“God has no power over this hit. God has no power here.”
The man gestured as a royal but the scene that he unveiled was the largest open-air drug market on the east coast-the district Kensington in Philadelphia.
The man then sat down on a fallen milk crate, and while he was about to put the needle in his arm, I looked away. People were everywhere and drugs from the open air.
Without God the dream of New York will becomes. My walk through America proves it
I saw a lady, with what I hope was not a babybuil, stood in a frozen position, hung towards her left side, looked like she was about to fall.
I saw a young teenager with pressed, clean clothes, smoking who knows what, only on a curb.
It was overwhelming, so many people who used drugs without shame or care for passing pedestrians or police.
I heard the man sigh next to me. He had just shot himself. I asked him what he put in his body and he smiled, “The good things.”
“Does the good things have a name?”
“Philly dope. Sleep cut. Tranq dope – whatever you want to call it, man.”
“And you?” I asked. “What’s your name?”
He laughed, his entire face was tightened. Then he started to crave air, attempt to catch his breath, his breathing slowed down and became heavier. Then he looked at me one last time, his words swing: “I told you, God got no power here.”
Chicago’s ‘Smoktop Pastor’ to start with Epic Cross-Country Journey for the benefit of America’s troubled youth
The man bent forward, halfway between sitting and fell to the ground, then he drove into the deepest sleep. I looked better and saw the most disgusting skin wounds on his body. There were open sores and abscesses. It seemed as if his intestines were trying to get through his skin.
I have seen a lot in my life on the south side of Chicago, but something like that. The man I was just talking to – it was not difficult to see that he was only your average Joe. Under his dirt and physical decline, he looked like a university type and a financial brother. But he became addicted to the tranquilizers of the horse and Kensington, the only place with a steady stock, became his home.
But was it true that God has no power here?
I walked through America to breathe new life into the American dream and to breathe new life into God in God. But even I had my doubts when I entered Kensington.
I thought: what would Jesus do here? What would he do? I know he would not reject this hell on earth. He would be there, under the zombies and needles and pipes, just as he was with the lepers, the shifts and sinners in his time.
The struggle for the future of America must start again in places we have written off
In Matthew 9: 12-13, Jesus says: “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But learn and learn what this means:” I don’t want to sacrifice grace. ” Because I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners. “
God’s power is not absent in Kensington – his power rarely resembles what we expect. It is not a lightning bolt or a flood to free up the streets. It is the silent, persistent call for grace, to meet people in their pain.
Kensington has been a drug market since the 1960s, when Philadelphia underwent his great de -industrialization. By the nineties it was known as the heroin capital of America. The rest is history.
Countless numbers of people have come through this small neighborhood that offer their solutions. The new mayor of the city has recently announced a five -phase plan to close the drug market. One part was a huge swing, followed by shorter office hours and more police patrols. Although it is clear that the Hoofdweg, Kensington Avenue, is usually cleaned up, the drug activity has moved to the side streets, where I stand today.
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The only thing, however, that is lacking in all this is the power of Jesus and the almighty Lord. Jesus would sit on that milk crate, look the man in the eyes and look along the swears to the university skid that he had once been. He would touch the inviolable as he did with the leper in Mark 1: 40-42, where he knew that the soul needed much more healing than the body.
From San Francisco’s Tenderloin district to here, the problem is spiritual – our souls need food.
When I come across lost men on my streets on the south side of Chicago, my only goal is to reach their souls and feed them with the Word of God. He works through me, his modest disciple. I have seen the most lost people come back to life with this word, their conviction that takes them higher and higher from their misery to the good life itself.
At a certain moment in their journeys I tell them that “they are the light of the world … Let your light shine for others, that they can see your good deeds and glorify your father in heaven.”
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I have no illusions about what I saw in Kensington, but I believe that God is everywhere and within all of us – even the young man who denied his presence.
I prayed for a long time over his sleepy body. I promised God that I would return before I would leave Philly, find that man and tell him that he is wrong about God – and His power.
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