John M Perkins Quotes

Love Is The Final Fight

Yielding to God's will can be hard. And sometimes, it really hurts. But it always brings peace.

justice is something for which every generation has to strive.

I am all for churches being a part of the nonviolent marches and protests that have happened in the wake of violent killings, but these protests happen only after a tragic event has taken place. I want the church to be what prevents these acts from ever happening. I want the church to be the community that is so dedicated to loving our neighbors, to caring for the poor and neglected, and to living out true reconciliation that these killings do not even take place.

In America, education and quality of life are directly related. Lacking a good education means lacking, among other things, access to the very doorway that leads to a wholesome life-style. Education is not a luxury in modern American society—it is essential for survival.

You have to be a bit of a dreamer to imagine a world where love trumps hate--but I don't think being a dreamer is all that bad. Joel prophesied that God would "pour out [His] Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions" (Joel 2:28). I'm an old man, and this is one of my dreams: that my descendants will one day live in a land where people are quick to confess their wrongdoing and forgive the wrongdoing of others and are eager to build something beautiful together.

God has always wanted the vulnerable in society to be cared for. He never intended for them to languish in poverty, abuse, slavery, homelessness, or other types of devastation. When we care for individuals who are trapped in these ways, when we show them love and help them move toward freedom and wholeness, we participate in bringing a little part of God's Kingdom back into alignment with His greater plan. We do justice and God smiles.

For too long, many in the Church have argued that unity in the body of Christ across ethnic and class lines is a separate issue from the gospel. There has been the suggestion that we can be reconciled to God without being reconciled to our brothers and sisters in Christ. Scripture doesn’t bear that out. We only need to examine what happened when the Church was birthed to see exactly how God intends for this issue of reconciliation within the body of Christ to fall out (p. 33).

In response to my question about how we might rein in the empire, he said, "That's why I'm meeting with you. Only you in the United States can change it. Your government created this problem and your people must solve it. You've got to insist that Washington honor its commitment to democracy, even when deomcratically elected leaders nationalize your corrupting corporations. You must take control of your corporations and your government. The people of the United States have a great deal of power. You need to come to grips with this. There's no alternative. We in Brazil have our hands tied. So do the Venezeulans. And the Nigerians. It's up to you.

True Christian change works more like an old oak tree in the spring, when the new life inside pushes off the old dead leaves that still hang on.

Love. No matter where I start, I always end up here.

We've been looking in all of the wrong places for help in fighting this battle for reconciliation. We've sought help from social service agencies and government programs. But this is something that requires divine power.

Justice is a process, and change takes time, but I believe we ought to dream big dreams and make big statements as we pursue those dreams. Amos didn't tell the people that God wants justice to trickle through their society. The New Living Translation uses the phrase "mighty flood of justice" (Amos 5:24) to describe what God wants to see. One thing we learned in Mendenhall is that once flood waters start rushing through a place, there's no turning them back with human strength.

The difference between relocation and gentrification is motive, plain and simple. When we decide to move into an inner-city neighborhood we should always ask ourselves the question, Is this good for my new neighbors? Moving into inner-city neighborhoods for merely selfish reasons with no regard as to how it will affect the community residents will probably eventually do harm to your neighbors.

William Pannell said in one of his sermons that the ugliest four-letter word in the English vocabulary is "them". It's a word that separates and divides. It's important that we know their names. It's really hard to dislike someone you pray for regularly. One of the most important things we can do to move the cause of reconciliation forward is to pray for the brothers and sisters who we have been separate from.

Jesus intentionally brought together disciples who were very different - fishermen, tax collectors - not people who would naturally love one another. But he did this to show us what love looks like in practice. We have the privilege of putting this same kind of love on display as we love those in the body of Christ who don't look like us.

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I hear people arguing about everything from church pews to worship songs to old cultural traditions but we need to start getting beyond this stuff.

Injustice is an evil in society that must be fought.

We work out the idea of redemption with redemptive living.

At eighty-six years old, people tell you how much wisdom you have. I don't know about all of that, but I do know that God has done much in me and through me, and He's still working on me.

The psalmists came to God with pure, raw emotion...He wants us to empty our hearts of this heaviness...I know that without his Spirit moving on all of our hearts, nothing will happen for good.

