Being a Christian can be equated to two lovers getting married and then
beginning the real task of living together. There is the euphoria where
love is fully found for the first time and a man and a woman have now
entered into a new life together. It could modestly be equated to fully
witnessing your first spring or catching your first taste of the cold
morning dew. We as the Bride have exchanged our vows and promised to be
faithful to One Husband. Though, while we conceptually
may have understood, we did not realize then how strenuous the process
of dying to oneself would really be. We now begin the process of riding
ourselves of all selfishness (all the while failing miserably) and
seeking forgiveness for our wrongdoings, daily. Like the perfect Husband
He graciously forgives us and continues to lead us with life-giving
leadership but we struggle with accepting that He still perfectly loves
us in spite of ourselves. Daily, He affirms us by noting how wonderfully
made we are and He makes us his number one priority. Yet, we run. We
break our promise. We act out in our flesh, we run after other desires,
we commit adultery with things that have no power to satisfy but we do
it over and over again, unsatisfied, we go back. All the while the
Husband sees us for who we really are. Though we are a wretched-cheating
mess He beacons us home and calls us blessed, He calls us redeemed.
There at His feet we repent and He picks us up, dust us off and says,
"you are forgiven." For the Husband knew whom He had married and He knew
His Bride would be a mess before we said, "Yes" to His call. As the
years go by, the Bride learns to that to die to herself means to become
more like Him. Though the battle will be strenuous and perhaps even
daunting at times we move forward because of how unwavering His love is
for us despite our imperfections. It is His love that drives us, it is
His love that carries us, and it is His love that gives us new life. As
time passes by we learn how to better love Him and be obedient as His
wife but ultimately we model His love and life-giving sacrifice.
Reparations is a conversation about a ‘debt that is owed.’ Reparations is NOT a handout NOR welfare. Reparations is an OWED payment to an entire people group who literally and figuratively built the United States with its own hands. Reparations is biblical, just and it is necessary. Reparations is as it is implied: A repairing of an unjust action against African peoples that lasted for 244 years, 100 plus years of Jim Crow, domestic terrorism, police brutality and an unjust criminal system. Reparations is a restorative process that enacts a repayment process to men who were lashed, sold, beaten, castrated, mutilated and subjected to slave labor until the day their heart gave out. There was no escape from slavery. Reparations is a restorative process that enacts a repayment to women to were taken, shackled, used as human bed-warmers for house guest, raped, taken from their families and forced to produce children who were fathered by their oppressors who wanted nothing to do with
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