Last year I lived in the same building as this family and really learned a lot from them. Besides having a week old baby, they have a 7 yr old son. He has received the student of the month award this year, and I cannot even begin to describe the look of pride his father had on his face when telling me this news. This family has such a sense of raw, authentic love for each other.
My parents had dreams for my life, as well as for my two older brothers.. As a child they wanted me to grow up in a healthy environment, eat nutritious foods, make good friends, show respect to those around me, and do well in school.
Dan & I
Hangin out with my big brothers...
This couple has similar desires and hopes for their 7 year old son, and 7 day old son. As I sat down with them in their living room today, the father had such a sense of pride in his voice as he talked about his children. Their 7 year old son was so excited to be a "big brother." His Mom was had such a high smile on her face as she talked about the new baby.
I think one of the most beautiful lessons I have learned living in the city is that we do share humanity. Yet, we also create a mosaic of different cultural backgrounds, and traditions to be celebrated.
As Robert Lupton writes so powerfully in his book "Theirs is the Kingdom: Celebrating the Gospel in Urban America."
'I think God must detest sameness. At least he has gone to great lengths to avoid it. Every snowflake, every cloud, every flower is unique. He has created and continues to create an endless variety of tress, bugs, sunsets and beasts. He has created billions of human beings, every one an original. All of nature is an infinite array of individually designed organisms interacting in harmonious praise to its Maker. And humans, created in the very image of God are given the privilege of being co creators with God.
I suspect that one of the results of the fall for humanity was the loss of some of our creativity. Not all of it, of course. We still are quite capable of creating symphonies and paintings and children and other beautiful things. But I think that sin brought with it sameness. Boredom. Monotony. Instead of remaining co creators with God, we opted for making molds. We began making people on our own image, forcing them into conformity. We traded creativity for cloning. We found that we could accomplish certain ends more efficiently by re eliminating faces and personalities and replacing them with numbers and uniforms. Regimentation became our method. We separated human beings into tasks, color, intellect, health, age, sex, and a host of other useful classifications.
Soon bondage and drudgery choked out much of the fun of living. We became isolated from the rich, dynamic interaction in which all creation was to participate. We became so accomplished that we didn't have time to stop and see the loveliness of snowflakes.
The city. A melting pot. Variety packaged together in one place. A collage of humanity. A nightmare to economists. A fright to social engineers. A curse to many.
But the church- how does it view the city? Church growth experts see the city as a problem because its diversity makes homogeneous grouping difficult to achieve on a large scale. Denominations aren't able to replicate their traditional church models here very well. And keeping alive the old city structures is quite a drain on our resources. The city is making us realize that sameness is a failure.
Maybe, just maybe , God will use the city to remind us that all his unique individual masterpieces clustered together in high rises and housing projects and neighborhoods bear a reflection of his original design. Perhaps it will be in the city that the church will rediscover the richness of diversity interacting in hard-earned unity.
I wonder why God has selected for our place of final destiny the City of God!
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