He looks up. Our eyes lock,and he breaks into a slow smile. My heart beats faster and faster. Almost there.He sets down his book and stands.And then this-the moment he calls my name-is the real moment everything changes. He is no longer St. Clair, everyone's pal, everyone's friend. He is Etienne. Etienne,like the night we met. He is Etienne,he is my friend. He is so much more. Etienne.My feet trip in three syllables. E-ti-enne. E-ti-enne, E-ti-enne. His name coats my tongue like melting chocolate. He is so beautiful, so perfect. My throat catches as he opens his arms and wraps me in a hug.My heart pounds furiously,and I'm embarrassed,because I know he feels it. We break apart, and I stagger backward. He catches me before I fall down the stairs. "Whoa," he says. But I don't think he means me falling. I blush and blame it on clumsiness. "Yeesh,that could've been bad." Phew.A steady voice. He looks dazed. "Are you all right?" I realize his hands are still on my shoulders,and my entire body stiffens underneath his touch. "Yeah.Great. Super!" "Hey,Anna. How was your break?" John.I forget he was here.Etienne lets go of me carefully as I acknowledge Josh,but the whole time we're chatting, I wish he'd return to drawing and leave us alone. After a minute, he glances behind me-to where Etienne is standing-and gets a funny expression on hs face. His speech trails off,and he buries his nose in his sketchbook. I look back, but Etienne's own face has been wiped blank. We sit on the steps together. I haven't been this nervous around him since the first week of school. My mind is tangled, my tongue tied,my stomach in knots. "Well," he says, after an excruciating minute. "Did we use up all our conversation over the holiday?" The pressure inside me eases enough to speak. "Guess I'll go back to the dorm." I pretend to stand, and he laughs. "I have something for you." He pulls me back down by my sleeve. "A late Christmas present." "For me? But I didn't get you anything!" He reaches into a coat pocket and brings out his hand in a fist, closed around something very small. "It's not much,so don't get excited." "Ooo,what is it?" "I saw it when I was out with Mum, and it made me think of you-" "Etienne! Come on!" He blinks at hearing his first name. My face turns red, and I'm filled with the overwhelming sensation that he knows exactly what I'm thinking. His expression turns to amazement as he says, "Close your eyes and hold out your hand." Still blushing,I hold one out. His fingers brush against my palm, and my hand jerks back as if he were electrified. Something goes flying and lands with a faith dink behind us. I open my eyes. He's staring at me, equally stunned. "Whoops," I say. He tilts his head at me. "I think...I think it landed back here." I scramble to my feet, but I don't even know what I'm looking for. I never felt what he placed in my hands. I only felt him. "I don't see anything! Just pebbles and pigeon droppings," I add,trying to act normal. Where is it? What is it? "Here." He plucks something tiny and yellow from the steps above him. I fumble back and hold out my hand again, bracing myself for the contact. Etienne pauses and then drops it from a few inches above my hand.As if he's avoiding me,too. It's a glass bead.A banana. He clears his throat. "I know you said Bridgette was the only one who could call you "Banana," but Mum was feeling better last weekend,so I took her to her favorite bead shop. I saw that and thought of you.I hope you don't mind someone else adding to your collection. Especially since you and Bridgette...you know..." I close my hand around the bead. "Thank you." "Mum wondered why I wanted it." "What did you tell her?" "That it was for you,of course." He says this like, duh. I beam.The bead is so lightweight I hardly feel it, except for the teeny cold patch it leaves in my palm.

If the church took up the responsibility of caring for the poor, of living incarnationally, of participating in the unspeakable gift of giving, our world would look much different from the way it does today. Justice is a stewardship issue, caring for the poor is a stewardship issue, loving our neighbor as we love ourselves is a stewardship issue. We have the resources, but our priorities aren’t there yet.

The psalms of lament were meant to be tools in the community worship experience to bring the worshipers into the presence of our God. The lament is His gift to us, His church. They urge us to come and be healed together.

In the midst of all the pain, oppression, and lack of meaning in life, the Church must proclaim the answer that is provided to us so clearly in Scripture. It is simple. We must be loving like Jesus in this fractured world.

