It’s hard to imagine that a whole week has gone by since the tragic death of George Floyd in the United States of America, and yet the protests continue around the world.
When we see the images beamed across our television screens it is also hard to call the United States of America, ‘United’!
United is far from the truth, the streets are teeming with people who are angry that Racial Injustice continues to blight this once proud country.
Unfortunately many of the protests that we see through local media channels show that the often peaceful protests have been blighted by people who take it a step to far, and turn to violence and looting. Almost as if they are wanting to exacerbate the issue and raise the importance factor up a tad even more.
Yet for me the images that resonate most are the ones where we see the law enforcers actually showing compassion and empathy; by taking a knee, embracing protestors in a hug and standing alongside those that they supposedly do not like or even as some have reported ‘hate‘. Nothing could be further from the truth.
But it is important that we recognise that:
‘This Dream Against Racial Injustice is Worth the Fight‘. The following is an excerpt from the Faithlife blog.
John Perkins (author of Dream with Me: Race, Love, and the Struggle We Must Win) reminds us that God hates wrongdoing and loves justice – and that our differences should not divide us.
Human beings were created as one race – in the image of God. For some reason or another, though, we have doubted that central truth.
We have allowed ourselves to believe we are divided by deep and irreconcilable differences, but that is not the truth of the gospel…
The things that divide us are differences of ethnicity, nationality, and culture. Many of our differences result from the location and environment we were raised in, or the various ways we were told to think or act. Maybe we imitated the behaviors of those around us. This does not mean one way a person was raised is right, while the others are wrong; it just means there are differences. More often, the most dangerous divide between us is our lust for power and deep greed that makes us hate our neighbors and think only of ourselves.
But when we view ourselves as one race, one human race, I think we start to recognize that these differences are not insurmountable. We have a common place to start from. We must start viewing other people as human beings, not as obstacles to getting what we want. We can start believing that as members of the family of God, reconciled to him through the blood of Jesus Christ, we are actually brothers and sisters.
The gospel’s very purpose is to reconcile. Reconciliation reflects the heart of God for ALL people and is at the very heart of God’s mission in the world.
So why not spend the next few moments in a time of Prayer for Racial Justice and Reconciliation.
The life and times of Perry... 