Friday, February 16, 2018

Seeing Clear

The little girl comes home and tells me someone told her she comes from a bad country.

A bad country.

A country defined bad in the eyes of a child because it is labeled non-Christian.

How does a mama respond? I try to hide my bear claws and the temptation to say this proclaimer of bad was “bad” himself.  I resist showing her the headlines revealing to her the bad in this, her adopted country.

I can get sick over racism, so much of which I do not understand. White, churched and suburban.  I am naïve.  I am sheltered.  I am blind. I was raised by parents whose response to Civil rights was to teach us to “not see color.”

Oh, that it was so easy.
If we were not meant to see color, God would not have revealed them. Each color, each race, each religion, each philosophy embraces their own  tears and traditions.  I need to see.

How do I explain something I can barely understand myself?

Difference is not bad. 

The devil, he is the inventor and deliverer of bad.
He is the one that blinds our eyes to the value of people no matter their origin.  He is the voice that speaks untruths when misunderstandings come. He is the fear monger and the terrorist.

What do I tell my child?

I show her the Church.

I show her a God that created all colors and skins and faces.  I show her a God so full of love, He lights a fire for Himself in the darkest spaces.

I show her God’s people who need to respond in prayer and love even when bad chokes the desire for charity out of our very hearts.

I show her a Jesus that stopped for the unclean, the diseased the foreigner and tell her that is who we need to be, not because of who they are or are not, but because of who He is.

He placed value in each of us when He breathed life into lungs, we must find value therefore in the perceived bad, the good, the holy, unholy, clean and unclean.


Being indifferent to difference is not the answer.  Being obedient.  Being lovely.  Speaking truth is the beginning.  Opening ears is the method.  Extending hands is the ministry.

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