It's beginning to get cold here in New York City. It's been consistently in the 40's at night, and is sure to keep getting colder. This Fall weather provokes me to miss home, where you can see all the beautiful colors of the leaves and where the weather is milder. Here, you can't see anything because of all the buildings. New York is a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live here for the rest of my life. Despite all the lights and the ostentatious façade, New York City is by and large a very dismal and lonely place. I can see how it would be very easy to get lost in the crowd here. And because of the inconvenience of time pressures, money, and distance, it is difficult to meet up with friends just to hang out. Thus the tendency of most busy New Yorkers is to be loners, or to be friends with only those whose daily paths are the same as their own. Being from the country, I'm not impressed with all the aggrandizement of this city, since I have actually seen the beauty of God's creation. God's creation surpasses man's constructions any day.
Now some readers, sympathetic to the New York lifestyle, may not agree with my sentiments. I've talked to people who love living here. That's fine. I'm not asking them to move. I do wonder, however, if they have actually taken time to look "outside of the box" in order to see the bigger picture. I'll give you an example of what I mean. A good friend of mine here at TSC, who has lived in New York his entire life, took me to visit Coney Island back in late August. When we arrived, he expressed with satisfaction, "Isn't it beautiful!?" Before I go any further, have any of you ever been to Hawaii, or Savannah, GA, or Destin, FL, or even Gulf Shores, AL? If you have, you know what a beautiful beach looks like. ANY outsider who has ever visited Coney Island, knows that Coney Island is not a beautiful beach. It is admittedly run-down, dirty, drug-infested, and the beach itself is laden with trash and old heroin needles. For my friend to proclaim its beauty only reveals that he has never seen a beautiful beach; it is the only beach he had ever known. No doubt, he had experienced fond memories there as a child, but the truth remains that he only calls Coney Island beautiful because he doesn't know any better. Now that may sound like a cruel pot shot to my friend, but I assure you that I mean no harm. I only want to point out this fact: sometimes we humans become satisfied with a lesser good merely because we don't know any better. My friend isn't stupid. I guarantee if he saw any of the above-mentioned beaches he would agree with awe that they do surpass Coney Island in beauty, aside from the fact that Coney Island is a place of nostalgia for him.
Aside from the goodness of nostalgia and talk of beaches, isn't it interesting how easy it is for us to accommodate ourselves to be content with less than God's best? So many of us deprive ourselves of God's abundance just because we are too lazy (or afraid) to look out of the box in which we have become comfortable. Be assured of this much at least, on my end: if I had wanted to stay in my complacency I never would have come to New York. Not only did I want to broaden my own horizons, but God loved me enough to pull me out of my state of spiritual complacency in which I had been found in Alabama.
This week, my beloved Helen will be coming to Times Square to visit me! Also, this week, I will be filling in for my friend Billy who is visiting Israel. Billy is in charge of distributing food and providing information on local shelters and food kitchens after the Sunday and Tuesday evening services. I had the delight of feeding four people this past Sunday night. We gave out 90 pounds of food! If you want to know more about Times Square Church's ministry to the homeless and poor, check out the website for the "Raven Ministry" at http://www.tscnyc.org/ministry_raven.php. It is truly a worthwhile ministry.
I'll update again after Helen and I have spent some time together this coming week.
Grace to you all,
David
*Patio*
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