A Full Life in the Emptiest of Places

Today we reflected on our communities.
We lamented that neighbours are too often strangers who live near us,
And that it's sad when we have to pay people to help us.
We found it strange to think that we live in a culture that maintains such high walls between ourselves and our neighbours, wants so little of God or church, and yet longs so sincerely to be famous, to be known, to have significance.
And yet we also sensed a greater hope,
In which life streams forth from the church,
To the streets, to peoples homes
Into the lives of lonely, disconnected people.
And though we may have secretly thought that no change was possible,
God reminded us who He is,
That the very soil beneath our feet can be changed,
Transformed, restored
If we'll only dig our roots deep into Him.
A salt bush has a capacity to tolerate the most barren of environments
Environments suffering so much degradation from human irresponsibility
And there, in the midst of the lifelessness, it plays a part in rehabilitation
Restoration
And things are changed
All we thought we knew, gives way to the new.

Isaiah 58
9-12"If you get rid of unfair practices,
quit blaming victims,
quit gossiping about other people's sins,
If you are generous with the hungry
and start giving yourselves to the down-and-out,
Your lives will begin to glow in the darkness,
your shadowed lives will be bathed in sunlight.
I will always show you where to go.
I'll give you a full life in the emptiest of places—
firm muscles, strong bones.
You'll be like a well-watered garden,
a gurgling spring that never runs dry.
You'll use the old rubble of past lives to build anew,
rebuild the foundations from out of your past.
You'll be known as those who can fix anything,
restore old ruins, rebuild and renovate,
make the community livable again.