Perhaps the strongest indictment against us as the Church is that we have settled for an Americanized version of the Church that mirrors whatever culture says, and there is no collective sense of loss, no sense of remorse. We have sinned deeply. The problem is that we haven’t got a taste of the sinfulness of racism... We don’t see the wickedness of profiling God’s people that He has created to be one and that He has created in His image (p. 75).

Throughout Scripture we read about God's concern for people who are vulnerable or suffering - the poor, the widows and orphans, the foreigners in the land, and so on. All Christians should feel a sense of calling to where there is pain in our society.

When you live a lie it destroys everyone involved. For the slave master, his conscience was seared as the love of money, and economic gain overruled his concern for his fellow man. And for the slave, his sense of dignity and personhood was assaulted without recourse.

Right before Jesus went to the cross, He prayed that all believers, past, present, and future "may be one, as You, Father are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me" (John 17:21 NKJV). This was Jesus's prayer for us all, yet more often than not, I fear we have not lived up to it. Instead, we fight for our own way, for our selfish desires, for our right to be superior. We build churches centered on our own cultural ideas of God, rather than on seeking to bring us back to Him. And then we fight with other churches and religions about who is serving their personal culture god the best. Come dream with me. Dream of a fight for something bigger, something more important and worthwhile. We need to fight for justice and peace, for the walls between us to come crashing down.

Now, I’ve learned over the years that racism exists nationwide—yes, even outside the deep South. But socioeconomic structures in Northern urban areas maintain the ghettos and white supremacy in a mechanical way, so Northern whites have never had to be open, active racists as was true in the South.

In our Western world we don't do well with grief and suffering. Our rugged individualism has trumped the call to shared grief. And many of us believe that it shows a lack of faith to lament. We want to move too quickly to our claims of victory in Jesus. We neglect the need within our souls to cry out.

Justice is any act of reconciliation that restores any part of God's creation back to its original intent, purpose or image. When I think about justice that way, it doesn't surprise me at all that God loves it. It includes both the acts of social justice and the restorative justice found on the cross.

But why is it then that some Christians get all hot under the collar when an organization like ours gets out and helps the whole community? I see economic education as a total responsibility to all people. And that responsibility is not lessened if some of those helped do not respond to our preaching of the gospel.

If we have been silent and have chosen to ignore the mistreatment of others in the past, we should begin to speak up and challenge injustices. If we were racist and bigoted in our speech and actions, there should be a radical change that is observable. If we have been angry and spiteful toward the other, there should be a radical change that is observable. And, yes, if we have an abundance of wealth and we have the opportunity to use this blessing to encourage those we have previously been prejudiced against, we should open our hands in Christian love and brotherhood. We should tear down the walls that have separated us for so long.

And it requires that we make some uncomfortable confessions. G.K. Chesterton said, "It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is that they can't see the problem." I believe this statement can be applied to the lack of reconciliation within the Church today. We've not been able to arrive at the solution because we haven't seen or acknowledged the problem. The problem is that there is a gaping hole in our gospel. We have preached a gospel that leaves us believing that we can be reconciled to God but not reconciled to our Christian brothers and sisters who don't look like us - brothers and sisters with whom we are, in fact, one blood.

I believe in the inherent dignity of all human beings. The Bible states clearly that God created men and women in His image from the very beginning. (see Genesis 1:27) No matter how damaged people become, they still bear that image. No matter how much people have been oppressed or how much they have oppressed others, the part of them made in His image is worth rescuing and restoring.

The reason we haven’t solved the race problem in America after hundreds of years is that people apart from God are trying to create unity, while people under God who already have unity are not living out the unity we possess. The result of both of these conditions is disastrous for America. Our failure to find cultural unity as a nation is directly related to the church’s failure to preserve our spiritual unity. The church has already been given unity because we’ve been made part of the same family. An interesting point to note about family is that you don’t have to get family to be family. A family already is a family. But sometimes you do have to get family to act like family. In the family of God, this is done through the presence and power of the Holy Spirit. A perfect example of spiritual unity came on the Day of Pentecost when God’s people spoke with other tongues (Acts 2:4). When the Holy Spirit showed up, people spoke in languages they didn’t know so that people from a variety of backgrounds could unite under the cross of Jesus Christ. The people who heard the apostles speak on the Day of Pentecost were from all over the world, representing at least sixteen different geographical areas, racial categories, or ethnic groups (Acts 2:8–11). But in spite of the great diversity, they found true oneness in the presence of the Holy Spirit. Spiritual oneness always and only comes to those who are under God’s authority because in that reality He enables them with the power of His Spirit.

