Don't Walk By

This past Saturday, Communitas participated in a campaign called “Don’t Walk By”. We joined about 300 other people who came together from all over the city to go out on a three hour “search and rescue” mission on the streets of Manhattan. In the frigid single-digit temperatures, groups of 5 or 6 walked block after block looking for homeless people trying to survive through the cold night. Some estimates suggest that there are over 75,000 homeless in NYC. Our focus was the Wall Street area. We would approach the homeless and offer to take them to a place to get a hot meal and a warm bed.

As we walked the narrow streets which carve their way through the skyscrapers of lower Manhattan, I had a sense of God looking down, seeing each person hidden in the cold and dark, and a group searching street by street. As I pondered this, I thought of Jesus words: “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.” In Jesus, God revealed himself as the one who leaves the ninety-nine “found” and goes in search of the “lost.”

Perhaps nothing better captures what Communitas is doing in NYC. We have joined Jesus in his search and rescue operation. We pass them on the streets, ride with them on the subway, eat with them in the diner. They are the poor and the rich, coming from all points on planet earth. God knows each one by name, and he is searching for them, that they might know him. How sobering and challenging to think that WE are the means by which he reaches them!