hope for the suburbs?

so coming home to chesapeake, the last thing i expected to be dealing with is homelessness.

for those of you who've never been here, chesapeake is suburban sprawl. pure and simple. suburbs from norfolk, suburbs from va beach, suburbs from suburbs. lots of middle-upper class white people and starbucks.


so i was a little surprised to come home and find my church being used as a homeless shelter.

it was part of NEST [norfolk emergency shelter team] which basically in the winter half of the year, takes 50-60 homeless out of norfolk and brings them to various churches in the area for a week at a time.

i generally think of life in chesapeake very cynically. i'm critical of the upper-middle class white folks that drive around in their hummer 2's and their mercedez. I feel like life here is very self centered. and maybe it's that way everywhere and i just haven't lived there long enough to see that side of it. but it was so refreshing to see the body of Christ doing something different.

it gives me hope that living in chesapeake doesn't have to mean living in that suburban daze. God's opening my eyes to the people that He wants me to care for and opening my eyes to the work he's already doing in this area and in His church. it gives me hope for the suburbs

"For God, who was at work in the ministry of Peter as an apostle to the Jews, was also at work in my ministry as an apostle to the Gentiles. James, Peter and John, those reputed to be pillars, gave me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship when they recognized the grace given to me. They agreed that we should go to the Gentiles, and they to the Jews. All they asked was that we should continue to remember the poor, the very thing I was eager to do."

galatians 2:8-10