We need to get beyond our ignorance of the other. We need to move beyond the thinking that white privilege means that all whites live a privileged life. This perspective ignores the reality of class in this country. The plight of poor whites was largely ignored until the last presidential election. According to the 2013 data from the US Department of Agriculture, 40.2 percent of food stamp recipients were white; 25.7 percent, black.4 What’s Their Story? We would do well to hear and learn from the stories of whites, especially those who share the common struggle of poverty and marginalization. In Hillbilly Elegy, J. D. Vance shares his story of growing up poor: “To these folks, poverty is the family tradition—their ancestors were day laborers in the Southern slave economy, sharecroppers after that, coal miners after that, and machinists and millworkers during more recent times. Americans call them hillbillies, rednecks, or white trash. I call them neighbors, friends, and family.”5 When we understand the details of the other’s story we realize that we have much more in common than we ever imagined.

I’m haunted every day by what I did as an economic hit man (EHM). I’m haunted by the lies I told back then about the World Bank. I’m haunted by the ways in which that bank, its sister organizations, and I empowered US corporations to spread their cancerous tentacles across the planet. I’m haunted by the payoffs to the leaders of poor countries, the blackmail, and the threats that if they resisted, if they refused to accept loans that would enslave their countries in debt, the CIA’s jackals would overthrow or assassinate them. I wake up sometimes to the horrifying images of heads of state, friends of mine, who died violent deaths because they refused to betray their people. Like Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth, I try to scrub the blood from my hands. But the blood is merely a symptom.

MURRAY (with a cynical laugh). Interesting? On a small town rag? A month of it, perhaps, when you're a kid and new to the game. But ten years. Think of it! With only a raise of a couple of dollars every blue moon or so, and a weekly spree on Saturday night to vary the monotony. (He laughs again.) Interesting, eh? Getting the dope on the Social of the Queen Esther Circle in the basement of the Methodist Episcopal Church, unable to sleep through a meeting of the Common Council on account of the noisy oratory caused by John Smith's application for a permit to build a house; making a note that a tugboat towed two barges loaded with coal up the river, that Mrs. Perkins spent a week-end with relatives in Hickville, that John Jones Oh help! Why go on? Ten years of it! I'm a broken man. God, how I used to pray that our Congressman would commit suicide, or the Mayor murder his wife just to be able to write a real story!

(It’s a doozy! I could listen to it all day long.) Nikki Lane—“Gone, Gone, Gone,” “Coming Home to You” Patterson Hood—“Belvedere,” “Back of a Bible” Ryan Bingham—“Guess Who’s Knocking” American Aquarium—“Casualties” Devil Doll—“The Things You Make Me Do” American Aquarium—“I’m Not Going to the Bar” Hank Williams Jr.—“Family Tradition” David Allan Coe—“Mama Tried” John Paul Keith—“She’ll Dance to Anything” Carl Perkins—“Honey, Don’t” Scott H. Biram—“Lost Case of Being Found” The Cramps—“The Way I Walk” The Reverend Horton Heat—“Jimbo Song” Justin Townes Earle—“Baby’s Got a Bad Idea” Old Crow Medicine Show—“Wagon Wheel,” “Hard to Love” Dirty River Boys—“My Son” JD McPherson—“Wolf Teeth” Empress of Fur—“Mad Mad Bad Bad Mama” Dwight Yoakam—“Little Sister” The Meteors—“Psycho for Your Love” Hayes Carll—“Love Don’t Let Me Down” HorrorPops—“Dotted with Hearts” Buddy Holly—“Because I Love You” Chris Isaak—“Baby Did a Bad Bad Thing” Jason Isbell—“The Devil Is My Running Mate” Lindi Ortega—“When All the Stars Align” Three Bad Jacks—“Scars” Kasey Anderson and the Honkies—“My Blues, My Love

Biblical reconciliation is the removal of tension between parties and the restoration of loving relationship.

