Friday, March 11

I am going to send you what my Father has promised; but stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.

Luke 24:49

It's 5:20 a.m. on Easter morning and I’m sitting in an old Pennsylvania farmhouse. Its thick walls protect me from the winds that lash the trees outside. I'm snuggled into a rocking chair sipping hot coffee as I watch the moon and wait for the sun to rise. Soon the first light of dawn brightens the sky, and as the curve of the sun appears the unknown threats hiding in darkness become trees, buildings and hills. I think of the verse in John which says, “The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.”

Walking into the city is like walking into the dark places before the dawn's light. Imagination peoples every corner with fearful things. But when light is brought into that darkness, fearful shapes become ordinary places and people huddled together against the dark, trying to make their own light.

As a participant in a six week Lenten Explorations program, I experienced the city of Detroit as a celebration of people who help others find the light of God within themselves so that they need never walk in darkness again.

When our girls turned sixteen, we filled their lives with celebration and loving affirmation of the women they were becoming. In the shadow of Tiger Stadium a young man arrived home on his sixteenth birthday only to find his parents had put his bed in the trash and him out on the streets. The Barnabas Youth Opportunities Center is there for him and other like him.

In southwest Detroit teenagers who have been failed by their families, schools, and government create their own family, religion, community and stability in gang life. When my girls are deciding what colleges to attend or what careers to pursue, these young people will just be trying to stay alive. When my girls leave for college, one in five of these young people will be either dead or in jail.

The wind still wails around the walls of the farmhouse. I could stay safe and warm and secure inside, but I put on my boots, pull a coat over my pajamas, and prop a note against the coffee maker. The note says, “Don't call the cops. I’ve walked out to meet the dawn.” As Easter people, isn't that what we’re called to do? We are called to meet the dawn of a new day, walking hand-in-hand with the homeless sixteen year-old, with the desperate youth who build community in the life and death existence of gangs, with the teen-aged mothers, with the young people devoid of dreams or hope or even the sure knowledge that the will live beyond their teen years. They are children; living life in the only way they know; using the only tools they have been given. They are children modeling their lives on what they see around them. They are OUR children. What do we want them to see? As Christians we are compelled to help them find the light in their darkness. God walks the streets of the city with them. God calls us, as Easter people, to walk there too.

Creator God, open our eyes to the precious lives of people who live and work, suffer and triumph, hurt and heal in the cities of our world. We pray especially for the children who are fearful, hopeless and lost. We pray for the children who defy all odds to transcend the darkness in their lives. Send us to join with all those who would carry the light of your love into every dark corner, until all the shadows are driven away and our cities are ablaze with Easter light.

Bev Schneider

from the 1995 Lenten Devotional