The Refuge

While our friends were visiting this past week, we had the opportunity to go meet some extraordinary people down town. A group there has been living together in an old apartment type building. As part of the living arrangement, they are required to become a community. They meet and work together much as the first church did. While they have jobs and lives, they also have 'things in common.'

They spend their free time working to take back the not-so-nice area of the city the building is located in with Christ's love (but not by handing out meals or other things.) It started with cleaning up the neighborhood -- literally. They picked up the trash on the streets.

It has become something much more. Currently, he told us they are attempting to learn how to teach those living in urban settings how to grow food where they are. And they are about to spread some of their residents to a new building in a different not-so-nice part of town. That will also open up the waiting list of people wanting to live there too.

They believe that Christ's love is best spread by relationships. That relationships are what God wants both with us and for us. They believe people who are living in poverty, both of body and soul, are hurting in large part due to the lack of relationships. The example he gave us was by asking us that if we were in need, how long it would take us to find a meal or a bed? We have a plethora of relationships; ones that we could call on and find those things, ones that would help us get back on our feet. The impoverished that they minister to don't. They are still hungry or still homeless or still hurting because they are missing that vital part of human interaction. They are still caught up in a life of slavery, sin, and pain because no one cared if they were snared by it.

In providing relationships, they point the way to Christ and, in the process, they help with physical needs too. It was pretty wild to be standing there seeing and hearing someone who is living the life of Christ, not just studying it or meeting in a building somewhere or trying to live righteously. It was pretty wild to be standing there with someone who was so convicted by Christ's love that he had placed himself in a position of complete and utter submission to it.

I haven't quite processed it all just yet. I know myself well enough to know that its boiling around up there trying to figure out how I'm going to respond to that. But I'll let you know when I do.

If you'd like to take a look at their site, you can find it here.