Yes indeed, things do look pretty bad!
Things look bad, as they
should, or would you steal fire from
the making of steel?
We are not presently being unmade as a nation; instead, we are being made into something greater, something worthy. I’m not one of those people who make comedy of or extol the “wonderful lessons taught by poverty,” after all, I can assure the reader that there is nothing “wonderful” about being poor, especially when that poverty is thickly extra-layered with the hostilities of racial refusal and access denial. Children find it hard to process why they can’t go here or there, be this or that, the forced act of being unable to be one’s true self. But life is a lesson, and all lives have a mattering story. One of my mother’s favorite sayings when we faced a denying or debilitating situation, like when banks would not give her a loan to purchase a home or what was later to become a successful hair salon. “Well,” she would say, always falling forward on her strong Christian belief system, “I have the devil right where I want him!” This always puzzled me as a child, but in those days, you could not voice your puzzlement out loud, especially with matters of faith. But I wanted to say in those moments: “But, we are losing here (translation: the devil is winning), so how is it that you have the devil in the bullseye of your crosshairs?” I learned later in life that she was right; the presence of evil is not a cause for fear of defeat. For sure, it can hurt, and maybe even hurt badly. But, that’s the middle and not the end of the story. The false cure that the “strong man” will offer is that the way to alleviate your suffering is to inflict suffering on our targeted, fellow humans who are wealthless and defenseless due to their lack of political power and access to the vehicles of corporate communication. However, even the pain that evil brings on them (and us) is an opportunity for our best anti-evil selves to emerge. In an evil plague, what will emerge is those who are inoculated by their faith to remain good practitioners of kindness and compassion.
There is so much gloom
we can almost touch our doom,
but hope is soon here.
Tho we wound every day,
and even say; “it’s over!”
all storms end in their own way.
Our crises are deep,
yet we know God isn’t sleep, and
who can peep His plan?
The eyes of God are
our eyes not looking away
from suffering souls.
The voice of God is
our voices speaking up for
love and not fearing.
The hands of God are
our hands doing Godly things,
the rest is on Him.
