This is #TorontoStrong

This is where it happened yesterday. 

I get to look at this painting every day. It hangs in our dining room. But yesterday when I came home to it - after seeing emergency first responders and police tape all over my streets - it moved me in a way like never before. 

This painting by Gene Tempelmeyer portrays the very 2km stretch of Yonge Street from Sheppard to Finch where a damaged man destroyed many lives today.

The painting’s river - in place of the actual street - portrays the River of Life of the apocalyptic vision at the very end of the Bible. It’s when the shalom peace of God is fully realized on Earth and all is well and in harmony. When there is no hate because there is no more pain. When the world is no longer shot through with abuse and abusers.

Because in the Bible, heaven is not another place. It’s Earth, completely restored. Did you know that?

Prescient today. When this very spot of Yonge was made into an alley of death and destruction. 

This is the time and place where we give in to the temptation to say, “Surely heaven is somewhere else - away from this miserable patch of dirt.”

But it’s the concept in this painting that drew me to become an apprentice of Jesus just over a decade ago: that there is a tribe of people - Jesus people - who look death and hate in the face like today, and who like Jesus two thousand years ago say, “Death and hate, you do not have the last word. God’s ultimate aim is life for all, and more abundantly. Love and wellness. Peace and light. We are people who grieve, but do not despair. We hope. And love. And we work tirelessly towards a better world against insurmountable odds. Because that’s what God has always been doing.”

I love that. The mission that God has always been on - it becomes the mission of us. 

And I know, too, that there are thousands of neighbours of many faiths in this neighbourhood who pulse with the same divine vision along with the Jesus people today. 

Willowdale: Yonge and Sheppard, Yonge and Finch. A neighbourhood full of fear and death and pain on this day after. 

But not for always. 

Not when we flow together like this. Like a cool stream in a parched desert.

Like a River of Life.

#yongeandsheppard #yongeandfinch #prayforwillowdale #torontostrong #prayfortoronto #prayforthevictims #prayfortheperpetrator