Childlike Faith...

"The people brought children to Jesus, hoping he might touch them.  The disciples shooed them off. But Jesus was irate and let them know it: 'Don't push these children away.  Don't ever get between them and me.  These children are at the very center of life in the kingdom.  Mark this: Unless you accept God's kingdom in the simplicity of a child, you'll never get in.'  Then gathering the children up in his arms, he laid his hands of blessing on them."

Mark 10:13-16 (The Message)

         I was reminded of this verse a few days ago while serving on the streets of mid-town Manhattan.  On Wednesdays I am assigned to lead the outreach at Chelsea Park, at the intersection of 28th Street and 9th Ave.  Without a doubt this is a tough site.  The primary makeup of the site is homeless men.  It is a transient community that lives for one thing: survival.  I often say that if someone isn't mentally unstable before they become homeless give it a year and they will be.  The drug of choice for most of these men is "hopelessness" (but often times medicated with alcohol).  Without hope comes little desire for change.  These are men (and some women) who have been dealt some very bad hands for years and have become hardened to the core because of it.  My main function at this site is not to get people into shelters or rehabs, but to give these men and women something to smile about and something to hope for. It's not a place one would normally expect to see a childlike faith, but sometimes I find myself humbled in the oddest of places.  As a Christian I think way too much.  I dwell on things I shouldn't and often ignore the simple things right in front of me.  This past Wednesday I was reminded of a faith that I aspire to possess.

        I became friends with a woman named Ruth almost immediately after I started serving at Chelsea Park.  She is an elderly woman who has very little.  Every week she comes to me for her prayer.  And every week I pray that she would realize her value in God's eyes.  About a month ago I prayed that God would give her something to smile about.  The very next day she came across a hamster that she had found.  Immediately she took it home and adopted it as her own.  God had answered our prayer.  She came to me the next week wearing a big smile and excitedly told me about God's gift to her.

       Now if you are anything like myself something this small is often easily dismissed, as well as theologically and logistically explained.  But the Kingdom is not made up of people who dismiss the simple things in life.  Nor can it be theologically articulated by the great minds of this world.  The Kingdom, this childlike faith, travels outside of anything this world can offer.  

       As I was praying with Ruth this past Wednesday I prayed also for her hamster.  A miracle easily missed by all, except those who possess that childlike faith... Like Ruth...   

Ruth and I praying.

   

              

Looking Forward... Looking Upward...

        For those of you that read my blog you know that I mainly tell stories.  I'm going to stray away from that this time and share a little bit of what God has been doing in my heart over the summer.
        For as rewarding and exciting as it is to be an urban missionary is, it does take a toll on one's spirit.  Often times when people ask me to describe my work I say it is a mixture of social work and street pastoring.  Although this is true there needs to be a balance between the two in order for us to successfully minister to those in need.  I have found this balance to be incredibly difficult the past few months.
        The men and women that we see everyday are truly the lowest tier of society.  They are men and women who are "unemployable", who know the "system" better than anyone, they've been in and out of every program out there, their families have given up on them, our churches have given up on them, and often times they've given up on themselves.  And in this state of being strung out on drugs, sex, ignorance, violence, anger, and hopelessness we roll in, week after week, month after month.  This summer has been tremendously hard on my soul.  I've seen women beaten by their pimps, men overdosing on the street, families living in warehouses, violence plague communities, and men and women who continually choose a lie over the truth, death over hope.  Subconsciously I have been asking myself where Christ was in all of this.  In the midst of all this questioning, the balance between social worker and street pastor became skewed.  I began to rationalize in my head the suffering I see.  And in my simple minded logic I began to lose hope.  I never questioned Christ's presence in all this suffering, but in an attempt to rediscover hope I started to cling onto the social work aspect of what we do.  I dusted off my old books and magazines about how we could build a better world (all in the name of Christ of course).  But in this endeavor I still found no hope.  We can build nicer looking neighborhoods, but the drugs don't leave.  We can refer people to shelters, but the internal homelessness remains.  We can create rent controlled apartments, but the shootings continue.  Through all this wrestling I finally came to the realization of one thing: this world is broken and the world's answers and solutions are even more broken.  Which of course made me more depressed because I wanted so baldy for these systems to work.  But without the redemptive power of the cross of Christ social justice is a sham.
        I wish that I could share with all of you some divine answer to all of Newark's problems, but I don't have one.  I do know Jesus though.  And in the midst of my depression and search for hope He was there waiting for me.  And although I still see the same hopelessness every week, I still manage to cling to Him.  Without Him we are nothing.  Without an eternal reconciliation of one's soul to Christ they will bounce from program to program their entire lives.  But its okay.  As I stated in a previous blog post its a simple journey from a -17 to a -16.  One day we'll reach that perfect ten.  And Christ will be there waiting for us with a big smile when we do.  But for now we walk and somehow He walks with us too, all the way to the end.  He has not abandoned us although at times it may seem like it.  He just shows up in ways that we never expect.
       There is a song by John Mark McMillan that I believe describes Christ's presence in our mess.  I want to share it with you.  For those of you who have read this I thank you.  I'm not even sure if it makes sense, but in a nutshell this is my heart.  Pray for us.  Grace & Peace....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8X8-mAlaVcA