At first glance, Denver seems like a huge amusement park. There are a million stores, city lights, and even a free bus that will take you through one part of downtown. There’s even a city skate park that is occupied with riders all day. The city seems to abuzz at all times with activity. The city’s diversity has delighted us.
However as God renews our eyes, we are seeing places that go unnoticed. There is a growing homeless population that is hard to ignore. A new law has even enacted that incarnates people for sleeping on the streets. Even though hordes of working people are coming and going from every direction, very few are wearing smiles. The vast majority is plugged into wifi connections and cell phones, never bothering to acknowledge their neighbors. Emerson’s description of city life as, “Millions of people being alone together” rings true in Denver than ever before.
So to combat this, we began to look at how Christ dealt with a sick widow asking for healing. We then saw how Jesus’s compassion was like nothing of this world, and because of these feelings, he felt the need to heal her.
Armed with renewed minds of what it means to care for those in need, we are beginning to see the ministry needs are limitless. We’ve spent our first few days befriending the homeless at a mission downtown, listening to the stories of skaters, and exploring new ways to worship God. All of these have pushed us to new levels of awkwardness and discomfort. However, along with these trials, we are beginning to see the change He is making this city and in us.
One of the prime examples of the fruit we have seen so far came from our first ministry site. It is a shelter for homeless in downtown Denver to rehabilitate back to thriving instead of merely surviving. Some of our group went outside and talked to the local homeless population. We talked to one elderly lady for a long time. She laughed, shed a few tears, and we prayed for her. After a strong “amen”, she looked at us and said, “I’m so glad God sent you all to us. I thought He had forgotten about me.”
Everyday yields, in new ways, the same message: loneliness is on its way out, and God remembers us all.
