No Abiding City Here

6-28

Before I left, I didn’t have enough time or foresight to do all the things I would’ve liked to. One of those things which I forgot until too late was to bring some music, and I’ve been kicking myself ever since. A few hours with the laptop and some CDs and I would’ve had plenty to listen to. And yet, all things work for good, and I just happened to “win” a copy of Sandra McCracken’s album, The Builder and The Architect during training. I don’t think I could’ve picked a better soundtrack for my summer. (Seriously, check it out)

The whole album has some wonderful eschatological (end times) imagery and I think listening to it repetitively in combination with the fact that my devotions have been on Revelations has got me thinking about heaven and the New Jerusalem. That and it’s hard to not be drawn towards a better world when surrounded by poverty and despair in this one. When I walk crumbling streets with dirty, stagnant drainage water in the middle, I am imagining streets of gold. When it’s blazing hot outside and I am drenched in sweat, I wish for a land where the sun does not beat down. When I see malnourished babies, I think about a place with no hunger or thirst.

Today I interviewed a girl named Rochele who could not help but weep when she told about how FH had helped her by paying for medicine when she had a virus. Talking about her family and their poverty also brought her to tears. I met a fourteen year old girl, Winnie, who suddenly began to lose her vision a few years ago. Despite some FH-Korea medical help and fully recovered sight, she has relapsed, and can’t even go to school because her vision is so blurry. The family can’t afford the treatments on their own. We visited a church with a family inside and their daughter Regean on two pews pushed together as a makeshift hospital bed. She spent two weeks in the hospital for rheumatic heart disease, and despite being released is still too weak to get up. Just talking to me was a struggle.

It makes my soul long for a place without mourning, or crying or pain. A place where the tears are wiped from our eyes. (Revelation 7:14-17, 21:1-4, 21) All day long one of Sandra McCracken’s songs played over and over in my head:

Addictions, empty promises
This broken world just can’t satisfy
A sweeter song, redemption’s bliss
Is sealed for us in paradise

Spirit heal our neighborhood
Until your kingdom work is done
Teach us what is just and good
As we look for the city that is yet to come

Oh lift up your head
For the day is near
And we have no abiding city here

A city filled with gold and light
God the builder and the architect
When our faith is turned to sight
Oh I cannot imagine it

Oh lift up your head
For the day is near
We have no abiding city here

-Sandra McCraken [Inspired by Thomas Kelly’s “We’ve No Abiding City Here” c. 1804]

By faith he lived as an alien in the land of promise, as in a foreign land… for he was looking for the city which has foundations, whose architect and builder is God.
Hebrews 10:9-10