madaling-araw

Madaling-araw means "dawn" or "sunrise" in Tagalog or Filipino, the national language of the Philippine Islands.

This morning I was riding the train to work earlier than usual. With a pale pink sky in the background, sun rays were shining in beams out of the clouds over a section of the city I was riding through. I saw beauty in the brokenness, somehow. I looked at the run down row homes and old buildings, and each represented a family--a life that God cared deeply about. And for some reason I felt like I had just arrived in a city that was new to me, beaming with hope and promise for a people unaware of it.

I wondered how God would reveal that hope to these people, and how I could be a part of that. I felt insignificant and helpless within myself just thinking about it. Not only that, Philadelphia is a huge city with a deep history. It is not a new city at all, and the issues have been here for years. But the mission of my church is "Renewing Lives in Christ to Transform Our City and The World." And if that is the heart of God for Philadelphia, then it will happen with or without my help. Only, He has chosen to include me in the process--to include all of us!

There's so much to pray for, and so much to do. For now I'll let that sense of hope and promise for this land sink in.

"The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. 'For in him we live and move and have our being.' As some of your own poets have said, 'We are his offspring.'
Acts 17:24-28 TNIV