When death is a fact of life (From St Albans & Harpenden Review)

When death is a fact of life

6:01am Thursday 26th January 2012

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My church in St Albans has developed a link with Vasco.

No, that’s not a multi-national company or a Government quango. He’s a real guy from Lusaka in Zambia.

We’ve been sending teams to build a school there – and in the process we met Vasco.

He came over to England in January and we gave him the platform one Sunday so he could tell us his story. Some story!

He was a street kid who survived by being tough. He used a knife. He was like crowds of other kids with no home, no roof over his head.

He said that in that kind of life, in that kind of city and in that kind of country you are never far from death. Someone you know will die most weeks.

Life expectancy is about 40 in Lusaka compared with 80 in St Albans and Harpenden. Death is simply a fact of life.

But Vasco is different today.

You wouldn’t guess his background as you strain to listen to this mildly spoken, humble man tell of his work seeking to get kids off the streets. His life was turned around through people who were doing just that.

They fed and clothed him but, above all, they loved him. And they told him the Good News about Someone who has since transformed Vasco’s life through his death 2000 years ago.

Someone who never even made it to 40, let alone 80.

Someone whose violent death is not so much a fact of, but a means to, life. Real life.

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