The mis-education of a small-town white girl

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Photo by Craig Dennis on Pexels.com

I pulled back the blankets exposing his contracted arm and dark chest. He turned his greying head away from me. I told him my name and what I was about to do. I would bath his arms and upper body, then his lower.  I’d help him get dressed and sit at the kitchen table where some nice lady had just made him a meal.  I tried to sound chipper and draw him in.

“What’s your name sir?” I asked while preparing the water.

He muttered his name. I asked nervous questions and he gave gruff answers. He had been a pastor and lived in Phoenix a long time.

The tension was thick. My pale hands in transparent gloves on his deep umber skin, I could feel his bitterness, his skin crawling back, his brow furrowing deeper with every warm, cleansing stroke. The poison, eating at him from the inside burst through when I reached his unpresentable parts, “It’s about time you white people do for us what we’ve done for you for centuries!”  I was taken back.  “Do you want me to stop sir?… I’m sorry.”  I was ignorant of the pain my darker-skinned patient was bearing.

I was raised in a small town in southwest Oregon where the majority of folks are white. When I was an infant my mom placed pictures of black, Hispanic and Native American babies along the wall by my crib. She wanted me to know what babies looked like outside of our small red-neck town. When Cabbage Patch dolls were the craze, she bought my sister and I black Cabbage Patch kids. She tried her best to give us broader ways to think about people within the limits of our little white county.

The first time I met a black person I was in sixth grade. We had moved to Fairfield, California where my dad took a job as a long-haul truck driver, after being laid off from pulling green chain at the mill. One of the girls who quickly befriended shy-and-pale me was a pretty black girl whose name my 44 year old brain does not recall.  I remember thinking she was beautiful and she made me laugh and taught me how to break dance- which I never could do. She laughed at me and I crumbled into laughter too.  I never thought once that she and her family were bearing a burden different than me and mine.

That same small-town white girl wearing scrubs, gloves and a pony tail, was shut in a room with a man burdened by years I had never seen nor heard. At 19, my mis-education was being exposed. Christ in me, barely a babe breathing his grace, compelled me to say, “I’m sorry.” I was sorry.  I didn’t directly do anything to harm the man, but I bore the DNA of those who had lynched and enslaved his kin. I remember wishing in that moment that I could somehow ease his pain. I hated it for him. I wanted him to know a white person who would take the lesser place and honor him.

After some time the man who wouldn’t look at me the day I arrived started talking with me. He told me about his years in the pastorate and the poverty he watched destroy so many young black lives. I remember one conversation at his table after I had helped him get bathed, dressed and lifted to his wheelchair. I don’t remember what brought it up but I said, “You are my brother in Christ sir. It doesn’t matter to me whether you’re black or white or purple.” I was so ignorant. I thought being color-blind meant being free of prejudice. I remember he shook his head- this white girl still didn’t get it.

Jesus said, “Love your enemies.” I’ve alway thought that meant loving those you see as an enemy. But I think it also means loving those who see YOU as an enemy. I look back on those days as a home health aide in a metropolis of people from all over the world and see how little I knew. I still know little. I’m just more aware of my ignorance. Thinking back to my days in the home of that burdened black pastor, maybe God placed me there to bear a tiny scourging of pain for injuries I did not cause. But surely there he began giving me eyes to see how blind I was. I think that’s what’s needed right now. People like me, ignorant white folks who think of themselves as free of prejudice, who feel defensive because they think they’ve done nothing wrong and yet are being pointed out as the embodiment of racist, privileged and blind culture, need to humble ourselves and love those who may see us as enemies.

At last year’s MLK 50 Conference, Feat LaToria, Lauren Chandler and singers from the Village Church in Texas sang these lyrics:

I didn’t know what I didn’t know.
Lookin’ through my own eyes.
Now I know, what I didn’t know.
Help me see.
Help me see through your eyes.
I will walk with you.
No matter what it takes.

Most of us will never stand on a stage and sing in hopes of healing wounds. But we can start listening without defensiveness. We can walk with or wash the feet of those who bear a burden we have never known.

