July 21
Color-blessed disciples see themselves as participating in a global family. We become a community of siblings, preserving the unity that Jesus won through his sacrificial death and resurrection. (Dr. Gray, Derwin, “How To Heal Our Racial Divide”, pg 137)
Day 151 of Russia’s war with Ukraine. Day 51 of America’s deadliest summer in decades (I started this count from June 1). I am sorry to start each post with such dreadful updates, but if you are not living in an area where you are not waking up to news of violent crime unfolding around you every single day and night, consider yourself blessed. Believe me, I do not want to write about this. I really wanted to get on here and talk about how we have begun the celebration for our oldest child, an eleven-year journey into the wonder and majesty of creation, of redemption, of God altering my entire life by blessing us with the gift of our firstborn.
I was also planning on getting on this post and speaking more about Dr. Derwin Gray’s wonderful work of “How To Heal Our Racial Divide”. However, after two violent nights in the city of Savannah, I was exhausted, and reminded that we as Americans have a long way to go before we can claim this is the greatest country in the world. Do you realize that America is the 129th safest country on Earth? And that is out of 163, so we are in the bottom quarter. Earlier this year, we talked about the happiest countries in the world, and if you remember that list, you should notice that many of those same countries are part of the safest countries in the world. Obviously, it is only common sense that you can not be happy if you are always living in fear for your safety. And America is quickly spiraling out of control where there are no safe places left. Mass shootings have happened in every venue where America has touted safety: churches, malls, schools, concerts, grocery stores. And lately, every moment of tribulation results in a gunfight in the streets because almost every person in America has a gun on them and an argument, or a confrontation, can quickly turn deadly when the two parties pull their weapons out and start blasting.
So Dr. Gray is trying to heal America’s racial divide. It is ridiculous that racism still permeates throughout this country, a country built as a melting pot of different ethnicities. But racism is still alive and well, and we are not living lives where we realize that we are “color-blessed”, as Dr. Gray so brilliantly coined the term. We do need to heal our racial divide, but there is so much more we need to fix in this country. As Pastor Steven Furtick put it this past weekend, “It is deeper than you think.”
The words to this new single from folksy artist Jess Ray begins with words of inspiration that sing to my soul: “Let’s get back in the light, I’ve grown tired of the fight.” This beautiful song, entitled “Easy”, is a reminder that God designed this life and world to be easy, but we continue to make it much more complicated than it ever needed to be.
Common Sense Reborn 