Humanity Intersects

At Cherry Street, our largest volunteer day of the year by far is Thanksgiving. On a single day more than 500 of our fellow citizens will arrive at one of our ministry sites to serve.

As a side note, this year we're doing something a bit different. Instead of only having a single service site where the community can come for a delicious Thanksgiving meal, more than 300 volunteers will be delivering nearly 500 family Thanksgiving boxes so families can stay in their homes. We're doing this to rally support for the sanctity of the home and to encourage the family meal whenever possible.

This is the time of year service to others becomes most visible. But what causes our community to show up during this season, like at no other time of the year?

There are two intersecting realities at play; it's getting colder and it's the holiday season. The cold reminds us there are those who are not warm and the holidays remind us there are those who are not happy.

Thankfully - these end of the year human intersections are fantastically attractive to the community. Social profit organizations like Cherry Street, look forward to the last twelve weeks of the year. We can historically count on the community to show up in ways that makes the first 40 weeks of the year look like a blur.

News and media outlets are on hand to both promote and report on community involvement.

For those of us who by calling and vocation serve in the human intersection all year long - we are both grateful and humbled by the generosity of the loving communities of Northwest Ohio and Southeast Michigan.

For the listening and generous heart it may go without saying - but let me say it anyway; 'The need for humanity to intersect is a year long responsibility.'

Here's today's question: 'In what way will you purpose a human intersect?'

The reality is, none of us were conceived in a relational petri dish experiment. No - all of us are where we are ... all of us ... because someone engaged and intersected with us. Someone in your past shared a substantive experience that became part of you - there was a powerfully molecular exchange that changed you, set your course and gave you compass.

God from the beginning wrapped Himself on earth in vessels made of flesh - humanity ... you and me. Given the reality that God is completely invisible He designed the relationship we have with Him to depend on our visibility.

Consider this:
A warm, nutritious and seasonally appropriate Thanksgiving meal will stabilize hunger but only God can settle old accounts.
A warm coat, gloves, hat and scarf will stabilize against the cold, but only Jesus can redeem a history.
A warm human experience can stabilize the fragile, but only the Holy Spirit can breath new dimensions of hope.

The capacity of life transformation only God can bring, is dependent on the infrastructure of life stabilization that only we can bring.

Of the many things that can transpire within human intersections my prayer is that God, through the gift of His son will find a way from you to someone else or from someone else to you - ensuring that the greatest of all human intersections may see the light of day.

Humanity Intersects!

Dan
A Runner

Complex

I was in New York City recently. We stayed in the theater district in mid-town Manhattan at a conference discussing the success of the Harlem Children's Zone and the impact this organization has had in Harlem over the past two decades.

My traveling companions, along with my wife Crystal, were Dave and Kelly Kaiser. Dave has been to the city many times and for the rest of us was an excellent host. In just four days, in addition to a rather intensive conference schedule, we took a boat tour of Manhattan which included the Statue of Liberty, a bus tour that took us to Brooklyn and back to Manhattan, went to the observation deck of the Empire State Building, Rockefeller Center, Central Park, Wall Street, Times Square, Ground Zero of the World Trade Center, Battery Park, rode the famous NYC sub way, prayed with about 2,000 fellow laborers at the Brooklyn Tabernacle, and oh yes, ate without shame or hesitation some NYC pizza - whatta ya gonna do?!

All cities are a complex maze, but in NYC I found this to be overwhelmingly true. It is so vast and complex a place, that all you truly can have confidence in is your ability to put one foot in front of the other and see where it takes you.

For the first time in my life and career of working and serving the human condition, I finally have an appropriate metaphor for humans.

All of us are very New York City synonymous!

For example, NYC is as deep as it is tall. The Empire State Building stands at 1250 feet while there are water main pipes that are 1000 feet below the sidewalk. There are some buildings with names in which are visited frequently and many more buildings with no names that are walked by each day without as much as a passing glance. Some buildings are dressed in bright colors attracting all to their doors and some buildings that are non-descript and uninviting.

You get the point.

Here's today's question: How does someone minister within the context of complexity?

The person in whom you will encounter today will need you to appreciate how exhaustingly complex their vertical issues are. As it is for all of us our issues are both in the 'all can see' places and especially below the surface in the 'out of sight, but not out of mind' places.

Serving one another is not too terribly complicated, but serving the human condition is extremely complex. You and I will need a one foot in front of the other approach ... step lightly will you please?

The sidewalk conversation you're involved in right now towers over you with quiet anticipation and rumbles beneath you with disquieted confusion.

Are you prepared? Are you confused over your own vertical issues? What will you do with those pesky moments you know God is going to give you today that involves another person?

Can I encourage you to receive a new dimension of the Holy Spirit? If Jesus needed it before starting His service to humans, then I can imagine a followership of His example on this one to be quite a non-negotiable.

Here is the answer to today's questions: 'Get a new dimension of the Holy Spirit's leading'. Ask Him, seriously ask ... what do you have to lose? I'll tell you the alternative to trying to keep up with the complex in you and around you all by yourself will leave you less than satisified.

In contrast, when you receive a new dimension of the Holy Spirit, you'll be empowered, those in whom you intersect will be served and God will get a chance to redeem a past and renew a future.

Dan
A Runner