A Sign and Foretaste of The Kingdom

Christians have always longed for Christ's kingdom to come straight away, and many have worked to try and bring it about. What has been achieved is only partial, and flawed, in practice just a foretaste and a sign of the kingdom to come. But such efforts receive a blessing. The account which follows dates from the 1930s, the time of the economic slump in Britain.

Men fall back upon primitive faith in times of distress and despair, and the years of economic collapse have seen a number of undertakings launched. We may look upon them as small scale efforts to show society what might be done if Christ were called in to deal with its modern problems. As might have been expected, South Wales, with unparalleled unemployment and religion mine-deep in its very soil, has been fruitful ground for those experiments. Consider the story of one of them. The Rhondda Valley cannot support its present population. It could not do it, even if the Welsh coal trade were to regain its former prosperity. Failing the unlikely creation of new industries, therefore, it becomes a question of developing those which have life in them and at the same time promoting migration on an extensive scale. This is not easy at any time; it is doubly difficult when, as is here the case, the surplus men have been bred to one trade (and that a crippled one) while the youths have done no work at all. Allotment gardening and industrial training suggest themselves as palliatives, and they have been encouraged as much as possible, but their limits are painfully obvious. Industrial training, in particular, is of little value unless a way of absorption can be discovered for the trainees. Now a goodwill network, with meshes all over the country, might go a long way to meet this need, and the League of Goodwill conceived a plan whereby unemployed lads in the Rhondda could be taught such trades as would give them a chance of securing work with members in less distressed areas. Building, carpentry, pig and poultry farming, boot and shoe repairing and general agriculture were among the vocations chosen. There was this slight snag at the outset: a training centre was plainly needed, and the League possessed neither site nor funds.

But two workless men had a vision. They saw some ragged, derelict land, up in the hills beyond Penygraig (hard by Trealaw and Tonypandy, with their streets of riotous memory). It was a wiIderness of a place, littered with stone, tufted with coarse grass, foul with the refuse of a disused mine ; but to them it was a fruitful field, tilled by hands which had long been idle. They passed the word on, and its echoes reached London. Somebody rang up Peter Rawlings and asked him to join in praying for forty acres. Rather a startling request, you may think, and certainly something out of the usual. But Peter, barely a fortnight later, was down on those acres, planting. He planted the first of a grove of trees at a house which is called the House O' the Trees, and that house with forty-three acres of land, had come in instant answer to prayer. Once the home of a colliery manager it had been empty since the pit closed down, and its dependent buildings, including a farm, were fast falling into decay. By ways astonishingly smoothed, the League obtained a short lease, and the sum of money involved (it was almost ridiculously small) was promised at once, anonymously. Teams of lads were picked from surrounding townships to come to the centre for training by expert instructors, and a start was made with forty or so. Although it was frankly a venture of faith, a gauntlet thrown down to unbelievers, no sort of religious bias was shown when it came to selecting the venturers. There were two or three youths who were Communists, and whose first idea was to make trouble. They were not debarred, because those in charge of the undertaking knew that the very best thing for Communists was a taste of communal effort.

They were to have no wages, and they were to sleep in their own homes, but they would be given good meals and ample opportunities for recreation. When the land was put under cultivation and the training centre was paying its way, the lads themselves would have a voice in the disposition of any profits. Meantime, those who were entitled to the 'dole' would not suffer any prejudice to their rights, inasmuch as they were genuinely seeking work; and they would be able to earn small sums of pocket money by extra work in the evenings.

The "such as I have, give I" spirit was laid under contribution, and a flow of supplies at once set in. When anything lacked, God was asked to make good the deficiency, and very soon even the doubting Thomases were being thrilled at the ways in which prayer was granted. Everything came that was needed - seeds, implements, stock, transport, and all manner of raw material. One team broke up the land, another started a poultry farm, another devoted itself to pigs (beginning with one named "Lavender") and yet another to building. The mountain farmers began to sit up and take notice. These youngsters were learning so well from their expert tutors (lent free of charge by various authorities) that older hands asked to join their classes and carried the blessing of knowledge farther afield. Crops began to make their appearance, and the first of them, full in the ear, was Hope.

Hope sprang up on ground which had given no promise of any such harvest. It came, for instance, to a lonely tribe of cottagers, who lived within sight of the House 0' the Trees, but out of the eyes and the mind, as it seemed, of all the rest of the world. Nearly all were miners, now without expectation of work, shrunken of muscle in body and soul, existing mainly on what they could grow in their gardens and caring little for aught beside. They watched the taming of the wild land with new interest. Chance conversations took root, contacts were made, visits exchanged, and before very long there were signs of an awakening, meetings for prayer in cottage parlours, songs of praise over converts, plans for a house of worship. The building team got busy, and a Bethel grew on the hillside. It was a wonderful night when they sang "Cwm Rhondda" together there:

Guide me, O Thou great Jehovah,
Pilgrim through this barren land !

A night of gladness in solitary places, with a blossoming desert round about, and streams breaking out in the wilderness. A night when the guidance of God was made very certain, and the Highway gleamed white in the darkness.

The first missionaries have since gone out from that place: by the time these words are bound in a book they will be sowing in barren lands elsewhere, strong in the faith that has come from deep personal experience. The first lads, too, have gone out into ordinary employment and are making good. The grove of trees is extending, for as each lad leaves the House, upright and full of vitality, he plants a tree as the symbol of his new self. With this very end in view,

the House O' the Trees was given its name :
That they might be called trees of righteousness,
The planting of the Lord,
That He might be glorified.

The centre is doing better than merely paying its way. It has found good markets; its teams have been carrying off prizes; it has been able to help a second centre in another part of the Rhondda. Not in spite, but because, of the fact that it had no help or hope save God, it has proved, with unqualified success, that faith like George Muller's, being based on immutable law, must always produce the same results.

Admittedly, however, the House 0' the Trees is a model and little more. Forty acres of hope, grown upon waste Welsh soil, is something for Christians to ponder. It is for you and me, when we utter the words "Thy Kingdom come," to pray that we may have faith and courage to play our parts in its coming. The step-by-step teaching of Jesus is that we should first make this our will, and then subject our will to God, so that it may be accomplished in His way. Now this, quite certainly, involves re-birth. Nothing less can give us the un-selfed mind and spirit. Nothing less can give us the childlike belief. Nothing less, as Jesus told Nicodemus, can bring the Kingdom before our sight. Unless we receive the Kingdom as little children, we shall not enter therein.

For some it is a hard doctrine, as it was to the Jewish ruler. But for those to whom Jesus is real, it is gloriously easy of understanding. All things are possible to him that believeth. Our Father has delivered us from the power of darkness and "translated us into the Kingdom of His dear Son." It is here, at hand, within us. Wherever Jesus is realised, the Kingdom has come already.

Taken from Kingdom Come Hugh Redwood 1934