My husband and I did our research before deciding to move to Albuquerque two years ago. We left a pretty safe, mostly white, increasingly affluent city to come to a much more diverse, arguably more dangerous city within a state that houses some of the most forgotten and overlooked people in our society. When my husband interviewed for medical residency here he was told: “If you really mean what you say about desiring to work with underserved populations, you will come here.” So we did. And here’s the thing: we really like Albuquerque. God has given us a lot in our time here: friends, a house, a great preschool for our kids, green chile, amazing natural beauty, sunshine, we could go on. But also, we know about some of the brokenness in this place, some of the systemic displacement of it’s people, some of the emotional weight many carry throughout their day, some of the trauma many have or continue to experience—often from a shockingly young age. We know, and we do care about it. We love. But this is where it gets hard for me. When Justin tells us that for absence to give way to presence within our city we need to move in, to show the love of the Incarnation, to be the “skin” of this love here on earth, here in our city. And that can only happen through sacrificial love. This is hard. I want to give an extra Cliff Bar through my window to the guy holding a sign at the intersection. I want to hand an extra wool blanket I keep in my trunk to the older homeless man during the winter. I want to send my husband off for the long hours he works, knowing he misses so much at home, but also knowing he’s doing this work for the marginalized, for the broken. And perhaps this is love. Perhaps it’s a start. But there’s a reason I grew uncomfortable hearing that word on Sunday: sacrificial. That I might have to move in more. That I might have to give more. That I might have to let go of more. That I might have to risk. These are incredibly uncomfortable ideas to me. And yet this is the love required of the faithful presence we are called to have. The love that can really change things here in our city, that redeeming love, is always sacrificial. My gut reaction to this is to wonder if I can schedule that into my life: like maybe I have a window on Monday mornings I could give sacrificial love to my city. After all, I’m a busy person. But what would it mean for me to just start to go about my day caring more, noticing more, loving sacrificially? The hurting and wounded around us that desperately need to be loved might need someone to stop and listen to them. It might change the way we see people, the way we walk by people, the way we greet the person in our everyday: from the person checking us out at the store to the fellow parent at our neighborhood park. And this is the kind of thing that might lead to emotionally draining work. Sacrificial love. As Tim Keller puts it, “Some of your fullness is going to have to go into them, and you have to empty out to some degree. If you hold on to your emotional comfort and simply avoid those people, they will sink. The only way to love them is through substitutionary sacrifice…”

This is heavy work. And I honestly don’t know if I can do it or know how to do it. So I’m going to start by praying that deep, redeeming, sacrificial love might be given to me. That when my heart, often in my selfishness, tells me to run the other way, to be afraid, to not risk… that I would have the wisdom, the courage, to instead offer what I have. I want to pray every morning, like the repairman Justin talked about, that I might be given the opportunity to serve and bless someone. And then, I want to wrestle with this stuff. Do I send my son to Kindergarten at our neighborhood school, even though it’s considered “failing”? Do I shop at big retailers or do I try to buy what I can locally? What part of town do I live in? Who do I invite into my home? How do I teach my children to see the needs of people around us? And when I want to scream: “I don’t know!” I will instead say, “Lord, show me how to do this.” Let us wrestle more with what this looks like in our lives that we may spread the love that really changes things throughout our city, becoming the faithful presence we are called to be.

~ Ellyn Yoon