I have found great encouragement today in a simple magazine article and the text of Martin Luther King Junior's famous speech. I've found another beautiful story of redemption.

As you probably know I'm moving to Houston this fall and to some degree I was a bit nervous to move back to the corporately influenced consumer culture present there. You see as a female, it is quite easy for me to want way too much stuff. eek!

I purchased a copy of Cottage Living magazine today in the grocery line and while enjoying my lunch I came across an article about three restoration projects in the fair gulf shore city. My heart leaped. I always love reading about restoration of homes and communities.

Houston is the nation's fourth most populated city and rapidly growing. There are three organizations cultivating healthy communities. Project Row Houses, Avenue CDC, and the Menil Foundation share a common ethic: to provide affordable, attractive housing and an appreciation of art's empowering role in neighborhood development and restoration.

You may enjoy exploring the websites of these projects...
Project Row Houses
Avenue CDC
Menil Foundation Their website only describes their art exhibits

I've been so struck by the places I see God in the last few days. I am just amazed at those moments when you see a quote from what God shared in the Bible resonate out into life.

They will rebuild the ancient ruins
and restore the places long devastated;
they will renew the ruined cities
that have been devastated for generations.
Isaiah 61:4

The building has been vandalized, but it still retains its smoothly crafted elegant façade and entryway. This building has played a significant part in Houston's history and since renovated will continue to do so.

The original Jefferson Davis Hospital building has welcomed a cadre of new residents after being vacant for 20 years. Avenue CDC, in partnership with Artspace Projects Inc., recently completed the rehabilitation of this historic structure in the fall of 2005. The old Jefferson Davis Hospital has recently become the home to 34 families and is now known as Elder Street Artist Lofts. source:http://www.avenuecdc.org/jeffdavis.asp

God is surely working among us to bring about justice, peace, love and ultimately a deeper understanding of Him. He's showing us His glory!

Take a moment to read this exert from the I have a dream speech. Thank God that what seemed a distant dream to people of the 60s is becoming an increasing reality.

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.

Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair.

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood...

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight,

and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed

, and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with a new meaning, "My country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring."

And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"

Labels: Community Development, Martin Luther King, Redemption