We had a sweet time at Upper Room this week. I particularly enjoyed praying together for our city. One person shared a beautiful poem that resonated with me. It began, ‘The Lord reigns over London. Mercy, justice and righteousness flow from his throne’. It reminded me of the prophetic picture of the river of life that Ezekiel describes in Ezekiel 47. He describes a river that flows from the altar of the temple, where ‘everything will live where the river goes’ (47.9). It is literally the river of life! It’s a prefiguring of the Holy Spirit, the living water that will come from Christ and, of course, bring true life to all who receive Him! Elsewhere, in Revelation 22, it’s this same living water that sustains the tree of life whose leaves are for the healing of the nations. The kingdom of God is like a river that irrigates the city and brings life, restoration and healing wherever it goes. Without it, people are like dry bones, spiritually dead and cut off from the source of life. But as people encounter God and invite him into their lives, they start to experience the life they were made for, alongside deep healing and restoration. It’s beautiful!

It would be easy for this to sound super-spiritual, and perhaps I’ve already lost some of you. Simply put, I’m arguing that part of being Christians and citizens of this city should include a longing for the city’s restoration through Christ. Andrew and I recently recorded a podcast exploring our relationship with the city. In it, we encouraged Christians who live in London to learn to love the city (aware that some will have found this harder than usual in recent months). It would be easy to misconstrue this as an encouragement to enjoy much of what the city has to offer. Of course, that’s no bad thing. And if memory serves, we did do that! But love means more than simply enjoying the city. Part of our love should include a longing for its restoration i.e. a conviction that this city is nothing compared to what it could be, or indeed should be, without Christ’s touch and presence in the lives of its citizens. It’s this strong sense that there is something far better for our neighbours, our colleagues and our friends that draws us to our knees and drives us to share Christ with them.

Part of the problem is that we don’t have a tangible image of what London would look like if everyone came to follow Christ. Fortunately, the writer and London pastor, Andrew Wilson, wrote a brilliant description of a ‘redeemed London’ that is simply incredible:

“It starts in the human soul. In the redeemed London, everybody knows that they are loved by their Creator. This might sound very fluffy and religious, but it's the biggest difference between the redeemed London and the regular one. This means that people in the redeemed London live without anything to prove, in complete security, and this has all sorts of implications that make it hard to recognize it as London, even though Tower Bridge and Big Ben and St James's Park are still there. For a start, people on the Tube make eye contact with one another and smile, instead of hiding behind their newspapers, because now strangers are not people to be avoided because they're all scary, but people to be celebrated because they're all happy. There are no brooding clumps of youths standing around Elephant & Castle smoking and looking miserable, trying to find their identity in the acceptance of their group, because all young people in the redeemed London already know who they are and why they matter, since they know and are known by God.

People's hearts have changed, too. It's like everybody's got new desires, new passions, because they are all pursuing their happiness in the joy of God and the joy of others, and that changes the way they do everything. Metro doesn't have any negative stories any more, and nobody kills or abuses or cheats on anyone. It's not just that people don't do bad things; it's that they don't even want to. There's no hatred in Tower Hamlets, no greed in Kensington, no jealousy in Primrose Hill and no lust in Soho. Beauty is celebrated, but without anyone trying to own it to the exclusion of others. The seedy brothels north of Chinatown stopped operating long ago, not because someone made a law about it, but because nobody wanted to cheapen something as beautiful as sex by having it with a woman they didn't know in an underground hovel. It's as if the whole city has lost the ache in its soul, the ache people were trying to soothe with money, sex and power. People are living satisfied, fulfilled lives, and it makes the city so beautiful it makes you want to weep.”

This gobbet doesn’t quite do it justice. You can read the whole quote here. In the meantime, let’s keep praying, longing and acting for the healing and restoration of this beautiful city together.