I Spoke Up

The following are a collection of thoughts inspired by the events in the USA this week. I'm not an expert nor am I claiming to have all the information and authority on these issues, but I think that whatever voice I have I need to use to bring these issues to the light. Feel free to make up your own mind and do your own research, but don't just scroll on as if nothing is happening. This one goes out specifically to my brown brothers and sisters, we're not off the hook on this.  I remember watching movies like The Help and Selma and thinking to myself, "I wish I had been there. I wish I could ride the bus with the Freedom Riders of Montgomery or refuse to give up my seat like Rosa Parks..." but those days were gone and there was nothing more to be done... or so I thought.  Enter now the year 2020 and look around. I don't know that the story has changed all that much. And maybe, in some ways, things have gotten worse. Instead of seeing overt Jim Crow laws we ...

"In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." Genesis 1:1. This was the fist Bible verse I ever memorized. I've been thinking about it a lot lately because I've been thinking about why on earth God would want to make something out of the mess that was the earth. I don't know if you're an artist or familiar with people who do creative things, but usually the first step to a masterpiece is a blank slate, a clean canvas, and a brand new palette with great splashes of color. The beginning of a painting is often the most organized moment of an artists' day, it's when anything can happen and the possibilities are endless. But that is not the picture we get at the beginning of creation, instead the canvas God is looking at is this: "The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep." (Gen. 1:2a) It was formless and void, in other words, all there was was chaos and emptiness. Not a squeaky clean new canv...