Depth of Care for a Broken World

A little girl approached her daddy with what was left of a ladybug. She had picked it up and pulled it’s wings off while examining it. In great sadness she held it up to her father and said, “Look Daddy, it isn’t a lady bug anymore.” The inference was clear, “Can you fix it Daddy?” Like that lady bug, we live in a broken world. From broken people, to broken societies to breaks in the environment around us, everything is not as it should be.
 
Studying Ezekiel 47 and the corresponding passage in Revelations 22, we realize that the Lord calls us to care about our broken world.. Christian environmentalists? Christians for social and racial justice? Actually, followers of Christ were leading these things through the beginning of the 20th century when, for some reason they began walking away from the table. Slowly God was taken out of the equation; a sure way to get things warped.
 
At River47 we don’t pretend to have this emphasis figured out or how the Lord will ask us to play this value out. We do understand from our vision text that when the river reaches its final destination the water becomes fresh (the word in Hebrew is “healed”) and that somehow, some way God calls the church to a ministry of healing what is broken. So we have determined to care about the brokenness of people, societies and all of God’s creation that we might have a part in the healing process and become a stream that would make glad, not only our city, but the city of God(Psalm 46:4).