It'll be Alright.

Sometimes I listen to Nico and it means much more than it once could have.  Music laden with drug related overtone near streets laden with drug overtone.  Talk of friend’s addictions wrapping up.  Sometimes I feel guilty that I don’t relate quite as much with our friends on the streets as some people here. I think something in me can be afraid.  So many people from so many pasts I’ve never understood.  I know it’s absurd really, but sometimes I think to myself, am I worthy to speak into their lives?  I envy sometimes people who come and minister, seeing the scratch of the surface; seeing the brokenness, but not the continuance of it.  It can seem so easy when you can simply say that it’s a broken world.  But when you’ve observed after a while, you see that these people have endured things far beyond what I’ve ever even been challenged with.  Would I be in their same place?  Would I have crumbled under the weight of the world around me?  I suppose it’s just as easy for any seed to be overtaken by the weeds of life as the next.  

I pray frequently in thanksgiving.  Thanksgiving that God blesses me to be able to have some contact with our friends on the streets.  My life has seen such a brand new definition to “Blesses are the poor in spirit” and “Blessed are the meek.”  In our segmented, capitalistic society, where we honor democracy as a great, but often are really protected by our money, such a great and immense amount of people won’t eve, wouldn’t even, will never even see the trouble we have here in the Tenderloin.  God opening a door into someone’s heart can be just as powerful as opening a door in our society to see.  How often do we see poverty?  Canton had three or four guys roaming around if you weren’t looking; Hartville almost none.  We hide our ‘shameful’.  If not by city reform, pushing via gentrification into one neighborhood, then by social norms that you ‘just don’t show your face here’ through repetition of embarrassment.  But Jesus sees them.  Jesus Christ, the Christ of crucifixion, but the Christ of the destitute.  Our destitute may not be like His, but they still are.  Christ burns through with light in my life to the truth lying under the surface of our oft quaint lives.  Does He for you?