Streams of Mercy
In these difficult days – days that turn into weeks and months and perhaps even years, it’s hard to keep on keeping on. There’s so much need all around. There are moments when we’re so consumed with what happened in the past and so anxious about what tomorrow will bring, that we find it difficult to tend to “today.” As I look back over my life, I see how little I’ve done in the area of social justice. I’m just now learning truths about American history and even church history that are disturbing, even shameful. Why did I not see all that was going on? How did I not see injustices so visible in daily life?
Only this morning, I heard an interview with a Native American, of the Navaho Nation. She spoke of “institutional racism,” resulting in over-regulations that keep her people from moving forward. She stated that 30-40 percent of her people do not have homes with running water. There’s great need for “the system” to ”invest” in the Navaho people, so that electricity, water and housing are available to them. While they’re “grateful” for the aid given so far, “We need to do better,” the reporter said. We must not turn back from facing those whom our actions and inactions have hurt – sometimes for hundreds of years. It’s time for us to do better.
When I hear the phrase “defunding the police” I don’t think of doing away with the police, but of re-directing some of their funding to put other trained professionals in place to help to meet needs in the community. Social workers and mental health workers and medical professionals could address community issues and provide resources to help.
In his book series The Walk, Richard Paul Evans quotes Kierkegaard, “We understand our lives backwards, but we must live them forward.” So very true! Remember the saying “Hindsight is 20-20?” Perhaps the year 2020 is the year that will correct our vision and help us to see more clearly going forward.
In this month’s Pine Straw magazine, editor Jim Dodson writes: “Change and history move in halting steps, stumbling – before we who are living through them finally come to terms with the truth. To many in America, a racial awakening in the midst of a worldwide pandemic is a clear message that it’s time for America to face up to the sins of our collective past, and finally take steps to end systemic racism, a reckoning long overdue.”
As we slow down and listen to our lives and reflect on our living, as we learn to live with open, teachable hearts, and as we grow in our awareness of the needs of the world, may we become a part of the solution, rather than a part of the continuing problem. May we begin to see more clearly the truth of what has been, and the hope of what yet can be.
Elizabeth