Interesting seeing how God protects us when we choose to live for, work for and serve Him rather than ourselves. A while back I lived in Walworth, just a couple of roads away from the goings-on detailed in the following quote, submitted anonymously to The Guardian earlier this evening:

I turned up at the Morrisons supermarket branch on Walworth Road, SE17, at about 6.50pm only to find the place shuttered up and one of the few members of staff remaining by the back door telling me that they had closed early as it was due to “go off” in Peckham, four miles away, at 7pm.

I left and dropped into a bar to pass on ‘the news’ only to see BBC World footage on the TV, taken from a helicopter by the look of it, of nearby Lewisham burning, and Peckham soon after. Within minutes, fives and sixes of masked blokes were running past the bar and through to the main street, a handful dumping cars outside the bar on double yellow and charging through to the nearby thoroughfare, which the police had blockaded at the north end in the vicinity of the Tankard pub, along the side road from the police station.

Buses were stopped and abandoned, I’m told, and looters were laying siege to Lynne’s Electrical, jewellery and pawn shops, the Carphone Warehouse, Foot Locker and later M&S and finally Argos, and that’s all that I heard. Others will have been done, although the Turkish supermarket was apparently left alone.The pie and mash shop in the sidestreet of Westmoreland Road was also entered and trashed

Young men, 90% of them black, and the occasional middle-to-old aged black woman, then spent the next hour or so running through the sidestreets with their pickings, the first of them with widescreen TVs, boxes that contained kettle-sized electrical goods, trainers and the like from Foot Locker, and M&S clothing. A white 20-something one with a bad limp came to the door of the bar to ask them to call him a cab. The request was declined.

Some of the looters dumped gear in nearby gardens and returned to the Walworth Road, others had filled wheelie bins with whatever and were pushing them home, while the professionals returned to the double-parked cars (BMWs and the like, tinted windows in at least two cases) before replacing their masks and returning for any pickings they may have missed.

Innocent people turned up at the bar who had been diverted around the sidestreets, one telling me he saw a gang of about 10 black youths throw a man off his motorbike at Albany Road traffic lights before another rode it on in the direction of Camberwell. then the cyclists around him at the traffic lights who tried to help were attacked with weapons by hooded and/or masked vigilantes coming from the vicinity of adjacent Burgess Park.

People in the bar who lived on the other side of the Walworth Road were ringing relatives/kids on the other side of it not to open their doors to anyone – it was anarchy in the literal sense of the word.

Two police vans finally made it up to Argos at about 8.30pm, which dispersed the people in and outside there sporadically. They had been in there for about an hour though people were still loitering in nearby streets with intent at nightfall. We can only hope that nothing is torched by late arrivals who find themselves empty handed. That, or the police regain control of the thoroughfare.

What I find most amazing, is that had I not married and moved away, then after the day I’ve had at work today I’d have walked home. To Walworth. At that time. And gotten completely caught up in it all. There are no coincidences.  God knows what He’s doing, even when I don’t know anything…

I can only hope and pray that such protection continues to be afforded while the authorities bring things under control.