At a Freedom School set up by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Harris and friends read books and staged plays. The Jim Crow laws of Hattiesburg, Mississippi, kept his elementary school underfunded and poorly supplied. Surely God is my help the Lord is the one who sustains me.Īs a young African American child, Anthony Harris, PhD, had few educational opportunities. In what experiences has God sustained you? Join the conversation. “God kept me.” Despite the racism and more, “God sustained me.” Indeed, God sustains us all. On the drive home, I confessed to my husband an unexpected epiphany. Then I considered that, in the 60s, my classmates and I had struggled to integrate a society while watching friends go to Vietnam and come home in body bags, our world still torn. Listening to him, I marveled at how social taboos and racial awkwardness had blocked our friendship as teens.
We’d never exchanged two words in high school, but he asked my opinion on how racial healing happens. One varsity football player came over to talk to me about race, of all things. I reminisced and reconnected with many old friends. Was it because of race? Why were they still not bothering to say hello? I wasn’t sure. Thus, at a recent class reunion, some who shunned me in high school did the same. The one who created you, Jacob, the one who formed you, Israel:ĭon’t fear, for I have redeemed you I have called you by name you are mine.Īs the only Black student in my high school graduating class, I was accustomed to occasional snubs. When have you felt alone, and how did God help you in this situation? Join the conversation. Patricia Raybon, “Summer Epiphanies,” The Upper Room Disciplines 2022: A Book of Daily Devotions (Upper Room Books, 2021) Today's Question As one author has described the mass incarceration of Black males in the U.S., it’s “the new Jim Crow.” His tragedy illustrates the soul-killing costs of a criminal justice system that disproportionately confines America’s Black citizens. In 2015 he committed suicide at his parents’ home. Without ever standing trial, he was imprisoned for three years-nearly two years in solitary confinement.Īfter release, he never recovered from prison’s indignities, including multiple assaults and food deprivation during solitary. At age 16 he was jailed on charges he stole a backpack because his parents couldn’t pay his $3,000 cash bail. Kalief Browder never should have been locked up. Help us to fight racism and to demonstrate your love for all people. Though there are many of us, we are one body in Christ, and individually we belong to each other.ĭear God, inspire us to always seek you. What can you and other Christians do to fight racism? Join the conversation.
Patricia Raybon, “Summer Epiphanies,” The Upper Room Disciplines 2022: A Book of Daily Devotions (Upper Room Books, 2021) Today's Question But not even racism stands up to the Lord’s authority. It replicates itself like a deadly virus, infecting legions as it rages through a body.
Racism is a pervasive spiritual brokenness. In that instant, he vowed to start a multicultural church serving the poor, and he kept his vow. In the blink of an eye, he knew the Lord was calling him to minister to precisely that couple-in fact, to all people-not just white people. Then, halfway across the street, he realized they were Black. While watching a young couple unload their car on the street across from his church, he decided to invite them to his church.
Can the demon of racism be dislodged in an instant? A Birmingham pastor said yes.
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