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A Lament for a Nation Unmoored

There is blood on the ground again.
A young woman in North Carolina,
who fled one war only to be swallowed by another …
stabbed on a train,
her story cut short before she even had a chance to write it.

A congresswoman in Minnesota and her husband,
executed in the quiet of their own home …
a sanctuary turned into a grave.

Children in a school,
their laughter silenced by gunfire.

And a man … Charlie Kirk …
shot while speaking words to a crowd.
And before the echo of the bullet fades,
before we know who or why,
the blame game begins.
Because we already know, don’t we?
We already have our villains picked out.

This is what it means to be unmoored.
To drift.
To lose sight of the shore.
To shout across the waters
instead of rowing toward one another.

We rage.
We divide.
We accuse.
We forget that we belong to each other.

Sit quietly. Breathe. Let the weight of what we know settle in our bones.
We live in a time of sharp edges …
a time when words are weapons before they are bridges.

The story of America was always a grand experiment …
a fragile dream
that people with different names and faces and prayers
could actually live together.

But somewhere along the way
we confused difference with danger.
And now we are drowning in the waters of our own hate.

And into this chaos,
a voice still whispers:

“Do not be overcome by evil,
but overcome evil with good.” ~Romans 12:21

Let that be our lantern in the dark.
Not to deny evil … to name it, to resist it … but to refuse to become what we despise.
To resist the shrug of indifference, the snap of judgment, the hardening of the heart.

Not platitude.
Not sentiment.
Resistance.
Rebellion.
A counter-narrative in a world where anger is currency
and hate is power.

So what do we do with this ache,
this grief,
this fracture?

We weep.
We lament.
We refuse to numb ourselves.

We name the evil.
We sit in the tension.
We cry out to the One who hears the blood of Abel still
crying from the ground.

And we remember …
we do not have to agree to love.
We do not have to understand to honor.
We do not have to win to serve.

So …. we lament

We lament These are not isolated tragedies; they stitch together a pattern. A rising heat of fear. A widening chasm in what we believe, who we are allowed to be, and who we think deserves justice or pity.

We lament that we do not yet know the full stories … the motives, the shadows, the human hearts in them … yet we so quickly assign them to “other,” to “them.”
We lose integrity in our haste.

We lament that civility is ever more fragile; trust ever more scarce.
That the presence of another … different in speech, in belief, in background … feels like threat. That compassion is increasingly viewed as weakness.

May we live as people who follow the Romans’ call … resisting evil, but not becoming evil; loving even when angry; speaking truth even when tempted by blame.

May our nation, which is unmoored, find its anchor again: justice, mercy, peace.
May our neighbors be recognized … not as enemies to defeat, but as souls to see.

O God … anchor us.
O Christ … heal us.
O Spirit … breathe civility, compassion, and courage
back into our weary lungs.

Until we learn again
that the only way forward
is to be overcome not by rage,
but by good.

Amen.

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Justice. Mercy. Humility

A meditation on Micah 6:8 in the age of air-raid sirens and culture wars

there’s a dull thud in the distance
but the tremor reaches our screens in real time

Khan Younis… 70 people fall while waiting for flour
Gaza’s toll climbs past 55,000 names no algorithm can pronounce

meanwhile war planners debate bunker-busters for Tehran
and reporters chart which U.S. bases are close enough to launch the next wave

the pundits label it deterrence
the prophets just call it blood

the rupture at home

pews once arranged shoulder-to-shoulder
now divided into voting blocs
some churches preach the ballot before they preach the Beatitudes
others go silent, hoping neutrality will save them

yet the fracture widens:
63% of adults still call themselves Christian,
but many wonder what the word even means anymore

Micah 6:8 (our compass)

He has shown you, O human, what is good.
And what does the LORD require of you?
To act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.

justice… because every image-bearer in Gaza, Tel Aviv, Tehran, and Tulsa carries equal weight in the heart of God
mercy… because vengeance only multiplies sorrow
humility... because power without repentance turns pulpits into echo chambers

three invitations

  1. Lament aloud
    Turn the scroll of headlines into prayer.
    Name the dead. Weep for enemies. Refuse to sanitize the statistics.
  2. Practice inconvenient empathy
    Sit with someone whose vote, accent, or liturgy unsettles you.
    Listen until you hear fear hiding behind their certainty.
  3. Re-center on the crucified Christ
    A kingdom without bombs, ballots, or budget line-items.
    Where swords are melted, not modernized.
    Where the metric is love, not leverage.

a closing breath

justice is not a partisan hobby
mercy is not weakness
humility is not silence

it’s the narrow way…
the way that heals divided churches,
defies reckless administrations,
and dignifies every war-torn street with the whispered truth:

“Beloved, you were never expendable.”

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Standing With My Asian Brothers & Sisters

People took part in vigils in Washington, D.C.’s Chinatown , Garden Grove, Calif., and Philadelphia on Wednesday night following the shootings in Atlanta, while mourners grieved outside Young’s Asian Massage, one of the three spas targeted by a gunman. Photos: Alex Wong/Getty Images; Apu Gomes/AFP/Getty Images; Shannon Stapleton/Reuters; Rachel Wisniewski/Reuters


Standing with my Asian Brothers and Sisters…

“Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.” ~1 John 3:15

Today I have, like you, read many tweets, thoughts, observations and news articles about the murder of eight people in the Atlanta Asian community. I would like to cut through all the spin out there surrounding this and first say that my heart is broken, and we in the Alliance NW mourn and grieve with our Asian friends, family, and churches that have already endured an intense year of racial hatred in America.