Eissinger, president and “honor man” of Penn’s class of 1918, died. Dudley Perkins, a Swarthmore football hero, died. Nearly two-thirds of the dead were under forty. It was a common practice in 1918 for people to hang a piece of crepe on the door to mark a death in the house. There was crepe everywhere. “If it was a young person they’d put a white crepe at the door,” recalled Anna Milani. “If it was a middle-aged person, they’d put a black crepe, and if it was an elderly one, they put a gray crepe at the door signifying who died. We were children and we were excited to find out who died

The problem is that there is a gaping hole in our gospel. We have preached a gospel that leaves us believing that we can be reconciled to God but not reconciled to our Christian brothers and sisters who don’t look like us—brothers and sisters with whom we are, in fact, one blood.

One reason that the expression of the love of God is so often limited in Western society is that we do not expect it to change society and people except in a very spiritualized and narrowly defined way. We see the gospel as primarily rescuing us from hell and getting us to heaven. We have lost sight of “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven.” And when we do not expect it to change lives, we will not see it change lives.

But that this angel would choose shepherds in the fields as his target audience is even more noteworthy..."outcasts of society"...This would be right in line with the arrival of a Messiah who later would clearly identify with the "least of these" in society. And there are still other ideas about why God chose these shepherds to receive the good news of Jesus' coming. According to one scholar, the flocks of sheep at the location where these shepherds worked were likely reserved for sacrifice at the temple. So these shepherds had to keep their flocks safe from blemish or harm since their sheep would be used for temple sacrifice. If this was the case, then these were no ordinary shepherds. They were people who understood the importance of a sacrificial lamb in a very intimate and direct way.

This was the vision! All people, all kindred, all nations, all tongues. One blood. But it was the vision realized when Peter accepted the mandate to love those he had been taught to hate.

I want to know Him. And I came to know Him. I believe the purpose of man is to know that God, the God of the universe who made everything and holds everything together. That big God. That all-encompassing God. the God who makes Himself known to humanity. I came to know that God. And I believe the purpose of us knowing that God is to love Him back and make Him known to others.

And if I had not met Jesus I would have died carrying to strip it away, layer by layer. He reminded me again and again that I could not hoard His love. And I could not be selective about who I would share it with. The love He had shed abroad in my heart was meant to be shared with others regardless of their color. My good friend Judah Smith says, "You cannot exaggerate God's love. Just try it!" I agree with him. God intends for us to be extravagant and free in our love for one another.

Our natural preference is to stay home, comfortable in our own spirituality. God calls us each on a journey, an Abrahamic journey. It doesn't necessarily mean a geographical journey, but it will always mean a spiritual journey of the heart. It will mean leaving the familiar, traveling in discomfort but being pushed to place our trust in God for...everything.

We as the American church need to take more ownership for our collective sin, our obsession with things that will not make an ounce of difference in heaven, and our failure (past and present) to stand up and speak up for the poor, for the stranger, for the ones who don't look like us.

In 2012 they elected Fred Luter as the first African American president of the denomination...."A descendant of slaves elected to lead a denomination forged to protect the evil interest of slaveholders is a sign of the power of a gospel that crucifies injustice and reconciles brothers and sisters." "We thought it was time to stop talking about racial unity in positions of leadership within our convention" and "put a president out there

we only look back so that we can move forward with His power.

Lament comes from deep down in the souls. We need to give voice to our souls.

The wounds of our individual lives, which seem intolerable when lived alone, become sources of healing when we live them as part of a fellowship of mutual care." - Henri Nouwen

The soul is the ultimate truth teller. It knows truth. And from the very soul of the Church - we need to grieve our refusal to obey His command to love one another.

