Miracles & Hope

This past Sunday I attended Eikon Community Church’s worship service. It was held in this adorable little church right off of 360. That adorable little church is the perfect wedding chapel. Just sayin’…

Anyway, this church does church completely different than anything I’ve ever seen. They are a church that spends more time in small groups than they do as a congregation. For three weekends out of the month they serve in mission groups. These groups solely serve the community… “serving as the hands and feet of Jesus.” On the second Sunday of every month they hold a worship service and their pastor speaks. There are so many creative elements: storytelling, drama, music, poetry, etc. It was a phenomenal experience.

The setting: The oh so adorable lil white church at around 5:30pm (it’s just starting to get dark.) In the front of the church there are numerous white candles lit-some tall, some small, some fat, some thin & strung across the ceiling are white lanterns hanging at various heights. The ambiance was perfect.

The people: The majority of the people there are in their twenties and going on into early thirties. Some single. Some married. Some with very small babies (A-D-O-R-A-B-L-E.)

My experience: I sat in awe for most of the service. I LOVED the music. The people were extremely nice. They were welcoming but they didn’t hover. Which I like. I think they have around 40 people that are regulars within this church. It’s small and very intimate.

The pastor’s wife got up to share her testimony in working along side people who are living in inner city Richmond. She and her husband grew very close to a woman and her son living in one of the poorer areas in Richmond. This woman adopted her son when he was a baby. This little boy was left for dead in a hotel room by his birth mother. He was born addicted to crack. This woman felt the need to call him her own. She had her own home, and was considered middle class. Within the past two years she lost her job (crappy economy), cashed in her 401K so she could pay the bills, and when money ran out they lost their home. She and her son were living on the streets before they were placed in temporary housing in Gilpin Court. She said, “The carpet was wet when we moved in. Not because someone had just cleaned it. It was wet with blood…there had been a murder there the night before.”

My heart broke. It broke for this woman who was living comfortably before her world turned upside down to no fault of her own. It broke for the child who is forced to grow up far too early. It broke for the birth mother who felt that drugs and leaving her newborn to die were her only answers. It broke because this isn’t just happening in Richmond. It’s happening all over this world.

Well, this story wrecked the pastor and his wife. They decided to make a difference in this family’s life. They took pizza out one night and decided to take the little boy school shopping. He was to start school in a week and there wasn’t any money for extras…hell, there wasn’t any money for the necessities. They shared a meal, they built a relationship, and everyone left changed.

The woman shared that the little boy’s birth mom was living in the same neighborhood as them. She had promised to come by and take the little boy shopping. She never showed and he was heartbroken. She said, “I didn’t know what else to tell him so I said that God would bring a miracle.” God answered in the form of a young pastor and his young wife.

I was in awe of this little boy as his story was shared. He seemed to be very happy. Very easy going. Very thankful. Full of life. How is it that from day one his life started hard and yet his attitude remained so full of thanks? Most newborns are OoOO’d and ahh’d over yet this lil one was left for death. Most newborns go home to brand new nurseries that were planned long before the birth yet this little one was laid on a dirty mattress with little thought. Born addicted to a habit that he didn’t choose. When a human intended death our God, once again, brought life.

None of it’s fair. None of it makes sense. But I’m choosing to believe that for every human error God WILL and CAN correct it all. He’ll use us all….even our mistakes. I’m learning more and more that I know nothing. I hear stories like this and I am inspired. I’m inspired in spite of the hardships. I believe in a God who is using generations to rise up.

A generation that craves: a world in which no child will be left to die, where the Gilpin Courts don’t exist, where necessities are accessible and affordable, and most importantly where love motivates people to help instead of watch.