The Last Light in Detroit

In 1950, Detroit was the wealthiest city per capita in America. Nearly two million people filled its neighborhoods. The Fisher Building gleamed like a cathedral of commerce. Motown records poured music into every living room in the country. The whole world envied Detroit.

Drive down Brush Street today and you will pass block after block where houses stand open to the sky, their roofs caved in like broken ribs. Schools that once held a thousand children are silent, their windows dark. Grand Michigan Central Station — that magnificent Beaux-Arts palace — stood empty for decades, its marble floors buried under debris and pigeon feathers. The population has fallen below 640,000. The friends who once profited from Detroit's industry moved their factories overseas without looking back.

This is the ache of Lamentations. "How deserted lies the city, once so full of people! How like a widow is she, who once was great among the nations!" The prophet Jeremiah did not write about Jerusalem's fall as a detached historian. He wept. He walked those empty streets where children once played, where merchants once haggled, where worship once rang out toward the Almighty. The roads to Zion mourned because no one came to her festivals.

Yet Jeremiah kept walking those streets. He kept bearing witness. Sometimes faithfulness looks like refusing to look away from the ruins — trusting that the God who dwells with the brokenhearted has not finished writing the story.