The beginning of a breakthrough...?

As September began drawing to a close, I found myself once again facing the prospect of imminent homelessness. These past six months have been so unstable, with my not finding a new home and having to move to new temporary accommodation every couple of weeks. Then, something very interesting happened last week.

I was preaching in the morning service at church and I mentioned that our enemy, the devil, will try to use the difficult circumstances of our lives to tell us lies about the character of God. If we're ill, he'll try to tell us that God can't heal. If we pass through some trauma, he'll whisper to us that God doesn't protect. If we're homeless, he'll try to convince us that God doesn't care and that He isn't a Provider for us.

A visitor to the church heard me give the example of my own situation and she came to speak to me at the end of the service. "I have an apartment that I'm not using at the moment," she said. "You're welcome to live there until you find something more permanent."

And so, for the first time in this homeless journey, I find myself with the prospect of having short term accommodation that can be for a few months instead of only for a few weeks. It will give me a small measure of stability and relieve me of the stress that comes from never knowing where you're going to be living next week.

There are plenty of things about this little apartment that are not ideal:

• it's on the other side of the mountain range, 30km away in the coastal town of Fuengirola... so I'll be quite far from everyone and everything that I know.
• it's in an area of narrow pedestrian streets near the beach, so the nearest places to park my car (apart from pay-by-the-minute beach parking) will be about a mile away.
• it's on the second floor, without a lift, so carrying my suitcase or my shopping up all those stairs will be quite a challenge.
• it's only one floor of a little house that's been divided into three, so there's no separate bedroom; the sofa bed is set up permanently in the cute little living room.
• because it's furnished, my own furniture and books will need to stay in storage for now.
• it's in a street that's likely to be noisy with tourist restaurants and bars. (A policeman acquaintance warned that he'd been called out a few times to break up fights!)
• there don't seem to be any places nearby where the dog could run off-lead...

Yes, there are plenty of reasons that could make you say that this is not an ideal place to live... and yet I feel incredibly thankful for this medium term change from our nomadic lifestyle. I see it as God's provision while I continue my search for longer term accommodation, and I want to embrace the quirks and strangeness of it as a new kind of adventure.

It means, for example, that some travel will be possible for me again, as I'll have a place to leave my clothes and stuff while I am gone. I have two short ministry trips planned over the remaining months of the year, as well as a visit to my family in Scotland.

And so a new adventure begins. Next week, I'll have been in Spain for fifteen years... but I've never lived in a coastal town in a tourist area. I'll continue to look for a new home on the other side of the mountain, but I'm grateful for this little apartment that can be my base for a while.