Submitted June 15, 2009
By Major Herb Fuqua
Administrative Corps Officer

If you have driven by Omaha’s Kroc Center recently you will have noticed a major change.  Y Street, from 27th to 30th, has no fence.  In fact, the entire Kroc site has shed its winter coat of fencing.  She looks very innocent….and as vulnerable as a new-born baby.
The Kroc Center is a beautiful facility, reflecting the day-to-day care and attention skilled workers provide her.  She is a dazzling, twinkling star shining against a night sky called blindness. Not physical blindness.  But, the blindness to ones own potential as a human being.  The darkness of not knowing what talents, gifts and abilities God has given you.
Many children and adults are at a point in life where they, too, are vulnerable.  The fences of love, security and friendship have too soon been removed or trampled down.  Circumstances have woven a web so tightly around them that hope, optimism and dreams of a better tomorrow are clouded and any effort to escape the web seems vain.
Property owners put up fences to keep people off their land to prevent those who would steal, vandalize or destroy from accomplishing their cowardly mission.
Children who have had their protective fences torn down, by those stronger then they are, have experienced the theft of their innocence, the vandalism of their dreams and the destruction of their hearts.
The result?  They grow up replacing their trampled down fences with walls.  Walls so thick no one will ever have the chance to hurt them again.  Walls of anger.  Walls of mistrust and suspicion.  Walls of addictions.  Walls of isolation.  Walls to keep anyone in a place of influence or authority out of their life.
The unintended result?  They find themselves enclosed by new walls. Walls that someone else built.  The prison wall.  The gang wall.  The wall of ignorance from dropping out of school.  The wall of unemployment.  The wall of broken relationships. 
The Salvation Army Ray and Joan Kroc Corps Community Center has no fences or walls. We welcome with open arms all those who have had their fences of love and security trampled down.  We welcome all who have built strong, thick walls to protect themselves from further pain.
Why?  Because fences and walls contribute to the blindness…the darkness…of not being able to see themselves as God sees them.  The talents, giftedness and abilities their Creator has given them lie dormant… just outside the wall.
Jesus says in Scripture, “I am the light of the world; whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” John 8:12.
It is my prayer that all who enter the “doors of opportunity” of the Kroc Center will discover that life without walls is freedom.  Freedom to pursue and develop every
God-given talent they posses.  Freedom to choose the healing presence of Christ for all of life’s wounds and trampled down fences.

I hope to see you soon at The Kroc Center. 
                                                                                                                                           And, yes, “We’ll leave the Light on for you.”
Major Herb Fuqua