The newspaper headline read, “One Killed in Gang Related Shooting.” Well, I guess this is not a shock. People are killed in gang related shootings all the time. It is a tragic bi-product of a violent life. Gangs are on the rise in every city across this country. The small urban areas are no longer safe from this type of crime. No matter the population, they are coming in and lapping up wayward youth looking for a place to belong. I guess it gives them sort of misguided sense of belonging and order to otherwise chaotic lives.
No the headline did not surprise me. What came, as a shock was the response. My good friend Lynn Ann’s ministry, Aslan Youth Ministries had been working in Asbury Park, NJ for over seven years now. Aslan has been working in the cities of Monmouth County, NJ for over 33 years. I myself was a part of Aslan when the Asbury program was launched. I have walked those streets and played with the children. There are streets that are dark no matter what time of day you venture them. Children run drugs as young as seven years old, just to survive. This is life on the streets. This is the story in, “the hood.” My observation is that this is true of street life in every city I have been to, big and small. When I moved to other parts of the country, I expected it to be different. Maybe, not better, but at least different. Yet, Asbury Park, Roanoke, VA, West Palm Beach, Fl, in all of these places children struggle daily to be just that, children. Innocence is lost, too often hope is gone way too young. Just because the headline made the paper did not mean that the violence had grown from the day before. Families die daily, from hunger, despair, addiction and devastation of the body and soul.
However, within a day of the report all of the volunteers and even the staff involved in Asbury, no longer wanted to go into the streets and pick up the children to bring them to tutoring and bible classes. They would continue to teach, but they would not get the children there. They were afraid. The reality of the daily situation had smacked them in the face and their own mortality suddenly came to light. I can’t say I wouldn’t have been scared. I have had knives pulled on me by 12 year olds and heard gun shots while I am setting up for an after school program. It is frightening. You hold your breath, your heart pounds; you wonder what you are doing there in this very angry place. In your mind you throw in the towel a million times and ask the Lord for a call to a different place. Maybe he could send you someplace cushy for a while? I am not mocking them for being scared. Yet, Lynn Ann had a different response. She did what she has done for over 32 years. She went and picked them up. When everyone else was paralyzed by fear, she did what she always does- She put the children first. Her resolve has always been that this is not her life. It belongs to Christ.
Why? These children aren’t allowed a choice. They don’t get to wake up in a safe bed, on a safe street. Often, the guns are safer than their own homes. There is nothing more agonizing to watch than a life that is void of hope. When someone has given up then they don’t put anyone before themselves. It is a life waiting to die. This is when the anger, alcohol, drugs, pain and hurt envelope them. Their eyes are on one thing, the end. They are eyes that are hollow and shallow. No more tears are cried; the hardened shell has taken them over. When Ezekiel talks of the “heart of stone” this is what it looks like. These are the homes the children of the city grow in. Cities right here in America, in our own back yard.
Lynn Ann exemplifies the passage from 2 Corinthians 5: 13 “If we are out of our mind, it is for the sake of God; if we are in our right mind, it is for you. 14 For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. 15 And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.”
The New King James Version says it this way, “If we are beside ourselves,” and the new Living Translation puts it bluntly, “If we are crazy.” The reality is that sometimes in life we do crazy things for Jesus. We go onto the streets that no one else will go to. We work with families that are forgotten by the world. We tell some stranger about the love of Christ, we comfort the tears of the person behind us in line at the grocery store. We take ourselves out of our comfort zones. Those who hate large crowds teach Bible studies, and those who make a lot of money give it away. The Bible is full of true stories of those who gave away more than they had. Why? We are compelled by the love of Christ. The one who “died and rose again” shows us that our life is no longer ours. For me it belongs the fatherless, the widowed, the hungry, the poor, the broken and the desperate. Without Christ, my life is just death. Those empty souls need to be filled with hope.
“…. 20 We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. 21 God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. “ My life belongs to those children, and their families on Christ’s behalf. I have often said that the youth of the cities are offered extra help but they are never offered true empowerment. True empowerment comes when someone will tell you the truth. A life is changed when they come to grasp, “how, wide and deep and long is the love of Christ,” as it, says in Ephesians. I don’t know if we will ever truly understand how powerful it is to show someone the love of Christ. Go beyond just telling them and walk it out with them.
No, I do not condemn those who won’t drive into those dark areas. They still give their lives for the Lord in other ways. Yet, “As for me and my household we will serve the Lord” In other words, “We will be crazy for Jesus…” I have seen the lives that they cannot escape. I know who offers them the way out. No one has shown them what love that will come for them looks like. I will…
So my question for you today is, What will you do?? Will you be “out of your mind” for the Lord? Will you allow the knowledge that the one without sin became sin for us, so that we might live overtake you? Will we go beyond ourselves this day in whatever way he asks?
I have to ask him everyday what he wants from me. I am no better than the lost, except that I have been found. Today will you join me?
