NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!
“God ain’t got no power over this hit. God got no power here.”
The man gestured like a royal but the scene he revealed was the largest open drug-air market on the East Coast — the Kensington neighborhood in Philadelphia.
The man then sat down on an overturned milk crate, and as he was about to insert the needled into his arm, I looked away. People were everywhere, doing drugs out in the open.
WITHOUT GOD, NEW YORK’S DREAM TURNS HOLLOW. MY WALK ACROSS AMERICA PROVES IT
I saw a lady, with what I hope was not a baby bump, standing in a frozen position, slouched over to her left side, looking like she was about to fall over.
I saw a young teenager with pressed, clean clothes, smoking who knows what, on a curb by himself.
It was all overwhelming, so many people doing drugs with no shame or care for passing pedestrians or police.
I heard the man next to me sigh. He had just shot himself up. I asked him what he put into his body and he smiled, “the good stuff.”
“Does the good stuff have a name?”
“Philly dope. Sleep cut. Tranq dope — whatever you want to call it, man.”
“What about you?” I asked. “What’s your name?”
He laughed, his entire face tightening up. Then he began gasping for air, trying to catch his breath, his breathing slowing and growing heavier. Then he looked at me one last time, his words slurring, “I told you, God got no power here.”
CHICAGO’S ‘ROOFTOP PASTOR’ TO EMBARK ON EPIC CROSS-COUNTRY JOURNEY TO BENEFIT AMERICA’S TROUBLED YOUTH
The man’s body leaned forward, suspended midway between sitting and falling onto the ground, then he drifted into the deepest sleep. I looked more closely at his body and saw the most disgusting skin wounds on his body. There were open sores and abscesses. It looked as if his innards were trying to come through his skin.
I’ve seen a lot in my life on the South Side of Chicago, but nothing like this. The man I was just talking to — it wasn’t hard to see that he was once just your average Joe. Beneath his dirtiness and physical decay, he looked like a college type and a finance bro. But he got hooked on the horse tranquilizers, and Kensington, the only place with a steady supply, became his home.
But was it true that God has no power here?
I have been walking across America to revive the American Dream and to revive our country’s faith in God. But even I had my doubts when I walked into Kensington.
I thought: what would Jesus do here? What would he do? I know he wouldn’t turn away from this hell on earth. He’d be right there, among the zombies and needles and pipes, just as He was with the lepers, the outcasts, and sinners in His time.
THE BATTLE FOR AMERICA’S FUTURE MUST BEGIN AGAIN IN PLACES WE’VE WRITTEN OFF
In Matthew 9:12-13, Jesus says, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
God’s power is not absent in Kensington — His power rarely looks like what we expect. It’s not a lightning bolt or a flood to clear the streets. It’s the quiet, persistent call to mercy, to meeting people in their pain.
Kensington has been a drug market since the 1960s, when Philadelphia underwent its great deindustrialization. By the 1990s, it was known as the heroin capital of America. The rest is history.
Countless numbers of people have come through this small neighborhood offering their solutions. The city’s new mayor recently announced a five-phase plan to close down the drug market. One part was a massive city sweep, followed by shorter business hours and more police patrols. While it is clear that the main thoroughfare, Kensington Avenue, has been mostly cleared out, the drug activity has moved to the side streets, where I stand today.
CLICK HERE FOR MORE FOX NEWS OPINION
The one thing though that has been missing in all of this is the power of Jesus and the almighty Lord. Jesus would sit on that milk crate, look the man in the eyes, and see past the sores to the college kid he may have once been. He’d touch the untouchable like he did with the leper in Mark 1:40-42 where He knew the soul needed healing far more than the body.
From San Francisco’s Tenderloin District to here, the problem is spiritual — our souls need nourishment.
When I encounter lost men on my streets on the South Side of Chicago, my only aim is to reach their souls and nourish them with the word of God. He works through me, his humble disciple. I’ve seen the most lost of men come back to life with this Word, their belief taking them higher and higher out of their misery to the good life itself.
At one point in their journeys, I tell them that they are “the light of the world…let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.”
I hold no illusions about what I saw in Kensington, but I do believe God is everywhere and within all of us — even that young man who denied His presence.
I prayed long over his sleepy body. I promised God I would return before leaving Philly, find that man, and tell him he’s wrong about God — and His power.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM PASTOR COREY BROOKS
Read the full article here
