stupid mood, a destructive mood, so I send up a silent prayer. Father, please do something about this situation...

It's about then, midnight, that the people in the booth behind us get up to leave. I turn round for some reason, to see a red hoodie with the word Jesus on it. Uh? Closer inspection reveals John 10:10 - "I have come that they may have life, and have it more abundantly." Uh?

Excuse me, mate, are you a Christian?

Stealing the trolley wasn't especially spontaneous, in that Est suggested about half an hour before we actually did it, and Kate and Endrit did it yesterday. This was spontaneous.

Yeah, I am a Christian.
Oh right, me too, are you in the Christian Union?
Yeah, in fact, we're about to go on a prayer walk.
Really? Where? How long for?
Yeah, round campus, now, til 1.
Can I come with you?

Somehow, I'm making poor excuses to the boys and leaving the pub with a group of people I've never met. This is stupid, I don't explain myself and the boys are quite rightly worried to see me wander off with some guy. I walk up to their car while one of them gets a jacket and then I'm walking through the woods to Founders with the red hoodie guy, whose name I don't even know. This, I think, is even more stupid than the trolley thing.

But it's not, it's really not. We walk around Founders and the rest of the campus, praying for RHUL and its students and employees. I feel completely at ease with them, enough so that I pray out loud for the first time in a considerably long time. How much of this is due to alcohol I'm not entirely sure yet. Between prayers, we get to talking. These guys are from the Journey church, the other church, the one I just decided to take my mate to.

They have a service on Sunday, would I like to come along? Would I ever. They're a small church, a house church, about 30 people, mainly students, only a year old. Would I like to give it a try?

We walk to the back of the Geology department, across the newly frosted grass and mud and climb up a fire escape. This bit, past Geology, is the best view on campus. I've been thinking this for two months and yet it's never occurred to me to walk round and see it fully. At the top of the fire escape I look up and see the moon first, a slightly red sky, hundreds of stars, so clear. The lights of London.

They're saying over there is terminal 5 and over there is Canary Wharf and there is London, a giant smear of orange and red lights across the countryside. I didn't know you could see that from Egham.

I take numbers, they take mine, we go our separate ways. And I'm as sure as ever that things don't just happen, that there is reason and a plan behind everything that occurs in our stupid little lives. And I'm as sure as ever about grace, that picks up pissed little girls and bumps them into exactly the right people at the right time.