It seems to me that we do not need to be taught how to lament. What we need is simply the assurance that we can lament. We all carry deep within ourselves a pressurized reservoir of tears. It takes only the right key at the right time to unlock them...in God's perfect time, through lament, when these tears are released, they can form a vast healing flood. - Michael Card

It troubles me that there is no outrage at our collective failure to rise up to God's call to oneness. In the Old Testament when Ezra returned to Jerusalem with the exiles and discovered that they had violated God's law by intermarrying with foreign wives , the people of Israel gathered for a time of corporate lament. "Now while Ezra was praying and making confession, weeping and prostrating himself before the house of God, a very large assembly, men, women and children - gathered to him from Israel, for the people wept bitterly: (Ezra 10:1). And then in verse 6: "Then Ezra rose from before the house of God and went int the chamber of Jehohanan the son of Eliashib. Although he went there, he did not eat bread nor drink water, for he was mourning over the unfaithfulness of the exiles.

That we have given up our control of this issue is evident in the fact that the Black Lives Matter movement began outside of the church. We should have sounded the alarm when Michael Brown (Ferguson, Missouri), Eric Garner (Staten Island, New York), and so many others were killed. We should have been leading the marches and speaking truth to power. But instead, too much of our energy and drive has been misdirected toward materialism, comfort, and convenience. Many of us no longer keep our church building open to provide a safe harbor for our children after school. We are concerned that our building may be torn up. We have shut out the children in our communities who need the influence of God's people and God's Word on their lives. We have become inwardly focused and are not the healing agents we once were. This is part of our confession and we must be broken about it.

Peggy McIntosh, a professor at Wellesley College, shares some of those advantages: - If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure of renting or purchasing housing in an area that I can afford in which I would want to move. - I can be pretty sure that my neighbors in such a location will be neutral or pleasant to me. - Whether I use checks, credit cards, or cash, I can count on my skin color not to work against the appearance of financial reliability. - I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race. - I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group. - If a traffic cop pulls me over, I can be sure I haven't been singled out because of my race.

The Son of God, Alpha and Omega, was multiethnic, multicultural. IN the family tree of Jesus were the indigenous inhabitants of Israel, Palestine, Ethiopia, Egypt, the Sudan, Libya. If that is true, we need to present it, remember it. Then we need to ask what it means for us, through the Holy Spirit, for that Christ to live in us. We must wrestle with what it means to follow that Jesus, to surrender to that Jesus, to represent that Jesus. He walked our earth as a multiethnic, multicultural, Jewish human being. But we have reduced him from that. In our culture, we have made Jesus look like, whoever we are instead of who he is. We have made him white. Western. European. Democrat. Republican. Urban. Handsome. Comfortable." - Pastor Efrem Smith

And finally, we can all confess to being consumed with fear around this issue. True success in the area of reconciliation will require the mastery of our fears. This fear has people saying, "I can't do it" before they even try. Whites are afraid to cross the divide because they might have to give up some of their power and status. Blacks are afraid because it's a lot of hard work, usually with nothing to show for it at the end of the day. Many of us who have tried to make the effort have found out, like LeBron James, that we're still seen as "the lesser other." But God's Word speaks into our fears: "There is no fear in love. But perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfects in love." (1 John 4:18) So the antidote to our fear is His love. It is His love empowering us to extend our hands and hearts to one another.

To forgive is to make a decision to cancel a debt that you are owed and not to hold it against your offender. There is no forgiveness without a debt. And when we realize the enormity of our own debt it makes forgiveness possible. So in this sense forgiveness is closely connected to gratitude. If our hearts overflow with gratitude for all that the Lord has done for us, all that He did to secure our salvation, all that He continues to do to keep us - then forgiveness will be easier. The person who doesn't have anything to be grateful for is an angry, vengeful person.

Many struggle to forgive because there's the notion that to forgive is to suggest that the wrong was not committed. But forgiveness requires an offense to have been committed. Someone was hurt. En evil deed was done.

And I think that when the Lord puts fire in your belly and a call on your life, quitting isn't an option. But if we're able to stand and to remain committed, it's because of His grace. We can't claim credit for it. He does it in us and through us by the power of the Holy Spirit. Our part is to just do what He tells us to do.

Without them the chain would be broken and progress, as slow as it has been, would have stopped. The same is true with you. You are a link in the chain of progress, and our children and their children are depending on each of us to remain strong, to do our part until the work is finally done. And one day it will be done. Of that I am confident.

I don't think it makes sense to go into a battle and not know who you're fighting against. And if you're in a battle and don't even know there's a battle going on, you're going to be wiped out. This thing of reconciliation is one of the devil's main battlegrounds. We need to know that in order to be ready to fight well.

