Although the job hunt was far from successful, Jess and I had the privilege of joining a ministry group called Urban Hope this afternoon for a children’s service in Kensington, PA. Kensington is a suburb of Philly, obvious by the colonial houses turned slum.
I must admit that after church this morning, I had little motivation for anything, let alone urban evangelism in cold, grey rain. I was irritable about the smallest things, a sure sign of Satan at work; it’s amazing how dreadful ministry seems before the fact. It’s as if every fiber of my being was sore, my mind keen with excuses for reaching to the pillow rather than reaching to the lost.
But we went, hesitantly and stubbornly, and it was good for my heart. Many years ago my heart burned with a passion to reach inner-city kids, and on this damp, ashy day on C Street, the Spirit swept across the ember and it began to glow again. The graffiti on the buildings, the piles of trash in the streets—nothing compared to the emptiness of the hearts. I even watched a young man hand off a plastic bag full of white stuff in exchange for a wad of bills—one needing a fix, the other needing the cash, both needing a Savior.
So we rounded up some children on this bleak day and bused them back to the church, where the leader explained Christ as the “door”… thirty kids sitting for a moment on the Rock of Ages while a surge of lost souls swirled around us on those cold, cramped streets.
