The city screams its longings
Oppressed by its own hang ups
Because that’s all it knows
The beat box of the back alleys pulsate
A syncopated pattern
but not quite on rhythm
Broken
The winds blow
Pops from the sweet city
While the neighborhood kids chew
Their way to the calming center
Only to lose its flavor from the mundane
Of trying to make it
The city tries to make it
Only to take from the grandmothers
And pioneers of her liberty
The city longs for a Savior
A gallant rescuer and redeemer
A lover in His divinity
But we
We come in as He
We market our campaigns and promise delivery
We offer hope in the form of blaring JBLs
And a 4o-minute oratory
We divide the city’s sections and subsections
Into an “us versus them” reality
Not realizing our reality is mere fantasy
The One who knew no sin became sin
For the sake of humanity
He moved into the neighborhood
And didn’t commute into the community
He became we
We aren’t apart from the whole
But we make ourselves out to be
It’s the difference between operating in sympathy
And moving toward empathy
We need to scream the city’s longings
We need to tap drum patterns in the back alleys of complacency
We are the broken
See,
It’s we
We are the oppressed
We are the thieves robbing from our own
We are possessed with as much idolatry
As the community we’ve seemingly disowned
In our efforts to rescue and redeem
We are the city
And we are the takers
We are the perpetrators
Preying on our fellow offsprings of God
In the name of our Savior
See,
God moved in and made himself comfortable in the most uncomfortable of all situations
He declared his Passionate love for creation at a grotesque crucifixion that rang volumes throughout the nations
But we…
Now that’s a different story