Saturday, January 3, 2015

Ferguson “…a time to grieve, and a time to dance…”


          Did a white cop hunt down and execute a black teenager?  Was it an execution?  Planned or spur of the moment, did Officer Wilson decide that the color of an 18 year old was reason enough to kill him?  Many in the community think so.  And they believe the prosecutor colluded with the police to make sure he faced no charges for his actions.  They responded with riots.

          What are to do?  How do we sort out right from wrong, innocent from guilty?  How do we allow the ‘system’ to do its work when it is believed that the system protects the guilty?  How do we respond to a community so despondent, up to its neck in racial and economic inequality, a powder keg of angry response, when the fuse has been lit and the detonation has occurred?

          Do we take days and weeks to sift through all the public data to arrive at our own conclusion?  Do we take sides?  Do we trust the Holy Spirit to give us special insight into the circumstances of the shooting?

           Instead of entering into a polarized situation on one side or the other, shall we instead come alongside the person in pain and seek to help bring healing, seek to help bring understanding, seek to help repair the brokenness?  Can we work through our own grief and anger so that, in turn, we may help another to do the same?  Let us be there until they can think again.  Then shall we talk?

 

Lord, in our grief and anger, may you hold us so very tight to you.  Amen.

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