Since we have begun aligning ourselves toward the Bronx, we
have found ourselves paying much more attention when New York City pops up in
the news. And for a number of reasons, NYC pops up quite a bit. It has, after
all, the largest population in the country, and serves as the center of much of
our nation’s culture and commerce. It just seems as though everything happens
in New York City: It’s the home of the United Nations and Broadway, the Stock
Exchange and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. And it seems as though half of the
shows on TV take place in or are filmed in New York City.
New York is where it’s
at!
A mayoral election there makes national headlines. Many people
know who Michael Bloomberg and Bill DeBlasio are (the former and current mayors
of NYC) and don’t even know the mayor of the town where they live (I’m
struggling right now to remember the mayor of Chambersburg. Umm…I think it’s
Pete something…)
So New York is in the news a lot. Recently, for example, the
Super Bowl took place right outside the city and had lots of press coverage.
Then there was coverage of the connection between big sporting events and sex
trafficking, and then even more coverage that debunked the myth of the
connection between large sporting events and sex trafficking. On the lighter side, Staten Island's own groundhog made his own prediction a few weeks ago, though to much less fanfare than did Punxsatawney Phil.
One news report that caught my eye recently was put out by
the Barna Group. They surveyed people from all over the country about their
Bible-reading practices and their faith, and created a ranked list of “America’sMost (and Least) Bible-Minded Cities.” Some results were surprising, and others
less so. For example, the top 5 cities were more or less in the South , and 3
of the bottom 5 were in the Northeast. One exception is the Cedar
Rapids/Waterloo region of Iowa, which surprises my inexpert eyes because I
always figured Iowa to be a rather conservative place. Apparently not.
Then I looked for New York City. Not surprisingly at all,
the NYC comes in at a disappointing 89th, actually falling four
places from the previous year. My head and heart said in unison, “I want to go
there.”
I like how the Barna website itself puts it:
“The economic well-being of a nation rests largely on the health of its cities. Likewise, the spiritual vitality of the U.S. is deeply connected to the faith of the people living in its largest cities.”Where the cities go, so often goes the rest of the nation. But to bring the scope closer, there are literally millions of individual people in that big, sprawling city who need Jesus and who have no idea how much He loves them and what He did for them. God tells Jonah concerning Nineveh, “And should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left?” (4:11, NIV) That is a concern we share for the great city of New York.
New York City is definitely where it’s at.
