The Magnificant Mile

Thursday, 31. December 2009 by Dan Ryan

The Magnificent Mile was living up to its hype.

Amazingly enough, I’d never been here during the Christmas season. Despite having grown up 35 minutes from Chicago, I’d never been down Michigan Avenue when this shoppers’ haven is famously lit up for the holidays. One never notices how many trees actually call downtown Chicago home until they are strewn with white Christmas lights.

As my friend Ben and I power-walked north over the Chicago River and toward Water Tower Place, there was little doubt I was a fish out of water. I’m not much of a shopper, and even when I am, I never frequent the high-end stores which make up the Magnificent Mile. For a native Illinoisan, I sure felt like a tourist. Even out of my element, however, I was soaking up my first Michigan Avenue shopping experience and the festive spirit.

As we scurried to catch a bus back to Ben’s place, I saw the silhouette of a man on crutches. As we fast approached him and he came more into focus, I could see he was gingerly inching his way across an intersection, slowly sliding across the pavement almost as if he were cross-country skiing. Closer still, I noticed that he was wearing magazines for shoes and small plastic bags for socks.

That he was trying to get across Michigan Avenue made the contrast heart-wrenching. As Ben and I sped by this man, my heart silently sank. We barely made our bus, but whatever. I didn’t say a word. I didn’t do anything, to be painfully accurate.

The next morning, I wrote about this in my journal. I remember asking, “What do you want me to do, God?” A week removed from that experience, honestly, I’m not sure if that was a stupid question, a cop-out, both or neither. Not 3 days later, I was catching up on my Bible-reading and found myself face-first with the following reminder:

“He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” —Micah 6:8

“What do I want you to do, Dan? Here’s your answer.”

The God I’m getting to know, He’s not particular about where we’re at, what our day job is or even how long our to-do list happens to be. He’s really not. Rather, as long as we’re busy going about these 3 things, He’s quite happy to let us fill in the details. I don’t know about you, but I feel I need to unpack these 3 missions, for my own sake. If you’d like to do that together, by all means, read any or all of these three:

1)    Act justly
Micah’s contemporary, a guy named Isaiah, urges us to seek justice, to learn to do right, etc. Isaiah paints this very active, learn-by-doing approach to creating equality. What are you and I doing to bring justice to our corners of the world? Anything? If not, we need to at least be taking baby steps toward that very goal.

2)    Love mercy.
I’ve never really thought about this one until I started typing the words you’re reading now. The prophet Hosea interestingly equates loving mercy to acknowledging God. So if we believe in God and claim to know Him, we are acknowledging a Being who unfairly wipes our slate clean…

Not so the cycle ends there, but so we might do the same for others. For their sake and ours. I need to learn to LOVE to pay God’s mercy forward.

3)    Walk humbly with your God.
Do you regularly hang out with God? Does your lifestyle reflect His reality? Or would a bystander possibly conclude you follow a cartoon God, someone you don’t actually believe in? Because nobody would bother to spend time with a fictitious God, right? Tough questions with equally tough answers. And that’s just the walking part, let alone doing so humbly.

God equates humility with a responsive heart. Somewhere, we make the commitment to receive our marching orders from Someone other than ourselves. In other words, we know our role. We follow through on the impulses the Spirit places in our soul today, not worrying about tomorrow until it arrives.

I think back to that Friday night in the Loop. I didn’t do anything, and I’m certain I regret that more than if I had. Each of us will always have excuses—good ones, bad ones, and everywhere in between. But my mind is starting to shift in a scary direction:

What if it’s not that I don’t know what God wants me to do? What if the real issue is I just don’t care to do it?

Granted, this is complicated. I’m not getting the vibe that these are competing possibilities, that it’s an exclusively either-or proposition. I’m confident the truth carries a little of both.
But after my run-in with Jesus on Michigan Avenue, I now believe more than ever in a God who will give me repeated chances to a) learn to spread justice by actually doing it, b) leap at the chance to offer mercy rather than to begrudgingly do so, and c) to simply hang with Jesus, giving Him the chance to lead me into a fuller life.