To back up for a moment, earlier that day around 10am, a carjacking took place in a nearby neighborhood, and the arrest happened across the street from our new house. A man shot a father, stole his Suburban, discovered the father’s son in the backseat, and dropped the three-year-old boy onto a busy road where he was found walking by himself. Soon afterward, they stripped the Suburban, parked the vehicle at the end of our block, and walked home to the house across the street from us. After police helicopters tracked the man down, they made the arrest.

Welcome to Thirkield Ave SE.

Later, around 10pm, my mother who was visiting from Michigan asked me, “Nate, what are those booming sounds outside?” I casually explained, “No big deal. Turner Field sets off fire works every Friday night after the Braves game.” After the second set of shots, I quickly realized those weren’t fireworks. We ran upstairs. My two daughters were sound asleep in the back of the house. My wife, Melissa, and my mother and I knelt down on our knees, peeking through the blinds as we watched a full-on shoot out in front of our living room.

I called the police eight or nine times before one police car showed up about 35 minutes after the first attempted call. The first four times I called, I was channeled to a 911 automated answering machine: “Please hold. Someone will be with you shortly.” I hung up and re-dialed over and over. Each time I dialed I was getting angrier. How could this be happening when someone calls 911? Is this for real? The fifth time I called, the operator didn’t understand where we lived. I had to convince him that, yes, we lived in the city of Atlanta! The sixth time I called, the operator told me, “Sir, you’re going to have to wait. There are other things happening right now in your neighborhood, too.” My response wasn’t pretty. Finally, after losing any sense of composure I thought I had, I punched my floor as hard as I could. Like a knucklehead, I said to my beautiful wife, “I think I just broke my hand.” I did. I broke my hand and wore a brace for about 5 weeks—my daily reminder about the gap of relationship between our police force and our community.

The story began years ago, before I showed up, before I knew about the beautiful land and people of South Atlanta, before the community took a downward spiral—when the community was thriving and full of life and wholeness. God has been moving and working here longer and wider and deeper than I could ever imagine. I’m just now joining the story of South Atlanta.

I love South Atlanta.

Our neighborhood is filled with rolling hills, strong, tall trees, with hints of green life pressing forward through urban concrete. The streets are groaning and crying out to bring God glory. Neighbors are longing for change—the kind of transformation that’s good and whole.

And what will come about in South Atlanta? What does the future hold? South Atlanta, located just one mile south of Turner Field, nestled between two neighborhoods—Pittsburg to the west and Lakewood Heights to the east—is an urban neighborhood full of beauty and challenge. Everyday I experience the joy of community and culture, while wrestling with struggle and pain. Where is my God in the midst of injustice all around me? Where is the LORD when young girls are being abused? Where are people of faith when young men are selling crack and marijuana for survival, wandering our streets with no purpose or direction? Where is the church when one out of four houses is boarded up or foreclosed? The numbers are only increasing.

I’m tired and yet full of energy. I’m restful and restless, feeling moments of reflection mixed with urgency for action. I’m awakening to the reality that we only have one life to offer. God is calling us out to act here and now. “Us” means you and me. “They and them” is no longer an option.

We are in this story together.

I’m learning that God cares about people and properties. I’m finding that everyone and everything is meant to bring God glory. I long for the young men on my street to know and follow Christ, discovering the hopeful, living, unifying, healing, empowering way of Jesus. I’m also learning that love and proximity act together. Land and love interrelate. God seems to take geography seriously as the story of the gospel continues to call people to move, to go, to join another culture, another people, another place unfamiliar. Jesus set the ultimate example of this kind of relocation. Somehow, where and how I choose to live and love seems to matter, and somehow the land, the environment in which we live and work, is a reflection of God’s intent for our world. As we love people, we learn to love properties, believing that every inch, every blade of grass, every part of our neighborhood is to reflect God’s Kingdom of faith, hope and love.

So, we’re trying a new-old tradition. Every Friday night we’re hosting a Prayer Vigil. Neighbors gather at our house to pray for each other and South Atlanta, and then we take our candles to the streets, walking together, seeking peace, praying over the firehouse, our houses, drug houses, the post office, churches and schools. We are neighbors reaching out to neighbors. We are a neighborhood reaching out to neighborhoods.

Friday Night Prayer Vigils are more than something “nice” to try out for a while. For many of us, this is a matter of life and death—perhaps physically for some and spiritually for many. If Friday nights seem to be the culmination of oppressive activity each week, then what better time to seek peace in the streets? We envision a CREW of neighbors showing and sharing Christ, working for justice. The scriptures encourage us, saying, “Seek the LORD and his strength; seek his presence continually (Ps 105:4).” And in the book, Listening Hearts, we find this challenge for our lives:

“Typically, we think of prayer as what we say to God, as in petition or in thanksgiving. Unlike the boy, Samuel, who said, ‘Speak, LORD, for your servant listens.’ (I Samuel 3:10), we often pray, ‘Listen, LORD, for your servant speaks.’ But prayer, especially prayer for discernment, involves listening. Through prayer we seek for ourselves total attentiveness to the all-embracing presence of Christ. For Christ is found in the circumstances, the people, the things of daily life. If we are aware of this, we will open our hearts, and, in this way, our whole life can become prayer in action.”

And, so, in this light, we press onward to live life as prayer and to live a prayerful life. Justice is screaming out. Love is holding on. In the midst of prayer, solitude and silence, and in the pursuit of non-violence, we cry aloud each Friday night on Thirkield.

Copyright © 2008 Nate Ledbetter. All Rights Reserved.
Sub-Urban is a division of FCS Urban Ministries of Atlanta, GA.