Cities

The title of my blog comes from the lyrics of this song by Carolyn Arends. (I used to have that CD - wonder what happened to it? Did I loan it to anybody reading this?)

I live in a town - a city, really - that many would call God-forsaken. It's really not much different from hundreds of other cities in the third world - overcrowded, without enough resources to manage all the people who have flocked to it, thinking its streets are paved with gold. They aren't. Lots of them aren't paved at all, and even the ones that are paved are full of garbage.

But God is here; He didn't forsake this city. Bono said it well recently: "God is in the slums, in the cardboard boxes where the poor play house . . . God is in the silence of a mother who has infected her child with a virus that will end both their lives . . . God is in the cries heard under the rubble of war . . . God is in the debris of wasted opportunity and lives, and God is with us if we are with them." (You can read the whole transcript of Bono's speech here.)

We look forward to a city, and we know it will be much better than this one. Dennis Kinlaw wrote: "The master Artist designed our world to begin in a garden, and a garden is a place of order and beauty - a place of aesthetic and physical nurture. He designed the world to find its fulfillment in a city, not one like our cities, but the Holy City in which there will be no suffering, no pain, no sorrow, and no heartache. It will be clean, beautiful, and full of life."

Meanwhile, let's pray for our cities. From The Book of Common Prayer:

"Heavenly Father, in your Word you have given us a vision of the holy City to which the nations of the world bring their glory: Behold and visit, we pray, the cities of the earth. Renew the ties of mutual regard which form our civic life. Send us honest and able leaders. Enable us to eliminate poverty, prejudice, and oppression, that peace may prevail with righteousness, and justice with order, and that men and women from different cultures and with differing talents may find with one another the fulfillment of their humanity; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen."

Sure, it's asking a lot. But "there are no hopeless circumstances."