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