I often take Ruby (9) and Rosie (7) on bike rides through the center of our city. We did it this morning. It’s only a few blocks from our house and the visual landscape speaks of so much beauty and so much brokenness.
We ride through homeless encampments where neighbors are navigating addiction, mental health issues and impossible obstacles to restoration. This is the “hidden” part of the city that the San Diego marketing campaigns give everything to keep from view.
As we ride, we pray for these beautiful souls. And we pray that we will always have the eyes to “see” beyond what we are taught to see.
Just one block away, we ride through the high-rise condos filled with many whose bellies are so full of privilege there is no more room to take in the pain and plight of their neighbors. We talk about how easy we can fall victim to this blindness and how often we do.
We pray for these for these beautiful souls. And pray that God will keep us from being inoculated by the poison of the status quo.
It’s a sacred, everyday kind of liturgy. It wakes us up to what is real. Which is really all that following Jesus really is. It’s “waking up” to the reality that all things are being made new and it starts with us. This is what Jesus was talking about on the streets and shores of the Galilee when he said, “Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand!”
Wake up! And, may we remain awake to all that is beautiful and all that is broken around us.
God is making all things new. And we get to be part of it.
Jon Huckins – Co-Founding Director of The Global Immersion Project
Jon is the Co-Founding Director of The Global Immersion Project; a peacemaking training organization helping individuals and communities move toward conflict equipped to heal rather than to win. He writes for numerous publications including USAToday, Red Letter Christians, Sojourners, and RELEVANT, and has written two books of his own; his latest being Thin Places: Six Postures for Creating and Practicing Missional Community. His upcoming book, Mending the Divides: Creative Love in a Conflicted World, releases September 2017. Jon has a master’s degree from Fuller Theological Seminary in theology and ethics. He lives in San Diego with his wife, Jan, three daughters (Ruby, Rosie & Lou) and one son (Hank) where they co-lead an intentional Christian community seeking to live as a reconciling presence in their neighborhood of Golden Hill.
Connect with him on Twitter, Instagram or his personal blog jonhuckins.net