So we bought a drug house.

Stench in the air. Excrement on the floor. Holes in the drywall. Police coming to our door asking about drug activity at our address.

Yes, that kind of drug house.

It sat on three acres that sat in the middle of a city, surrounded by bustling stores and busy streets.

Behind loading docks and a doughnut shop sat forgotten ground.

Toward the end of a season of grieving the loss of my mother-in-law, my wife and I needed an adventure. More specifically, Jessica needed a project, and I needed something to matter. While some people might find a crossword puzzle and call it a day, we started dreaming about cultivating beauty in our city by renovating a home. Already starved to grow our own food, when a potential suburban homestead haven came on the market, we jumped at the opportunity.

When we first met our new neighbors, they had a sorrowful and apprehensive kind of hope in their eyes. They had live in the neighborhood for most of their lives. They had seen the showcase-of-a-home next door ravaged by carelessness, and they were desperate for someone to come in and do something about it. They were hoping we would do something about it.

Why not us?

Isn’t that what the world needs? Can you imagine what our neighborhoods, our communities, our families, our schools, or anything else in which we find ourselves collected with other human beings would be like if we all asked, “Why not us?”

What would it mean to the world if we stopped mincing words and stepped up to change it actually and lovingly?

This land upon which my family now lives is us asking those three words on three acres. It’s us attempting to bring redemption to the streets. To find the lost. To give order to chaos. To mend the broken. To sprout – from death – life.

Life.

From the ground up.