Ready for the Battle?

I arrived at the UrbanPromise headquarters on the eastern edge of Camden on Wednesday, September 9th, with my guitar and a Rubbermaid tub full of clothes, toiletries, and books. Eleven other interns trickled in over the next two days; we have fourteen ready to open program next week as I write this, and we expect to have a full twenty by the end of October. We spent the weekend on a spiritual retreat on a farm in the foothills of the Lehigh Valley, an odd contrast to the urban setting we will all learn to call home soon enough. We chatted, prayed for one another, transcribed our expectations, fears, and supplications for the year in letters to God, and ate unhealthy amounts of home-cooked food. And then we all crowded back into two white UrbanVans and crept back to the city invincible to catch what rest we could before a week of training sessions and preparations.

As you might know, I made a decision some time ago to postpone my senior year of college in favor of a year-long internship with UrbanPromise, a ministry in Camden, NJ with which I have been blessed to share my past two summers. The reasoning that preceded this decision was not particularly coherent, prudent, or, perhaps, sufficiently prayerful, but I am ready to proceed with much prayer and anticipation where God might lead me on (or from) the road that I have chosen. Hopefully as I continue to write this blog I will be able to articulate and explore not only the reasons I came here but also come to understand why I am here, why I continue to be here, and why I will be where I am to go.

A friend of mine from Georgetown suggested that this process of understanding is also one of seeking who I am in the eyes of God. And such a search is intimately concerned with the character of God and His relation to his subjects, his creation, to which I belong. This search, in fact, is at the core of much of what I see before me this year, and, as definitive in my thought processes, will also color this blog, insofar as it serves to record my reflections here.

As such, it is my hope not that this blog will simply provide a record of my activities as an UrbanPromise intern, but detail the questions I encounter along the way.

As always, thanks to my friends and supporters who would share in this with me.

Blessings,
Matt