Confessions of a white evangelical woman

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I guess the people that decide such things would categorize me as a white evangelical. Depending on what you read or who you ask, in our current social context, that might sound like I’m a Trump-voting, Religious-Right, conservative Republican.  I’m none of those.  But I am white, and I am a Christian- by the amazing grace of God in Christ! I guess I am evangelical in the sense that I believe the good news that Christ died for our sins and I love to tell others that good news in hopes that they might come to their senses like I did and follow Jesus. But in the social context that seems to connect the idea of being a white evangelical with being a bigoted, Christiandom, Culture Warrior  I want to be a light on a hill, driving out darkness and helping others see.  If I want to be a light, I first need Jesus to heal my blindness.

My pastor recently said something like, “Blind spots in a Christian’s life are not areas they struggle with.  Those are just usually areas where they don’t want to repent of sin.  Blind spots are just that. You’re blind to them. You don’t know they’re there.”

If I’m going to be aware of my blind spots I’m gonna need someone to point them out to me.  When it comes to being a white Christian in the U.S., I need my black, Latino, Asian, Indian and Native American friends to show me where I’m blind to my lack of love and burden-bearing with them.

MLK Day is one of those holidays where I feel haunted.  I feel a perpetually, present gnawing in my gut to get at what’s dividing me from the people of color (POC) in my life. Honestly didn’t think anything was.  But the more I hear the news and see the Twitter posts of Christian POC who are living with the history of the U.S.’s oppressiveness towards them, the more I realize I am not bearing this burden with them. I have no idea how they feel.  But I want to.

Dr. John M. Perkins said, “There is no reconciliation until you recognize the dignity of the other, until you see their view- you have to enter into the pain of the people. You’ve got to feel their need.

I wrote a post awhile back after hearing a radio broadcast on NPR about the African American wax museum in Baltimore, Maryland.  In that post I talk about my desire to listen to my black neighbors, co-workers and friends and to not be quick to say something to defend myself or make things sound better.  I just want to listen.  I want shut my mouth and enter into the pain of the people upon whose backs this country was built.

I never used to think about racism. I think about it a lot now.  I hear our President.  I see my elderly, white patient’s stand-off-ish reactions at work to the Nigerian doctors and Eritrean nurses who care for them.  I go to church, and I see mostly white people.  I go to the gym down the street and the grocery store and I see very few white people.  I drive through El Mirage, which is predominantly Hispanic and I see no grocery stores.  No kids playing outside.  No church.  I long to have personal relationships with POC where I can bear burdens with them.  I long for my church to be multiracial so we can be a more accurate sampling of the Kingdom of God which is made up of people from every tribe, tongue and nation.

So what am I doing about it?  I am blessed to work with doctors and nurses from all over the world.  There I have formed some professional relationships and early friendships.  But I want to go deeper.  I want to bear burdens.  I had coffee with a brilliant Nigerian nurse I work with a while back.  We talked about racism, being Christians, marriage, temptations we deal with… it was good.  But I know I need to go further. I’m praying about it.  Asking God to show me how I can be a minister of reconciliation to my Hispanic, African, Asian, and Native American neighbors.

On the way home from the gym I listened to this YouTube playing of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s sermon: Why Jesus Called a Man a Fool.  In his sermon he compared America to the fool Jesus spoke of in Luke 12:13-21. He was right.  And the spirit of America, where we build barns to store more of our wealth, has affected me too.  I have grown up in America as a white evangelical where the themes of being a conservative republican were preached as equally as the need to read my Bible and go to church.  I have never known oppression because of the color of my skin.  But I’m beginning to see the people around me who have grown strong under the oppression of America’s foolishness and I am emboldened by their strength to confess my blindness and follow their lead in speaking the truth in love- boldly, humbly, despising the shame of the fool.

 

 

we need to listen. and shut our mouths.

The other day while driving to my oldest son’s baseball game, this story came on the radio.  It’s about the producers memories of going on a tour of The National Great Blacks In Wax Museum in Baltimore, Maryland.  She recalls with audible disturbance, the traumatic memory she has from her school tours through the museum which depicts lynchings and a slave ship as well as segregation and slavery.  Its one of the few times everyone in the car was silent.  Three white males in the car 47, 14, and 12. And myself a white woman.  It really hit us all.  My pubescent sons’ mouths were gaping and at one point my youngest announced, “This is horrible!  Why would people do that?”  I turned the volume down and asked the boys to imagine that they were born and raised in a country where in recent history white people were segregated, lynched, abused, treated like animals and made to be slaves?  That’s the history that my black friends in the U.S. live with.

