Listening

 

Well, I’ve been gathering information long enough … I must write the next post I promised you, my readers, two weeks ago. As I’ve continued to wipe the ‘sleepys’ from my eyes I’ve also been hearing whispers from the Spirit of Jesus Christ, reminding me that He came “to proclaim good news to the poor … to proclaim freedom for the prisoners … to set the oppressed free” Luke 4:18.

I’ve also continued to watch the nightly news. The protesters are still marching in the streets, they are still carrying signs saying “Black Lives Matter,” and I saw that they are also destroying statues of Robert E. Lee, commander of the Confederate army during America’s great Civil War. It continues to appear that they are protesting the oppression of black people in America, going all the way back to the time of chattel slavery … But wait a minute, they are also defacing statues of Abraham Lincoln, wasn’t he the one who set the slaves free?

Yes, the Emancipation Proclamation officially set the slaves free as of January 1, 1863 but the Civil War was still raging. On November 19, 1863, Lincoln in his Gettysburg address at the site of the bloodiest battle of the war, said that this nation, born in 1776, was “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. … Now we are engaged in a great civil war testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure … we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain – that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” 

I believe we are being tested once again to see whether our nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all people are created equal can survive. The peaceful protesters seem to be for  equality under our Creator, and they want justice for all, but the violence that erupts in the streets shows that hate still abounds. The slaves were set free, but racism never goes away, it just adapts. I confess I have been complicit in racism because of my silence over the years. I do plan to vote on Nov. 3^rd, but government is not my Savior. The love of Jesus Christ is changing my heart, and that is the only cure for racism or any other sin, whether it be a dysfunction of the heart of an individual, a family, or a nation.

“If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land” 2 Chronicles 7:14.