Glimmers of His Radiance

As you know, part of the experience of hosting is to lead your debrief after each day of service.

With one particular group, I was having a hard time coming up with a debrief that would fit their needs in order to grow spiritually and be challenging enough.

As I was praying about what it was they needed to understand, I glanced up at the night sky. Where I am from you can see millions of star. Well, sometimes in the inner city you have to search really hard to find a star the shines bright enough to be able to see it over the fluorescent city lights that light up the night sky.

I began searching the sky for stars, a need to feel at home, a need to feel at peace. A twinkle finally caught my eye, which led me to another and another and another. Once I searched hard enough for the one, my eye was trained to catch the several other glimmers.

Man, was God speaking to me. My group that week was having a little bit of a difficult time finding the hope in the people they were interacting with. They were having a hard time seeing the face of Christ in His people. In a world so full on sin, sometimes it is hard to see the glimmer of hope, but once you find it and can put a person with the face of Christ on it, you begin to seek it out even harder until finally you are able to see with Christ's eyes, glimmers of hope everywhere.

My hope for the city, my hope for the youth that I am interacting with is that each and everyone (myself included) would be able to see with the eyes of Christ and catch those glimmers of His radiance. Then we may understand how deep, how wide, how perfect His love truly is.

-Julie, CSM Chicago City Host Summer 2008