Fanny Lou Hamer famously once said that she was “sick and tired of being sick and tired.” I’m thankful to Jemar Tisby (author of The Color of Compromise) for teaching me about her. At the age 42, after working as a sharecropper most of her life, Hamer became a civil rights activist and politician. She was fed up with the violence and injustice and oppression she saw and experienced in Mississippi and decided to do whatever she could, enduring...
I love this Youtube video of a shepherd calling his sheep to himself. I also love that God describes Himself as a shepherd. “A Psalm of David. The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will...
My daughter asked this morning, “Why is it called Good Friday when such a bad thing happened on this day?” I grabbed a marker sketch of this image that I had scrawled out this morning and told her about how all of history converges on this very day, this very moment when Jesus gives up His life for the world, for us. I had been grappling a bit myself with how to celebrate Easter in the face of such...
I was first introduced to the concept of lament in the course of learning about racial justice and reconciliation over the last few years. I was reading Daniel Hill’s White Awake (which I highly recommend to white people). In one chapter, Hill writes about how lament is one of the necessary and appropriate responses to injustice and suffering. We, as white Americans, tend to want to focus on celebration and victory, or we want to jump immediately into fix-it...
Hello friends! I pray your are safe and well right now. I know most of our lives have changed drastically over the last few weeks. I am home with my family attempting some homeschool, trying to retain sanity and peace, and fighting anxiety. The other night, I wrote down some people I want to remember to pray for by name, and ended up creating a whole list of people. I thought I’d share the little chart I drew out...
I almost didn’t post this one because it felt a bit chaotic with four sets of hands and arms and chatter, but friends say to post it, so here goes! Like most of you, my kids are home with me for . . . how long? I spent the first week of this alternating between doomsday scenarios, panic, and mentally checking out in a deluge of news and Facebook posts. I’m still checking the news, but I’m trying to...
