Our Longer Term Need

Mean Street Ministry is looking into the process of building a transitional housing program for these families on the edge, including a ministry-operated housing facility. Such a program would provide temporary, safe housing, and enable the families to save enough money so that they might get out of the cycle of poverty and into an apartment.

Having a ministry-operated facility would also make it easier for Mean Street volunteers to mentor these families until they can be financially stable in an apartment on their own. The dream is to be able to offer counseling, debt management and problem solving, and training in parenting skills, job, and computer skills during the transition to an apartment.

We are presently praying about and considering a building near Alameda and Sheridan to serve as a shelter for families. It was previously a prison halfway house and would suit our needs very well. It is already equipped with office space, room for a food bank, a shop space, large shared kitchen, dinning, living room, and laundry room. It also is equipped with some nice digs for a resident family. If you are interested in becoming a part of this venture, please call James Fry at 720-933-6926.

God's Grandeur

THE WORLD is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod; 5
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things; 10
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.


Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89)