A Mural on a Garage Door

 

One of my Facebook friends, author, mother and wife Kendra Broekhuis, (Brook Hice) has posted recently about her effort to paint a mural on her garage door.  Kendra and her family live in an urban section of Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  The neighborhood is OK, but they knew going in that there were the usual urban problems and issues.  They purposely moved there with the idea of serving and ministering to the community.  Kendra wrote a book about some of that ministry effort from their time living in an apartment complex before they moved to their present home.  Her book, “Here Goes Nothing…an introverts reckless attempt to love her neighbor,” is an honest, yet humorous and compelling look at doing ministry next door.

 Back to the garage door.  Kendra writes that she wanted something on her door that was more than just a mural.  She says,  “But most of all, I wanted to write part of the blessing that our pastor says over the congregation when he dismisses us. Every Sunday he says, ‘Now, in the power of the resurrection, let us go forth and bear witness and seek the peace of Milwaukee as those who love our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.’”  So she enlisted the help of some art students and their teacher from a nearby school to clean up the door and paint a Milwaukee skyline on the door along with a representation of the dismissal blessing as a class project.

 Of course, that thought is taken from Jeremiah 29 where God tells the captive Israelites who are in Babylon to, and I quote:  “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce.  Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease.  Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.”

 I don’t know about you, but sometimes this principle of seeking the peace and prosperity of the place where I’ve been called to live is difficult.  I look around at things and wonder if there is any way that I can have any kind of positive influence on anything.  The political shenanigans, the poverty, the societal breakdowns, sickness & disease, and the general brokenness of life and living weigh heavily on me.

 But then I go back to what God told His people some 2,700 years ago.  Build houses.  Settle down.  Marry.  Have families.  Find beauty and sustenance in the creation.  Seek the peace and prosperity of the place where you have been placed.  This is Jay again.  And, while you’re doing all of these ordinary things, God will work in extraordinary ways through us to redeem His creation, often one person…one family…one community at a time.

 That was exactly what Kendra was doing when, while living in that apartment complex, she reached out to her neighbors with random acts of kindness, encouragement, and the love of God in spite of her inherent shyness and introverted nature.  You’ll have to read the book to find out how that all turned out…and by the way, you’ll be blessed by doing so.

 If we allow the brokenness of the world to put us into states of depression and despair, we are hurting ourselves and failing to carry out God’s purpose for us.  God calls us to be in the world, but not of the world.  Don’t check out of life and living because of the brokenness of the creation.  Tap into the power and grace of God to not only face the world head on, but through the ordinary work of life and living allow God to change and renew His creation and crowning glory of that creation…One  Human  At  A  Time.

 May God go with you through the rest of this week as you seek the peace and prosperity of the place where you have been sent.  Blessings.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We Have To Do Something

 A couple days ago a woman came into the office seeking assistance from us.  She and a friend of hers had been at Sunday services a couple of days before seeking help, but we generally don’t do that on Sunday mornings due to the other responsibilities that we have as a ministerial staff.  We will work with an emergency situation, but this wasn’t an emergency.  We asked them to come in during the week and we’d visit with them about their need.

It seems the woman has been having a rather tough year.  Her 17 year old son was killed while in juvenile detention and her mother passed away in August.  She lost her place to live and was staying in her car.  She had a line on a place to stay but needed money for the rent and deposit.

We don’t do rent or deposits.  We don’t have the resources to do that, and there are a host of both governmental as well as non-profits that handle those kinds of things.  We told her we couldn’t help her with that, but as we talked further, it became apparent that she had no place to go that night or the next several nights and seemed to not have much information on who to contact to obtain the help she needed.  It was also fairly apparent that she was depressed.

We decided to violate one of our benevolence guidelines and put her up in a motel for a few days.  And we did.  We provided a week of rent for a room at the local Motel 6 and I gave her an extensive listing of various government and non-profit places to check with to find help.  I also pulled her aside at the motel out of the presence of her friend, who was a man, and asked if she was being treated OK and that he was not abusing her in any way.  She assured me she was OK.  I know that often women will not honestly answer that question, but I had to ask, letting her know that I was aware of her situation and could help her get out of a situation she may not have wanted to be in.  The motel man let her know with certainty that she was not to entertain visitors or have others in her room under penalty of having to leave the motel.

So we left the situation at that, and I went on about my daily business.  I had, however, a continual nagging feeling about things…not that we gave her a room…not that she had a man friend who I wasn’t sure about…not that she was depressed…but rather I had, and still have, the feeling that we really didn’t accomplish much.  We really didn’t alleviate her situation.  We only postponed some of it for a time.

It's kind of like the example you may have already heard.  Your bathtub is overflowing in your house.  But rather than shutting off the water and opening the drain in the tub, you begin to mop up the mess on the floor, leaving the water running and the drain plugged.  You never fix the root of the issue…you just mitigate the symptoms for a time.

I don’t know what the answer is to homelessness, mental illness, and poverty.  As I’ve said often before, I don’t even know what questions to ask.  But somehow, somewhere, some way, there have to be people who not only know what questions to ask, but some of whom can offer answers that make sense.

One answer I’ve heard that seems to make sense to me is a one-stop shop type of place…a physical space…a place…where those who are homeless can go and right then and there access a wide range of services.  Services like mental health care, prescription drug care, housing services, transportation services, services to help someone find a job or obtain an ID, and whatever other services may prove helpful.  Similar to something we already have like that in Sedgwick County…the Child Advocacy Center…a one-stop place where children who have been abused or trafficked along with their families can obtain a wide range of services.  It is working, and working well.  It is supported by both Sedgwick County and the City of Wichita.  It was sorely needed and is a godsend for many.

As it is, homeless services are available, but are scattered all over the county.  The homeless are shuffled from one place to another, given addresses and phone numbers, and sent on their way.  Many don’t bother to run the incredibly complex gauntlet of social services as it exists now.  Many have no transportation except their feet.  Many have non-working phones or no phone at all.  Adequate access to the Internet is a dream.  They have no mailing address, no money, no place to safely store what few belongings they have, and no sense of time or even of day.  A “Homeless Advocacy Center” would be a huge step in the right direction.

For now, however, that nagging feeling of mopping the floor instead of turning off the faucet will remain, specifically with this woman’s story.  It is my hope that instead of repeatedly saying, “We have to do something,” by those in the seat of power and leadership locally, but never get around to what that “something” is, that someone will say, “This is what we need to work toward and this is how we can do that.”

 

Until then, may God bless us, every one.