A few months after Hurricane Katrina, I was walking the streets of New Orleans with friends who were committed to helping in the rebuilding effort. We drove past the Superdome, walked in empty neighborhoods racked with garbage, debris, and broken down homes, previously flooded by activity and people. Hundreds of thousands of people left the city in search of something new.

The prophet Jeremiah, instructs us in both his self-titled book as well as his book of Lamentations that we should care for the city. He puts it clearly in two distinctly related phrases: “But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare,” (Jeremiah 29:7). Later in Lamentations 1, we read these words:  “How lonely sits the city that was full of people.”  And so images of New Orleans come to mind, both in its beauty and potential as well as in its dealing with its own current loneliness that was once ‘full of people.”