It's been a strange few days for me. I have just returned from several days away visiting my parents in South Wales. It's been a great time, laughing, remembering, chatting and sharing. Yet in the midst of the holiday I have been waiting news on a significant grant application that Oxygen submitted to the Youth Sector Development Fund (YSDF) back in March.
This was the largest grant that Oxygen had applied for worth around £400,000 over several years. We had been successful with our Expression of Interest (EOI) and had been invited to submit an application as 1 of the last 200 organisations across the UK applying for 1 of 70 awards due to be handed out. The final stage of application required 39 pages of proposals, suggestions, budgets and business plans. When confronted with what was required I spent time thinking and praying it through, eventually deciding to invest the time energy and ideas believing we had a good chance for being successful. Other grant applications were held off and focus was given to this mammoth task. Over several weeks I took time out to compile our bid. With three days to go I was proud to submit our application early, pleased to hand it in, finally grateful to get it off our hands!
Then the waiting came, the hope, dreams and questions for what might be. April 24th was D day, right in the middle of my holiday. Then we were due to hear if we had been successful with this the final stage of application. We would get an email inviting us to a moderation meeting where we would put the final pieces in place. Throughout the day I checked my email, just in case, hoping for news, waiting for a response from YSDF. That email never came and we heard nothing. The absence was deafening, no news was sadly bad news – it doesn't appear that we are going to be successful and the grant will go elsewhere in the country
Looking back over the last few days musing on that process I have been caught with how the process has been both before, during and after the application. Leading up to the application we were able to dream, to explore, to hope and ask God for ideas. Then we have lived by faith, poised in expectation for what might be, eagerly anticipating a good result. When that result didn't come the challenge to faith was do I give up or do I go on? Ultimately whose application was this, more importantly whose work is Oxygen's? If God wants this work to carry on then he will provide the means whether that is through a grant, donation or even money manna from Heaven. Our job as staff is to follow the cloud by day and the fire by night, following the path that God is leading us on, taking the journey through the dry and desert places, but knowing that there is a promised land ahead.
So I return to work tomorrow, brief holiday over, Oxygen's finances uncharged by the anticipated grant but adventurously looking forward to where God will lead, where he will provide and which young people will discover and follow him along the way.
