Wendy's

Alaina and I stepped out of the car into a quiet neighborhood. Children were out across the street, the grass was green, there were flowers shining in the sun, blue sky overhead. We started walking south toward Lake. We noticed the boarded up McDonalds, but we've kind of grown accustomed to that. Then we hit Lake and turned right.

I had seen the videos, I had seen the pictures and heard the stories, but you know? There is really something different when you are there.

The blackened...well...everything. Burned by flames of anger. The smell of soot, the piles of gutted building, everything ruined. Metal bent and useless, street lights dripping from excruciating heat, roads blocked, glass gone. One old brick building looked like it was ready to topple. Buildings were empty, their charred contents dumped in piles on the side walks. Graffiti covered nearly every standing building.

War-zone.

That's what I had heard it was like, and now I knew.

We didn't know where to start, what to do. It looked unconquerable.

But, finally we saw a line of people on the Aldi wall, scrubbing away at the graffiti. We did this for a bit before it became obvious that we weren't really doing anything, so we left to join a slowly growing crowd at the Wendy's. I think Wendy's must have been one of the first buildings to go down because it seems like a very familiar restaurant people talk about. It should be famous.

Anyway, upon approaching the Wendy's, it looked utterly hopeless. There was debris piled up upon itself, all blackened by angry flames. I thought, Are we actually going to clean this thing up with our bare hands. That's exactly what we were going to do, what people were already doing. Inside the remains of brick walls, there were piles of fallen brick, bent metal, glass, electric wires, dry wall, even a sharpy. People were literally grabbing huge metal pieces of roofing, medal counters, refrigerators, drink machines, etc., and throwing them into dumpsters and trailers that would haul the scrap metal away.

Alaina and I stood there for a second, almost unsure of where to start, but then we just walked in and grabbed something, anything. There was an assembly line with people collecting brick and throwing it into large piles where a guy in a Bobcat would scoop it up and carry it away. The crowd grew to about 50 people or so, grabbing this, raking up that, hauling away metal, and so on.

The air was hot, the sun burned, wind blew ash into our eyes and hair and arms and legs. Soot soon covered our sweating bodies. My hair felt sticky and strange as sweat and soot mingled into a crusty mess. But I worked on. We worked on.

It dawned on me: here was a group of people from all backgrounds working together for the good of others. Muslims, Christians, all the in betweens, blacks, whites, Asian, Somalian, all working together. It was like we were instantly friends, talking together, helping one another, laughing, hauling, scraping, loving.

When the media and the news and the world wants to scare us, to tell us we're in a big mess, that there's no hope for racial harmony, riots are happening, buildings are burning, people are angry, lives are lost, we have this. A bunch of people working together in love.

This is what I want to remember, looking around and seeing all those people making a difference, getting dirty.

By the time we left, so much had been accomplished. The floor was finally becoming visible. And we had done that with our hands.

"Beauty for ashes."

I'll never believe those fires were OK, or that the people who started them had a right to do that, but I know that God does bring good out of evil, and I'm glad I could see that.

So, next time you walk into a Wendy's, think about what God can bring out of the worst situations.


"The Spirit of the LORD is upon me...to comfort all that mourn...to give unto them beauty for ashes."
~Isaiah 61:1-3

"And they shall build the old wastes, they shall raise up the former desolations, and they shall repair the waste cities, the desolations of many generations."
~Isaiah 61:4