the economy... it's so depressing...

I hope you all caught the humor of my title. If not, you're in too deep.

I know the economy has been something that has been plastered all over the news, but I feel like I've seen the effects of the economy all over everything lately. My internship is with a housing agency, and over the past year in our part of the city, foreclosures have increased by over 1,000. That doesn't include the people who have missed just a couple payments, people who have lost their jobs, etc. You can literally walk up and down the streets and see for sale signs and vacant, boarded up houses.

Not only that, but you can see massive amounts of homeless people. My heart wrenches every time I see a homeless person, and I want to buy them coffee, talk with them, and then invite them home so they have a dry place to sleep. I know that this is not feasible for a variety of reasons, but I feel so helpless because I don't even know what resources to point someone to. I know that many of these people struggle with mental illness, or they have families, or whatever, and I have no clue what is even in the area to help them. Curse my social work instinct; it kind of makes me want to be back in Jackson so that I know how to help people. My worst fear is that I will become apathetic towards these people. I can't imagine how awful it would be to beg, first of all, and then to have people ignore you on top of that is even worse. It's dehumanizing. I don't want to be that dehumanizer, and I'm pretty certain that is not what Christ wants either.

Seeing all of this, though, does make me long for Christ more in my heart. I want to be more like him, and living here in the city makes me wonder even more how I can do that. I've been stuck in James, which tells me that if I ask for wisdom from God, He will grant it if I do not doubt. It's so easy to be distracted by any number of things here in the city, and sitting down and listening for wisdom from God is not easy. As my friend Erin reminded me the other day, the waves are still there even when the ice seems to be covering them up... you just have to listen closely.

More soon... until then, peace.