We stand with you…
We grieve with you…
We see you…
We speak out with you against the rise of Asian-racism…

In my mind, I hear the words of my Asian friends who have told me that the message they were taught growing up was to “keep their head down, work harder than anyone else and try to keep beneath the radar ” if they wanted to get ahead.In other words, “Here is how to survive in a “White” world.

We have had a year of escalation of hate toward Asians fueled by a national conversation surrounding COVID19 by calling it the “Kung-Flu” or the “China Virus” or other names that center the pandemic on a “people-group” making them the enemy. The result? Destroyed Asian restaurants, businesses and attacks on Asian people.

Words matter…
Sarcasm kills…

The spin has already begun…I have heard that, “The murderer had a sexual addiction, and the massage centers that the people worked in were a temptation… so, it’s not racial it’s sexual.”

It’s not that simple…it’s all connected…

As the murderer was a professed Evangelical Christian, blaming this on his sexual struggle misses the point. I see this as an unholy trinity of flawed sexual theology, unrepented of white supremacy systems, and an absolute devaluing of the sanctity of life…We have lost the concept of dignity towards others and we spin it in so many devaluing ways.

Is racism embedded? Yes
Is sexism embedded? Yes
Do we need to address our faulty sexual discipleship? Yes
Do we need to address the ethnic biases that exist in our lives, communities and churches? Yes

BUT…those realities and our focus on those things also dehumanizes this tragic loss of life. We forget that eight families have lost people they love and they lost them in a horrible, devastating and violent way that will leave scars on their souls forever.

Today would you pause with me and remember their lives.
Today would you pause with me and pray for our Asian friends and communities.
Today would you stand up and say “No More”

Grace and Peace,Monty

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Madam C.J. Walker: Black History Month (part 3)

I first encountered the story of Madam C.J. Walker in a movie about her life called “Self Made” on Netflix, starring Octavia Spencer. It was a powerful movie about a dynamic woman. Debra Michals PhD, writing about Walker states:

“Struggling financially, facing hair loss, and feeling the strain of years of physical labor, Walker’s life took a dramatic turn in 1904. That year, she not only began using African American businesswoman Annie Turbo Malone’s “The Great Wonderful Hair Grower,” but she also joined Malone’s team of black women sales agents. A year later, Walker moved to Denver, Colorado, where she married ad-man Charles Joseph Walker, renamed herself “Madam C.J. Walker,” and with $1.25, launched her own line of hair products and straighteners for African American women, “Madam Walker’s Wonderful Hair Grower.”

An article on PBS.org states that Walker was the first Black American women that was a self-made millionaire. The piece goes on to say: “To keep her agents more loyal, Walker organized them into a national association and offered cash incentives to those who promoted her values. In the same way, she organized the National Negro Cosmetics Manufacturers Association in 1917. “I am not merely satisfied in making money for myself,” Walker said in 1914. “I am endeavoring to provide employment for hundreds of women of my race.” 

Walker was tenacious, savvy, compassionate, entrepreneurial, and sacrificial. I hope yyou are inspired by her story. Check out the sources links at the end for more info.

The following biography is found at theundefeated.com

MADAM C.J. WALKER

“Because she found out you can never go broke working black women’s hair.”

ENTREPRENEUR, ACTIVISTb. 1867 – 1919

At first, it was all about hair and an ointment guaranteed to heal scalp infections. Sarah Breedlove – the poor washerwoman who would become millionaire entrepreneur Madam C. J. Walker – was trying to cure dandruff and banish her bald spots when she mixed her first batch of petrolatum and medicinal sulfur.

But what began as a solution to a pesky personal problem quickly became a means to a greater end. With the sale of each 2-ounce tin of Walker’s Wonderful Hair Grower, she discovered that her most powerful gift was motivating other women. As she traveled throughout the United States, the Caribbean and Central America, teaching her Walker System and training sales agents, she shared her personal story: her birth on the same plantation where her parents had been enslaved, her struggles as a young widow, her desperate poverty. If she could transform herself, so could they. In place of washtubs and cotton fields, Walker offered them beauty culture, education, financial freedom and confidence. “You have made it possible for a colored woman to make more money in a day selling your products than she could in a week working in white folks’ kitchens,” one agent wrote to her.

The more money Walker made, the more generous she became — $1,000 to her local black YMCA in Indianapolis, $5,000 to the NAACP’s anti-lynching fund. Scholarships for students at Tuskegee and Daytona Normal and Industrial institutes. Music lessons for young black musicians.

In 1917 at her first national convention, Walker awarded prizes to the women who sold the most products and recruited the most new agents. More importantly, she honored the delegates whose local clubs had contributed the most to charity. She encouraged their political activism in a telegram to President Woodrow Wilson, urging him to support legislation that would make lynching a federal crime.

Walker was labeled a “Negro subversive” by Wilson’s War Department because of her advocacy for black soldiers during World War I and her support of public protests against the East St. Louis, Illinois, riot.

By the time she died in 1919 in her Westchester County, New York, mansion, she had defied stereotypes, provided employment for thousands of women and donated more than $100,000 to civic, educational and political causes.

As a philanthropist and a pioneer of today’s multibillion-dollar hair care industry, she used her wealth and influence to empower others. One could say she was woke a hundred years ago. – A’Lelia Bundles

______________________________
Sources:

https://theundefeated.com/features/the-undefeated-44-most-influential-black-americans-in-history/#madam-cj-walker

https://www.biography.com/inventor/madam-cj-walker

https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/madam-cj-walker

https://www.pbs.org/wnet/african-americans-many-rivers-to-cross/history/100-amazing-facts/madam-walker-the-first-black-american-woman-to-be-a-self-made-millionaire/

https://www.netflix.com/title/80202462