~Brooding Waters~
Writings on the intersections of politics & spirituality
All Things New: A reflection on 2 Corinthians 5:16-20
"All of us are damaged by the realities of oppression in our world. ...relationships must be lived out in a world that bears the wounds of centuries of injustice and racial violence. No amount of good intentions or personal history can inoculate my friends and me against the times when this wounded history seems to rear up and make the chasm between us seem so wide, even virtually uncrossable. We work for a new creation, but we do not live in a new creation.
...Our world groans for change at the individual, relational and institutional levels, and I see God’s Spirit sometimes whispering, other times shouting a message of reconciliation for all there."
When There is No Peace: Where are the Saints?
"I saw good news in Ferguson. I encountered the Spirit of Truth and Love and Hope there. As someone who has committed my life to working against racism, sometimes I despair.
....In Ferguson, I heard the whispers of a new world, stirrings of the promise of Hebrews 12:27, that things will be shaken up so that 'what cannot be shaken may remain.' The message of the Gospel is that there is a Force more powerful than Empire, more powerful than White Supremacy, and these protesters are preaching the Gospel! I saw in their faces not only righteous anger and determination, but also joy, because they have discovered that they are free because, like Jesus, they no longer are walking in the fear of death. In the face of that sort of Soul-Force, the power of empire fades into the background, like the police line in the beautiful pictures my friend Aziz took of the protesters while we were in Ferguson. ~ read more
Photo by Abdul Aziz, used by permission