(Written and posted on facebook a while back; quick apology to my friends who I haven’t gotten to talk to individually about the plans…)
Over the last year my desire for humanitarian work has grown and has been reinforced by many, many passages in the Bible. I started looking around online to learn more about the Peace Corps and agencies like it. I kept running into a problem though—with many of those agencies, I had no guarantee that I would be able to be part of a church wherever I ended up.
Months later, I started looking for Peace Corps alternatives, and saw that Americorps’ CityYear program had a site in Philadelphia—where I had been part of Urban Imperative two years ago. So I had a church. And if I applied by midnight of a certain date, I had the chance to get into the program.
My thinking was that if anyone were to give a year of life in volunteer work for underprivileged communities, it should be a Christian—someone who feels amazingly privileged because of the good news of Jesus, and one who is called by Him to care for needy people.
If there are programs for ameliorating the dying inner-city communities with tutors, mentors, and all-purpose volunteers, Christians should be the first to join. It should never be said of us that we have a lot to say but not as much to do.
With all that in my mind, I sat in that apartment in the center of Manhattan last May, put my class work on hold, wrote 4 essays, finished my application, and sent it off at 12:05am. A little late, but it worked.
2 phone interviews, 2 references, and 2 months later I received confirmation that I had been accepted.
So this Wednesday, I’ll be taking another trip up the east coast. Part of me just wanting to be in the city, part of me wanting something out of the ordinary, but some part of me wanting to live pure religion, because…
“Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to kept oneself unstained from the world” (James 1:27).
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