The truth is, we were made for more than what social media or our nation or our world tells us we are to each other. While my personal social media has been blowing up these past few weeks with the stories of black lives that have been horrifically taken, I’ve left this space empty and quiet.
It was intended so.
I didn’t want to be another white company that had a lot to say when the truth is, I’ve been livid, I’ve been weeping, and I’ve been having a lot of hard conversations with my parents about how the America I know looks too much like the America of the 1960’s they knew. The nation doesn’t need another white voice to chime in on what we know. We need to listen harder and better to the black voices that have been telling us for far too long where systemic racism exists and how it affects them. We should have been grieved earlier. We should have loved our neighbors better.
I should have loved better. I should have listened better.
I’m grateful for the gift of my black friends who have patiently and graciously and tenderly taught me how to speak better, listen better, lean in better, love better. I’m a million times over blessed by their presence.
It shouldn’t have to be said, but yet it does: Black Lives Matter.
It aches that we are where we are because over the generations we didn’t do
the hard work of reconciliation and restoration from 400 years of trauma and pain.
We weren’t meant to be so divided. We were made to be a tight community, standing up for each other, crossing lines and holding each other when life hurts. My prayer in the days and years ahead is that we would all see each other as Jesus sees us. That we would speak of each other with the same dignity we speak of ourselves and the same powerful dignity God speaks over us. We are all incomparably made and bear the image likeness of the Living God.
Let us believe it and live it. We belong to each other. We are family.
– JM
Share this story