People like me and my husband and sons we have no idea what that feels like.  That’s what “white privilege” means.  It doesn’t me we get a hand out or hand up.  It means we don’t live with a history of oppression against people who look like us in the country we call home.

I know folks are upset about NFL players taking a knee during the national anthem.  And I know people are quick to defend police officers (so am I… I’m married to one).  But we white folks need to listen.  We need to listen to stories like this.  And to the stories of our black neighbors and co-workers and friends.  We need to listen.  And shut our mouths.  We may have good arguments.  But especially those of us who call ourselves Christians need to put our hands over our mouths and listen.

I have nothing but respect and prayers for our veterans and military servants.  I love my country.  But my country has a history of sinful oppression of people of color.  What we hear in the news and see on T.V. and post in our social media is not going to stop the blood of the slaves from crying out in their descendants. We need to lay down our lives and listen. We need to stop being Job’s friends to those who are bearing a bitter burden.  We need to love our black neighbors.  And give our lives for their restoration to wholeness.

This is the way of Christ, our God and Savior who wasn’t white.  This is the way of the God who calls peoples of every tribe, tongue and nation to be his children.  This is the way of Jesus, who drove out the proud money-changers and proclaimed, “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be a house of prayer for all nations”? And you have turned it into house of robbers!

 “For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.” -2 For. 5:18-19

Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger… -James 1:19 

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Around the house and Charlottesville

Current happenings:

1) Today is my first day of unscheduled activity since July 1st.  I napped.  Read a book for leisure. And went to the gym late.
2) Yesterday I received a $2000 scholarship from the Sun Health Foundation for use towards my Bachelor’s of Science in Nursing. I’m very thankful there are people in the community who give their money to invest in nursing students.  These people are often the patients cared for by the Banner hospital system.  And as one of their donor’s put it, they would like us to be better nurses when they’re in our care.  I can appreciate that.  I want future nurses who may care for me to be better nurses too, which is why I love having students when I work. 
3) After talking with several nurses I work with I decided to call Grand Canyon University to look into their RN to BSN program.  Turns out those nurse’s gave me good advice.  Grand Canyon won’t require me to take any additional math and I get a tuition discount for working for Banner hospitals.  Yay me!
4) The front covered patio project is nearly completed. The actual patio and permit for that project has been reviewed by an inspector from the county and passed inspection.  There’s no longer a timeline pressing my husband to get the project done, but there are still endless projects to be done.  We both feel relieved just to be done with the patio/permit/inspection process. And it looks really nice.  James definitely has a gift for quality craftsmanship.  Next, the siding and landscaping of the front yard will happen, but for now, the before and after pics look like this.
THE BEGINNING OF THE PROCESS
IN PROCESS
PASSED INSPECTION & ALMOST FINISHED!

Current even thoughts:
The events in Charlottesville Virginia sicken me.  As a white, Christian American I feel the need to stand on the rooftop and shout at the Alt Right and white supremacy groups wearing their stupid costumes and spewing their violent, evil agenda:  YOU BROOD OF VIPERS!  
I would like to simultaneously shout to my neighbors:  THAT IS NOT CHRISTIANITY!  Christ is the Lord of peoples from every tribe, tongue and nation.  Heaven will be ethnically and beautifully diverse.  There is no such thing as white supremacy.  White supremacists are terrorists using the name of God, Christ and the Bible blasphemously.  
It bothers me A LOT that our president is quick to tweet attacks on people for all sorts of things but he needed two days to think about the facts before Luke-warmly speaking out against the violence in Charlottesville.  He needed to stand up there and say, “White supremacists are terrorists among us and they will not be tolerated!”   If a Muslim gunman ran into a building shooting people at a club he wouldn’t have flinched at calling it Islamic terrorism.   The evil that people do in the name of God is evil, no matter what religion they use to defend it. 
I love the Christ I have never seen and worship the God of the Bible.  I believe he is the way, the truth and the life, but I don’t believe that means everyone who calls on the name of the God of the Bible is a Christian.  Nor do I believe that every person who calls upon the name of Allah is a terrorist.   There is a very scary evil in the hearts of every human being, that unchecked by the grace of God is capable of the atrocities we see in every ethnicity.  
I don’t want any part of racism.  I want to find deliberate ways to bring healing and reconciliation to the people of darker pigments and other cultures in my neighborhood, workplace, community and country.   I feel like under our current president, the efforts of real Christians shining the light of Christ in this dark world is increasingly in direct opposition with our historic right-winged political affiliations.  
The United States of America is a country built on the backs of African slaves.  The history of racial discrimination is in our roots and its still producing the evil fruit of violence and hate towards people made in the image of God.  As a white person I want to be part of laying an ax to the root of racism that is part of the culture I take for granted every day.  Charlottesville has me thinking and praying about ways I can do that.

