My City

Recently there has been a crime wave in my neighborhood.  Sadly this happens to some degree every holiday season because money for presents, travel, and family gatherings has to come from somewhere. So, crime increases.  What is different this year is the reaction I'm seeing from the people in my neighborhood.   There's a variety of responses, but almost all of them are pat answer to a complex pain.  The nature of the responses ranges from trying to increase security to wild racism.  The question, " what would jackson be like without black people?" is actually something that has been asked.  Most commonly, though, is the plan or talk to escape to the neighboring suburbs and just not deal with the problems in our community. We all want easy, simple, quiet solutions to pain.  Blame on one group of people, retreating deeper into your own home, and trying to leave completely are all over simplified answers that make us feel falsely empowered.  Reality is these completely avoid the issues of crime, hate, and pain.

The reality is there is no pat answer, no set up, no formula to solving pain; let alone solving a rise in crime.  Job was never given a reason on why he lost everything and was made to go from being as respected as a king to looked down upon while laying in the ashes of his former life.  The only response God gave was asking Job, " Do you know who I am?"  He simply reminded Job of who he was, never explaining why he allowed things to happen.  Pain makes us wrestle with the goodness of God, it makes us wrestle and find our own response to life, and it makes us look in the eyes of the people causing us pain and allows us to see the deepest parts of our own heart.  Perhaps we should, as a culture, take a look at how we have effected and created a lot of the cultural systems that are perpetuating our current problems.

I wish there was a reason I could hold up and say, " see! this is why I love Jackson and why we all should love Jackson."  Sadly, I can't find any reason to do that.  I love jackson, I love Mississippi, I love my neighborhood.  I know a dozen people who have been car jacked, I know a dozen houses that have been broken into, I've had a gun held to my head only a few miles from my house, but six years later I am still here.  In all honesty, I am not always sure why I am here when people asked me why I am still in Jackson.

What I do know is the city is very broken, very poor, and very needy.  I see a more honest view of myself when I look at the city than when I look at the mirror.  I am broken, I am needy, I need you to reach out to me and remind me I am a person.  I need you to be my neighbor and remind me that I am human every morning when I walk out my door.  I have a wonderful wife, wonderful friends and family closer than blood.  They became part of me when I was and still am at my weakest.  These wonderful people never handed me a few god bless you's, a meal, and some cash then left me to piece together the rest of my life with hands that were already tired.  They became my legs, they were my hands, they were my strength when I was almost lifelessly tired.

I am jackson.

Dear Mr.Christian, you claim salvation through God becoming you.  You have salvation because of God's incarnational ministry to you.  You killed Jesus while he was a man.  He became a man so you could know him better.  Jesus drew close to people who hated him, who beat him, who killed him.  Think about the implications of Jesus becoming one of the people who killed him.  Think of the implications of people becoming part of the community in south and west Jackson instead of leaving when pain or suffering becomes apparent?

Jesus moved from one world to another to reach you and me; leaving heaven and born into earth.  We refuse to move neighborhoods to reach someone desperate. When you flee from the sight of pain or darkness it doesn't leave.  No matter where you go or what you say everything still exists that existed before you left.  Perception and proximity doesn't change reality.  Leaving means you no longer have a voice in the direction the community is going in and one day the suburbs you live in are going to encounter to same problems.  The reality of human suffering is always one step behind us no matter how far and fast we run.  Sooner or later we all have to accept this and wrestle our own response to human suffering.  There's no need to agree with me.  I'm not here to persuade you to my side, but i am asking you to please no longer ignore this question and find your response.

Numb. That's how I feel
an absence of feeling
a lack of emotion that steals
a thief that takes what is real

Take a look at pain
stare into it's eyes
as i become weak
it leaves a mark; a stain

I want to scream
To ask, " why"
But please remember
" do you know who i am"

I created the earth
I always loved you
I planned you from birth
Rest, Know that is true.