Where do you call home?

It's funny...for me, it is here. In this city I am just beginning to discover. In my heart, it is already mine. 
I love it. It has so many issues, so many things that need to be reconciled...but it is mine.
I want to be a part of the reconciliation, of bringing justice and equality.
Inequality criss-crosses the city like chasms created by earthquakes. In the light of the richest of the rich, often the poor go unseen.
 
Open my eyes.


 Hopelessness hangs like smog over the parts of town no one wants to remember.


Teach me how to carry Your name there.


The haves and the have-nots. The satisfied and the hungry. The queen size beds and the park benches-or corners of the sidewalk. The forever grasping, who spend their days chasing their latest fix, longing to fill the emptiness that lurks in the recesses of their silent nights- and the forever unsatisfied who are just as empty, only you can see it. We are all here. Together in this city.

Why are we not out there? Why am I not out there?


Because I am afraid. I am afraid. I am afraid of having to face the kind of pain that ravages this city while we turn a blind eye, comfortable in our ignor-ance. If we wanted to, we would see. The haunted eyes. The bone-weary souls. The hunger that is never filled. But I am afraid. I am afraid breaking the status quo too much. I am afraid of how it will hurt. I would rather protect my heart. I keep being reminded recently that it is easy to give of our words (what do they mean without actions, anyway?), our money (because there's more where that came from), our stuff (because we have so much it doesn't matter) our "good intentions" (which are truly nothing at all)- but it is hard to give of ourselves. We only have one heart. And with that heart, we are to live our lives. And so if what we call compassion doesn't hurt-I'm realizing that it's empty. 

I am afraid. And I don't want to be. I wish I was brave, I wish I was strong...but I am not. I am not.  

I am not enough for this. I never will be. I am clueless as to help, what to do, how to deal with the brokenness that surrounds me.

Because the truth is it takes a God to mend broken hearts. It takes a God to love recklessly, give endlessly. It takes a God to reconcile the irreconcilable. 

His name is Yahweh. I am not Him. 


But He is in me. He is with me. And I'm praying that day by day, He will teach me how to lay myself down on His altar and die, so He can be what I am not. So He can change this city through the hands that are here-my hands.