Learning to trust: Service from the margins
Date Posted: Mar 12, 2026.
What does faith mean when life is filled with suffering, uncertainty and injustice? Franciscan friar Br Michael Jacob reflects on ministry among asylum seekers and the homeless — and why trust in God must be the place where service begins.
How do we learn to trust God?
Faith is an exercise in trust.
A vocation isn’t something that is easily explained. We say all sorts of neat phrases or pithy soundbites about it, but what are we really saying?
Perhaps the deeper truth is this: we are slowly learning that we are not the centre of the universe.
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A life of service
I am someone who wants to serve. For the past 14 years I have been a Franciscan friar in the Society of St Francis.
Our life as Franciscan friars is sometimes misunderstood. We may look like a monastic community, when really, we are not. Monks and nuns make a promise of stability, meaning they intend to remain in one monastery or abbey for the rest of their lives.
Friars are different.
We are itinerant. We do not promise to stay in one place forever. Instead, we go where we are called to serve.
I sit writing this in our friary in Alnmouth in rural Northumberland — a place so quiet that you could hear a pin drop from several paces away. Yet cities have also shaped much of my life as a friar: from Byker in Newcastle when I was a novice, to most recently at Harehills in Leeds.
Meeting Christ in the margins
When I arrived at our friary in Harehills, I went with a largely blank sheet of what my ministry would look like.
At the time, the friary was also temporarily home to several destitute asylum seekers. Living alongside these men was a new experience for me — and one of the hardest and best things I have ever been part of.
We lived together.
We ate together.
We spent time listening.
Harehill ranks 103 out of 12,178 parishes, where 1 is the most deprived
- Pensioner poverty: 44%
- 35% of people have no academic, vocational or professional qualifications
- 25% of households live alone
- 28 % of children live in poverty
- Women live 17 years less than the those enjoying the longest lives in in England
We offered friendship, and helped men navigate tricky, and often unjust, systems.
We gave shelter to these men because it was our God-given duty.
The Franciscan call
Franciscans have always been for the poor.
Our founder, St Francis, encountered Christ powerfully among those disfigured by leprosy, and it is in that spirit that we ask, who is a ‘leper’ where we live, and how can we serve them?
My calling was towards the homeless and forgotten, and I knew I wanted to work with them. It’s the kind of knowing that only the Holy Spirit can give, a sense of calling to something that also carries a sense of belonging.
Discerning that call meant trusting God enough to have a go, even when I felt apprehensive.
Joy and sorrow, side by side
What was it like living and working with people in such need and precarious situations?
Like many of the best moments in life, it was both wonderful and terrible. There was deep need and unremitting misery. But there was also humanity, laughter and hope.
How does a Christian hold all of that?
The only way I know is through silence — allowing the experiences we have to pass through us as we become instruments of God’s love.
We must hold those we serve with open hands. Otherwise we cling too tightly, and attachment can break our hearts.
We can only do what God gives us to do for a season, otherwise we’re serving our own needs first.
Seasons of calling
When it was time to leave Harehills, the grief is difficult to describe. But it was only for a season, a moment in God’s time.
That summer, riots erupted in Harehills as they did in other parts of the country. Watching from afar brought a different kind of sadness — the sadness of not being there.
But overwhelmingly the belief that God never abandons us.
Even when we move on, God remains.
Trusting God’s Kingdom
I long to see God’s reign of justice and peace across the whole earth.
Until that day comes, my prayer is that I — and others — might model that kingdom in our actions, and in our trust in God.
He is worth trusting even when we don’t know what He’s doing!