View from the 24th Floor

Ahh the pressure! How to come up with witty and profound items for a blog every couple of days! How about some free flowing stream of consciousness?

As I sit here in the hotel in Las Vegas and stare out the window from the 24^th floor, my mind whirs. This is really an interesting down/city/locale. The architecture is amazing. The beauty of the mountains surrounding the city is breathtaking. I love the look of the sun coming up over the mountains (what mountains are they? I haven’t even done my research!) at 6 a.m. By the same token, I love the look of the shadows on the mountains as the sun sets at about 7:30- 8:00 p.m. Wow! God does some great stuff! These are completely different than the mountains in Alaska – and I love those! I wonder what it is like in Denver to see the Rockies up close.

Did I mention architecture? These buildings are colossal! And so detailed (we went through Caesars Palace Forum – amazing!) I still can’t get over the spire with the rides on top and guys bungee jumping off the top (about 800 feet up). That is amazing, but definitely not for me! (Stratosphere, just watched another guy go down! Wow!)

The heat is intense this week. We have been over 100 every day we’ve been here and it isn’t supposed to go under 100 for another 4-5 days when it drops to 99, and then takes off again over 100. “But it is a dry heat!” Yeah right, it is still hot, and you don’t want to put your hands on the hand rails outside because they have been cooking all day in the sun!

And under all this are the people. I know I haven’t met everyone, but remember, I have been influenced by many things – growing up a preacher’s kid, living in small town in the MidWest, went to a conservative Christian University (not ashamed of ONU! www.olivet.edu) – and this town is not like the area I grew up. Suffice it to say there are some differences in attitudes or morals out here. In my mind’s eye, this seems to be like a cross of Cedar Point and Key West Florida. Not bad places, but different than small town Michigan! We have also seen so many homeless people begging by the street side and sidewalks. There are an estimated 10,000 homeless in Las Vegas.  They are right outside multi-million dollar hotels and casinos. Some were right close to a large building advertising as an employment agency for the many businesses in town. Yet they are unemployed and homeless. The city has a population of almost 600,000 and the metropolitan area has a population of almost 2 million people.  This is not a small area! What can be done to help out here? What can we do to help make a difference? (I joked about the Church of the Nazarene having a General Assembly here, it has the hotels, space, everything, but the culture is sooo different than our “church” culture. So we go to safe and secure Indianapolis in the Midwest…)

And as I think about this and the need to help, I wonder about the many people in our own communities that are hurting, homeless and needy, and because we are right there we don’t notice them. If we go someplace outside our comfort zone, we notice all the “different things” than back home. But once we get back home, our blinders go back on. Pastor talked in his sermon this last week, about getting the plank out of our eye before we attempt to remove a speck from someone else’s eye. Do you think this may relate? We are eager, anxious, and very willing to go “somewhere else” to help folks while ignoring the needs in our own community? I am not faultless in this, I love the ideas of work and witness trips to other world areas to help out, but sometimes I think we look so much for the big “home run” swing, while we miss the opportunity for a good single, or bunt in our own neighborhood. (Nice baseball metaphor from a non-baseball player, eh?) I don’t think I can ever forget the one young man with a sign that said “I am not invisible”. What a reminder!

How can we open our eyes to the needs around us, and not dismiss them because they are not big, bold and splashy? How do we balance the needs nearby, with the needs far away? Christ said to go into all the world. And in Acts chapter 1, He describes the very places “…you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”  (Acts 1:8b NIV). He describes near and far. Help me out here, I need some suggestions on this balancing act because this happens to me too!