Urban Superheroes?

From an ABC News interview with Geoffrey Canada, Director of the Harlem Children's Zone...

ABC: What role did Superman play in motivating your life's work?

CANADA: One day my mother told me Superman wasn't real. I was absolutely stunned and broke into tears and she thought it was because of how much I loved Superman. What she didn't recognize was that I realized that if there were no Superman then no one was coming to rescue us. And I always thought Superman would get around to the South Bronx once he took care of Lex Luthor and some of the other villains in the world. When I realized there was no Superman and nobody was coming, I thought that if I ever made it out and got an education I would make sure that at least for the children that I could touch they would never feel like they needed a superhero to save them.

If you care about building better neighborhoods for children and you plan to read one book this year, allow us to recommend Geoffrey Canada's story told in Whatever it Takes by Paul Tough. While secular in it's perspective, this book has fundamentally challenged our thinking about Jesus' command to love our neighbor. The story of Canada's grand experiment in neighborhood-building has been alternately invigorating and devastating to us as we wrestle with how to rightly love our neighborhood's children.

We'll share more about the book in later posts. But here is a prayer for today:

Superman is not coming. Jesus, however, is already here. Pray that we, his people, will not be wearied or numbed by the sheer big-ness of the problems. That we will offer up to Jesus "whatever it takes" for his work to be fulfilled. Pray this for RCP's corner of South LA, and for the distressed communities near where you live, work and worship.