I work in an environment that’s very diverse.  My little street here is pretty white.  And in this rural street of a major metropolis it’s easy to not think much about racism and my role in bringing reconciliation where there has historically been division and pain.  In an article I read the other day I came across a suggestion for how to bring hidden thoughts about racism to light by inviting friends and neighbors to discuss the goings on in Charlottesville.  I think that’s a good place to start.  

Why I took my boys to see Selma

I took my kids to watch Selma today.  Every year on MLK Day I purposefully talk with the kids about Martin Luther King Jr.  I set out to rescue the day from the “just another day off school” it could easily become.  Selma helped me do that in a big way today.  But I didn’t just take them because today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day.  I took my boys to see Selma movie for a four reasons:

1)  I want to be purposeful about talking to my kids about history and social and moral issues.  History is what they’re living and history is what they’ll learn from and repeat or change.  And the social and moral issues of life will confront them unless they move to the Alaskan wilderness alone or hide in the basement playing video games for the rest of their lives.  I pray neither of those options will hold any draw for them.  The truth is, even though most of us don’t live in either extreme it’s easy to hide from social and moral issues.   I don’t want my kids to hide.  I want them to shine.

2) My boys are about as white as white gets.  Blonde. Blue-eyed. Freckled-faced and have never been called a racial derogatory term in their lives.  They have no idea what it feels like to have a “people” who’s history is full of not-too-distant slavery and segregation.  They have no idea what it feels like to live in an era when segregation was commonplace.  Neither do I for that matter.

3) Dr. King demonstrated the kind of gutsy submission I want my boys to have in life.  I want them to be characterized as a Christian should be: as a submissive person.  Submissive as Christ was.  Submissive to authority.  Respectful of those in leadership.  Obedient to the law.  Yet, like Christ, I want them to be willing to suffer when they have to stand up and against unjust laws.  In a interview on Meet The Press after the march from Selma to Montgomery Dr. King was asked how he could justify going against a law that forbade him from marching when he himself proclaimed to be a peaceful, non-violent protester.  King’s response is spot on:

There are two types of laws. One is a just law. One is an unjust law. I think we all have moral obligation to obey just laws. On the other hand, I think we have a moral obligation to disobey unjust laws, because non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. I think the distinction here is that when one breaks a law that his conscience tells him is unjust, he must do it openly, he must do it cheerfully, he must do it lovingly, he must do it civilly, not uncivilly, and he must do it with a willingness to accept the penalty. And any man that breaks a law that his conscience tells him is unjust, and willingly accepts the penalty, by staying in jail in order to arouse the conscience of the community on the injustice of the law, is at that moment expressing the highest respect for law.

Oh that we as Christians, even me and my sons, would be so changed by the goodness and grace of God and the excellence of his ways that we would be model citizens and when we must break a law that our conscience tells us is unjust, we would do so openly and cheerfully and lovingly and civilly and willing to accept the penalty and thereby express the highest respect for the law.

4)  Martin Luther King Jr.’s mission and stand is a powerful and inspiring way to point my boys to Christ.

Dr. King’s stance against the moral evil of racial bigotry and segregation, and for the moral good of all human beings to freely live in their society, share equal access to that society’s economy, politics and social aspects as people created in the image of God no matter the color of their skin is important and life changing because it’s right!  There is a right and there is a wrong.  There is evil and there is good. There is sin and their is righteousness.  God through Christ showed us what righteousness is.  We human beings demonstrate over and over again what sin is.  Out of our hearts comes all kinds of evil.

Forcing people with dark skin to eat in a different part of a restaurant, go to a different school, drink from a different sink; beating peaceful demonstrators for respectfully standing against legislated evil; preventing black people from voting… and the many more evils that were accepted as right by our society is deplorable.  It should never be.  But even when that evil is eradicated from the planet other evils persist.  The killing of the unborn.  Human trafficking.  Child pornography.  Violent and oppressive governments.  Child abuse.  Domestic violence.  And the list could go on and on.  All these are evils that have come out of the human heart.  Dr. King pointed us to the One who’s glory is the only cure for it: Christ.

Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s speeches were prophetic and jarring.  He often quoted from the Bible in his speeches.  One from Amos really struck me in the movie today, “But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”  It’s righteous, God’s righteousness, Christ’s righteousness that will make things right.  In our lives individually now, as much as can be this side of His kingdom come.  And one day, on that great and glorious day, fully when we see him face to face!

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.  His glory is not merely racial equality and it is not less than racial equality.  It is massive.  It is transforming.  It is the right we long for.  And He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored.  All that evil.  All that has poured out of our hearts for generations and has done horror upon horror to each other and this world and ultimately has spoken enormous slander of God’s name whom we bear as creatures made in his image.  His wrath is coming against all that evil that we have done.  And there is only one place to escape His wrath- His Son.

Christ did ultimately what King was a small shadow of.  King suffered the evils of men to stand for what was right.  Christ suffered the evils of men and the wrath of a righteous God against all those evils (to which men have held dear) to save us and make us right.

The hope for the black man and the white man, the Chinese woman and the Arabian woman, the African child and the Iranian child is the One who created them and died to redeem them all.  Only His Kingdom come and His will be done will bring the ultimate of what Dr. King sought.  Freedom.

Quieted,
Sheila

Because I work night shift and my soul is in a night shift and I’m a watchman

When you wake up at 1 pm after working two night shifts you don’t much know what to say or do. But when you sit down to read the news, and you see riots, and genocide, and terror, and then for a split second, you let the reality of the dark things that tempt you to trade everything for temporary pleasures that lead to permanent chains slither into your mind and you shake your head and dash from the horror as fast as you can, one thing becomes very clear: Oh how we need a Savior!!

I’m married to a police officer, so reading about the situation going on in Ferguson is close to home.  Seven (I started with two, but more kept coming as I was typing) things come to mind:

1) Police officers have to make split-second, life-or-death decisions and they don’t always make the right one.  That doesn’t automatically mean they’re cold, hard, racist, murderers.

2) Police officers have tremendous authority and therefore their decisions (even if made wrongly out of a moment of bad judgement) must be held to the highest scrutiny and standard. 

3) Rarely do you hear of a person going about their business, doing good, when a police officer comes up to them out of nowhere and shoots them.  That doesn’t happen.  (Maybe it’s happened in history.  I don’t know.  But it’s not a frequent news story that’s for sure).   But in most news stories where an officer either wrongly uses his authority, or makes a bad judgement call that injures or kills someone, the person(s) involved are engaged in some bad/wrong/illegal thing.

4) Missouri needs a peacemaker- A person who will step forward and be willing to suffer to bridge the gap between two opposing parties.

5) Race does not equal wrong doing.   A person’s actions should not be judged because of their race, but because of their actions.  If you’re white, black, brown, purple, green, red, yellow or blue and you steal, vandalize, riot, cause fights, etc. your actions are wrong. Period.

6)  I hate what has been done to the black person in the name of God or superiority or rights in our history!  I hate that the country where I experience so much freedom is the country that built it’s economy on the backs of African slaves.  I hate that there are still people in this country (and in the world I’m sure) who still look at their fellow man and make a judgement about their worth and intelligence, person hood and trustworthiness based on the color of their skin.  I hate it!  Those wrongs are not fixed by committing more wrongs.

7)  I am white.  I will never know what it feels like to be given a suspicious stare because of the color of my skin.  When my white, blond boys walk down the street, I don’t have to worry that some person in authority may take away their rights, or their life simply because they seem suspicious due to their skin color.  I am not a racist.  But I am white in a predominantly white culture and I have no idea what it feels like to be suspect simply because of the color of my skin.

———– The above was written Monday.  Below today. —————

The situation with ISIS, and the horror of what happened to James Foley, and the horror of what is happening to tens of thousands of people who have been forced out or fled Iraq now eking out an existence in refuge camps or abandoned buildings, slaps me in the face and shakes me right out of the depressive thoughts I deal with every day.  I cannot sit in a mire of despondency when I see the video of the marching of thousands of families into the desert and a photo of a terrified man on his knees minutes before his brutal murder on the news.  I’m snapped out of my slump in despair onto my knees in desperate prayer.  Not only for these people, but for me, and my household and Christ’s church in America.

