Text: “In him appeared life and this life was the light of mankind. The light still shines in the darkness, and the darkness has never put it out” (John 1:5-6 Phillips).

A Burden and an Ache. That’s the title of a beautiful, heart stirring book written by Clarence McConkey. It’s a series of word portraits of persons in the inner city, living around the church McConkey served as pastor – persons whose lives are as down-beaten and ravaged as the buildings around them, as torn apart as the shattered economic and social structures that once sustained them.

One of those persons is Ruby. Let me introduce you to her in the first person as McConkey does.

Ruby is a child who sits entranced in the street…She is four or five years old I would think. The street which makes up her home is bordered b…