A Delightful Echo.

The Fourth has come again. Really, I love this holiday. I don't stand for much of what it does, and I don't believe in much of what it boasts. But the celebrations are yet to be matched.

This evening my sister Alissa (visiting me in Chicago for the week, woot woot!), Chandler and Kelsey headed down to Millennium Park with a picnic in tow. We listened to the craziest band I have ever … EVER … heard. Their name was Italian for "Crazy Cow", and they are self-discribed as a punk marching band. Bizarre, to say the least. We ate our grapes, cheese, crackers and hummus, olives and bread while watching one of the funniest and most entertaining shows yet to be on display. Oh, you're probably thinking I was talking about the band. Oh, no, my friends. The band was entertaining and all, but the real show sat about eleven feet away from us. A group of gender neutral thirty-somthings smoking their weed and getting more drunk by the minute. We played our Scrabble game and laughed to ourselves a bit.

After much of the funniness had passed, we headed down to Navy Pier to watch the fireworks display. It was wonderful, as it usually is. We were sitting on a dock, dangling our feet over the edge, reminding each other not to drop our shoes or purses in the water, and staring up at a dazzling sky. I always feel like a kid when I watch the fireworks. I get giddy and I giggle and do a little girl dance inside (well, and sometimes out, too). The fireworks were spread all across the darkening sky and they lit up the water and every building on the skyline. With every bang and every boom the city responded in delightful echo.

And then I realized: This is what I'm hoping for, this is what I'm longing for. Don't you see it? It's the story of us, the story of God's people in the city! We serve a God with plans and purposes bigger and wider and more dazzling than ours, and we long to be a city that mirrors and echos His heart! Yes, this is what we're seeking in asking God for a heart for the city; that every building, every drop in Lake Michigan, every widened eye looking to Him would reveal the Maker's heart with joyful submission and glad obedience.

This is my Fourth of July prayer.