In this battle for biblical reconciliation, we don't go against the Enemy with swords, spears, and javelins. We don't fight with small stones and slingshots. We pray. We pray. We pray because this battle is the Lord's. And by praying we call down the whole army of God to defeat the enemies of reconciliation. Like David, we believe that God's power is more than enough to bring victory.

Some people think that those of us who believe in social justice don't believe in prayer, that we don't pray enough. They think that because they don't really understand what prayer is. They think it's something that you do at a set time; that it's just asking God for what you want. But prayer is more than that. Prayer is listening for God's answer. It's that intimate practice of asking according to His will and moving as He directs. I love the words of this song, "Lead me, guide me, along the way. For if you lead me, I cannot stray. Lord, let me walk each day with thee. Lead me, O Lord, lead me." That's what prayer is.

And I'm convinced that prayer and work go together. We've got to work and we've got to pray. We've got to do all that we can humanly do to move toward God's vision for unity in the body of Christ. And we've got to pray that He will reign over our efforts and will bring His supernatural power to bear against the forces that oppose us.

After He changes our hearts we need Him to move us beyond our fears and anxieties into loving relationship with one another. When we are fearful, our prayers are probably more powerful...because they're probably more honest. We need Him to help us lay aside prejudices and wrong-headed notions about one another and help us to learn from and with one another. We need His help to be honest and transparent with one another, to grieve our past and be ready to move forward together as one.

There's an African proverb that I think expresses beautifully just how important this face-to-face kind of friendship is: "When I saw you from afar, I thought you were a monster. When you got closer, I thought you were just an animal. When you got even closer, I saw that you were a human, but when we were face to face I realized that you were my brother.

The greatest gift my friendship can give to you is the gift of your Belovedness. I can give that gift only insofar as I have claimed it for myself. Isn't that what friendship is all about: giving to each other the gift of our Belovedness...there is that voice...that whispers softly or declares loudly: 'You are my Beloved, on you my favor rests.' It is certainly not easy to hear that voice in a world filled with voices that shout: 'You are no good, you are ugly; you are worthless, you are despicable, you are nobody - unless you can demonstrate the opposite.' These voices are so loud and so persistent that it is easy to believe them. That's the great trap. It si the trap of self-rejection.

The greatest gift my friendship can give to you is the gift of your Belovedness. I can give that gift only insofar as I have claimed it for myself. Isn't that what friendship is all about: giving to each other the gift of our Belovedness...there is that voice...that whispers softly or declares loudly: 'You are my Beloved, on you my favor rests.' It is certainly not easy to hear that voice in a world filled with voices that shout: 'You are no good, you are ugly; you are worthless, you are despicable, you are nobody - unless you can demonstrate the opposite.' These voices are so loud and so persistent that it is easy to believe them. That's the great trap. It si the trap of self-rejection.” - Henri Nouwen

But we have to overcome our fears. Fear will immobilize us or cause us to do things that are ungodly.

We were very afraid. But our fears made our prayers more powerful, more honest. "God we need You! Lord, help us!" God uses the person who does what He says int he midst of fear. Courage is born in the face of fear.

I feel like that on a lot of days. And it's at these times that I reflect on what it will be like to see my mother. A lot of people say that she was a "Fannie Lou Hammer" type of woman. My mother would challenge the plantation owners if they were unfair. She died because her body was too weak to nurse me, a seven-month-old baby. She died that I might live. I look forward to crossing the threshold of heaven and rushing into her arms. I'll tell her that I picked up the mantle of reconciliation and ran hard until my day was done. I want to know that she is proud of me. I want to hear her say, "You did well, son." Then I'll go looking for my two sons, Spencer and Wayne. It's going to be some kind of reunion. That "great camp meeting in the sky"...where we'll see Jesus and touch the face of God. Yes, my steps are a little slower now...but my spirit is energized. I still have joy. I am full of hope for the future. We will get there. We will get there - together. We will get there - as one. "When we all get to heaven, what a day of rejoicing that will be! When we all see Jesus, we'll sing and shout the victory!

As I look back on my life I see the many successes that have happened in my lifetime but justice is something for which every generation has to strive.