God of this City

I love this song.  We sang it in church yesterday morning, and by the end of the song, I had tears streaming down my cheeks.  This song has so much meaning to me.

I first heard this song (called "God of this City") sung by Chris Tomlin at the Passion Conference in Chicago last fall.  We were singing about our own cities and hometowns...that greater things were yet to come, that we could see God's hand at work.

When I was in Romania serving in the Gypsy village in May, we had music playing over these big speakers so that the Gypsy kids could dance.  At one point, I was walking down the road tromping through the mud and the garbage with several kids holding my hands, and this song came on.  It made me really emotional thinking about all the ways I had seen God working in the Gypsy village and knowing that his work had just begun, that greater things were yet to come.  

Then yesterday I heard the song again at church in South Africa.  Despite all the poverty and the people dying of AIDS and the families living in shacks and the violence and the prostitution and the babies being dumped in garbage piles, despite all that, I can see God moving in this place.  I know He is working here and that greater things are yet to come for South Africa.  I believe that with all my heart, and I know that He will continue to move here in big ways even after I leave.