DEEP WATERS

Yesterday my heart was so grieved over the tumultuous events throughout the week, that I felt I had to share my heart here. So I posted The Racial Divide: Where Do We Begin? yesterday, hoping to encourage us as Brothers and Sisters in Christ to love one another well during these times. Love digs deep. Love is costly. Love calls us to live not only for our own benefit and welfare, but for the benefit and welfare of others. Yesterday I felt called to call us all to LOVE one another during these times. It's what I believe our Father expects of us, now more than ever. Today, I feel called to inspire us to do one more thing. This is perhaps the most important thing we can do right now. This is perhaps the real starting point. I believe I took it for granted that God's people were already doing this. I took for granted that it didn't need to be said. Then I read a Facebook post from a man I call my "Big Bro". His words were poignant and powerful. His words...

This week was one of the most discouraging in our country in some time. Sure we've lived through deadlier weeks - soldiers falling while fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, 9/11, the Boston Marathon Massacre... And yet there's something that darkens the heart and minds of Americans when we witness fellow citizens - especially our young African American males - gunned down in the street and during routine traffic stops.  There's something that oppresses the human psyche when w e witness police officers, charged with the oath to protect and serve , gunned down and murdered by a gunman motivated by hatred and racism. (And as a military veteran that served in Afghanistan, possibly out of mental illness and PTSD.) There's something hugely wrong about weeks like this... And yet we are a resilient people. We have persevered through many difficult times. We have stood together and marched together, hand-in-hand, in solidarity of heart and mind. We can ...

My heart broke at the news yesterday... Elie Wiesel, writer, professor and human rights activist, passed away yesterday, at the age of 87. I don't remember when I was first introduced to Elie, but I do remember seeing him interviewed on The Oprah Winfrey Show . I also remember watching footage of his tour of the concentration camp he had endured and survived at the young age of 15. I still remember the pain in his eyes. I also remember reading his book Night for the first time. I wept every night as I turned the pages of Elie's retelling of his young life as a young Jewish boy. His sister and mother were killed upon arrival to Auschwitz concentration camp. After being transferred to the Buchenwald concentration camp alongside his father, Elie watched his captors beat his father mercilessly. He also watched his father die before his eyes, his spirit nearly destroyed by the helplessness and shame he felt. His father died only weeks before Buchenwald was libera...