There is beauty, truth, and goodness in Alton. While there is great poverty in parts of our city, perhaps the greatest poverty is that she no longer sees herself as beautiful. Perhaps she even believes she’ll never be beautiful again.

This page is our attempt to capture the soul of our city in pictures. To see the depth of humanity in our neighbors and riches of grace God is extending to us all.

Most of all, these pictures are prayers like the one Langston Hughes wrote, called “Litany”:

Gather up
In the arms of your pity
The sick, the depraved,
The desperate, the tired,
All the scum
Of our weary city.

Gather up
In the arms of your pity.
Gather up
In the arms of your love–
Those who expect
No love from above.