Confession from somewhere deep in my soul

I can totally relate to Alex Mejias’s song, Where Hope Remains, (to listen scroll to the VERY bottom of this page and stop the playlist and click on Alex's cd cover and it's song #4) since we moved to urban America a year ago so Jon wouldn’t have a long commute to work…honestly, I’m resisting a change God is working in me. I can’t tell you how many times a day I wish I could go back to how I was before -- just living a nice little sheltered privileged life surrounded by TONS of Christian-type people who look and think just like me…doing good for others without really getting involved deeply to where I feel convicted about thinking I’m better than other people and alienated from the rest of people like me. Now I’m haunted by the millions of poor and needy people here in our own city on a daily basis b/c they live in apartments literally right around the corner from us and I’m having a hard time fighting the urge to take my family and flee to the refuge of the suburbs then contribute a few volunteer hours each month to the inner-city cause.

ADDENDUM:

So, like me, you may think...what wrong with that? Well for us, we see that it's easy to just get comfortable with the way things are (totally separate cultures) and even easier to get comfortable with it from a distance, but in reality, things aren't good and the less fortunate need churches that reach them and make sure they have a ride to get there and people that care about them when they do and a place where they feel included rather than just random para-church ministries branching out from rich white churches that have no real intention of becoming multi-racial churches. These lower income neighbors need to see the love of Jesus in their lives and a change in a cycle of poverty and hopelessness that's growing DAILY rather than shrinking and this is done better through hands-on relationships with them, than from giving them money and food and motivational speaker events. Who is the most unlikely person in the whole world to be writing this blog...I can't even believe I'm writing this!?!?

You may also think, like me, you have kids and you are responsible for keeping them safe and raising them right now, not saving the world. I couldn't agree with you more except on one point, I am not responsible for keeping them safe, the Lord is. I could keep them literally in a bubble, and it the Lord allows a bomb to drop on that bubble, I am helpless to intervene...I could bring them to the front lines of WWIII and if the Lord desires to protect us, we will be protected. Nothing happens that he does not allow. And I see myself having less regard for their safety by leaving them in a world of darkness that grows on a daily basis rather than spending my life fighting that evil darkness with the light and love of Jesus. One day, maybe many many years from now, if the darkness is left unchecked by the believers today, it will invade our safe neighborhood pockets in America and it will be too vast to be resisted and we will be in no better condition than those Christian parts of Africa being raped and pillaged...that is not what I want to leave my children and/or children's children's children. Fortunately or unfortunately, Jon’s committed to staying and making a difference and I don’t think God is giving me a way out of this one.