God loves Ghetto

When we first saw the duplex we’re currently living in, it was the best deal for the price.  Great location, good quality compared to everything else we had seen, and a good price for the area that fit our budget.  However, the second time we drove through our then to-be neighborhood several weeks later, it seemed different.  It seemed ghetto.

Was it the houses and other duplexes around us, or was it simply the people we saw?  As I processed this I realized that sadly it was too easy for me to look at areas or families that are lower-income and simply sum them up as ghetto.  What classifies someone as ghetto?  The way they look?  Dress?  Speak?  Their income level? We are now technically a lower-income family; does that make me ghetto?  (I realize that ultimately this is by our choice, and not everyone has that option).

Since actually living here, I now realize that our neighborhood is a mix of college kids and families, along with some elderly couples.  To many it would be considered a ghetto area of College Station.  And they might be right.  We do have the neighbors that sit out at night with their loud music on their front porch and yell at you as you run by (Paul’s experience, not mine).

Thankfully, God looks at the heart and not the outward appearance.  The reality is God loves ghetto.

I should clarify.  I know where ghetto gets its meaning from, and what it implies today.  God does not love ghettos, and poverty is never His heart for his children.  However, God loves every single person that this world would label ghetto.  He longs to take all the brokenness, cycles of poverty, abuse, or whatever our issues are (for all of us have them, no matter how good we look on the outside), and exchange them for beauty, hope, love, and life lived to the full.

I love this.  This is the essence of the Gospel; what Jesus came to do.  Give beauty for ashes.

I’m thankful for this little street God has planted me on in College Station, ghettoness and all.  My hope and prayer is that I will bloom where I’m planted and see God do all that is in His heart for my neighbors.