The Place
(submitted by our new Ministry Outreach Worker -Brett Ziemer)

Everybody moving in different directions, everyone trying to get to the same place…
Traffic lights, telling you when to go and when to stop...
Some of us drive slowly to enjoy the view, some of us drive fast to be on time for work.
We check our pockets hoping for change, but all we find is a bank receipt telling us we’re broke. We’re all trying to find out the fastest and most efficient way to get to “the place.”
What place, you may ask? “You know the place”.

We all have struggles in life; health, stress, bad decision after bad decision…
So much noise, distractions and everywhere you look there’s advertising telling you they have the answers. Maybe it’s as expensive as a brand new truck or as simple as a Sean John hoodie… that next purchase will get you closer to ‘the place.’ And it’s in this pursuit, that we find emptiness, desperation… but still, we push back the blankets (for some, a singular blanket) and start the day all over again.

I just started this position at the Upper Room Mission, as a Ministry Outreach Worker and to say the least it has been “interesting!” As I reflect back on my first week, all I can think is that ‘the God we serve is an almighty God and I am thankful for the work he is doing all around us at every moment of the day.’ I pray that this building will not be just another ‘soup kitchen’ but a bright light for Christ in this dark world we live in. I hope we can continue putting action to our words. We delight in our daily chapel and the Christian music that plays softly in the dining room; it’s a gentle, but essential reminder of why we are here and what God has planned for us. “Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?’ And I said, ‘Here am I. Send me!’”(Isaiah 6:8)

There will always still be temptations and conflict within us because there is an Enemy that is looking to stir up dissention and disharmony, his goal to seek and destroy. Spiritual warfare can be especially thick and without strong discipline to grow in Gods wisdom we can fall short on his return. Tempers rage and a simple couple dollars owed can quickly become a black eye or worse. Again, there’s ‘the place.’

The Place is the moment we know we are walking on holy ground. The place of joy, thankfulness, peace, encouragement, love and finally hope; the place where God faithfully meets us; if only we ask. A recent example of this was in the midst of all the frustration and pain of some guests arguing in the dining room, I thought that I couldn’t take much more. I looked across the room and then everything stopped… There sat one of my new friends; sitting in the far corner with no one around him; concentrated on nothing else but the small red Bible he just received while asking Jesus into his heart. The noise from the street goes silent. People yelling at each other two feet away becomes muted. Everyone moving and going in different directions are united as one. The worship of Christian music rises off the radio waves just above your head and you are mentally ready to appreciate the scenery on the way home. You realize that you are at ‘the place,’ where everything makes sense and you understand why we do -what we do. I am blessed because I get to be apart of that everyday here at the Upper Room Mission -where God comes to meet us where we are at, at that very moment. It’s ‘the place’ where God has his People helping People.