We, I, have no idea what it is like to suffer for our faith or under the macabre rule of violent men who believe they’re on a mission from God.  We grumble and complain and protest over our rights and against “injustices” that threaten our comfort and ease and beliefs.  What will we do if our rights are physically taken away?  What will we do if our lives are threatened and our bodies and the bodies of our loved ones are tortured or abused or killed by those in authority over us?  Grumbling, complaining and protesting will do no good.

If we can’t take up the commands of God through Paul to the church to pray for and show respect to those in authority while we have it so good, how will we if we’re in the situation that the church Paul wrote to was in?  If Paul told the Christians of his day to pray for their “kings and all in high positions” and treat him with respect, what would he say to us in relation to our current president?  What would he say if we were under violent Islamic extremists like ISIS?

“First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for ALL people, for kings and ALL who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way.  This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.  For there is one God and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for ALL… ” – 1 Timothy 2:1-6 (emphasis added by me)

I choke on the anger in my throat when I read this.  I need this to be my heart if I hope to ever stand amidst true persecution and suffering.  Because if my heart is full of revenge and a clinging to my life and rights I won’t stand.

I pray that God would take for himself some of the leaders of ISIS.  That he would conquer their murderous, evil hearts just as he conquered the murderous, evil heart of Saul… Paul, who wrote:

“… though formerly I was a blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent opponent.  But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.  The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost.” -1 Timothy 1:13-15

I believe in a sovereign God.  I believe in good, sovereign God.  I believe he desires all men, even the men of ISIS to be saved from the wrath that is coming against them.  And I believe he is working all things, even the evils happening around the world to his people, for the good of those who love Him and for the glory of his name!  May he give me the grace to stand.

On a personal note, as I eluded to, I have been struggling through a season of depression for awhile now.  And as I said, contrary to what you’d think, these horrible things going on the world are not adding to my depression, they are actually working to pull me out of it.  When I think of my brothers and sisters in dark places, suffering for the sake of Christ’s name, it puts my “suffering” in proper light and I recall Hebrews 13:3 and pray that God would not let me forget them:

Remember those who are in prison, as though in prison with them, and those who are mistreated, since you also are in the body. -Hebrews 13:3

But when the shock of what is going on in the world fades, and I find myself slipping back into the quicksand of lies this depression is surrounding me with, my sole comfort and hope is Christ.  The only real escape my thoughts and heart have from the heaviness and despair I’m living with right now is the word of God.  His word to me right now is literally like a breath of fresh air caught through a crack in a cave of poisonous gas.  I press against the rock and breath deep.  But I’m quickly overcome by lies because I can’t seem to call the truth to mind when I need to.  This is why I need the body of Christ.

We need each other.  We need to tell each other the truth.

I met with a neighbor today.  We confessed our sins to each other and shared our battles and prayed for each other.  We’re the same.  We need Christ.  We need the truth.

I came across this awhile back.  I felt like someone understood.

//player.vimeo.com/video/48815554

Out of <span class="crossreference" data-cr="#cen-ESV-16142B" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 0.625em; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;" value="(B)”>the depths I cry to you, O Lord!      

O Lord, hear my voice!

Let your ears be attentive    to <span class="crossreference" data-cr="#cen-ESV-16143D" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 0.625em; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;" value="(D)”>the voice of my pleas for mercy!  

If you, O Lord, should <span class="crossreference" data-cr="#cen-ESV-16144E" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 0.625em; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;" value="(E)”>mark iniquities,    O Lord, who could <span class="crossreference" data-cr="#cen-ESV-16144F" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 0.625em; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;" value="(F)”>stand?  

But with you there is <span class="crossreference" data-cr="#cen-ESV-16145G" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 0.625em; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;" value="(G)”>forgiveness,    <span class="crossreference" data-cr="#cen-ESV-16145H" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 0.625em; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;" value="(H)”>that you may be feared. I <span class="crossreference" data-cr="#cen-ESV-16146I" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 0.625em; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;" value="(I)”>wait for the Lord, <span class="crossreference" data-cr="#cen-ESV-16146J" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 0.625em; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;" value="(J)”>my soul waits,    and <span class="crossreference" data-cr="#cen-ESV-16146K" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 0.625em; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;" value="(K)”>in his word I hope;
my soul <span class="crossreference" data-cr="#cen-ESV-16147L" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 0.625em; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;" value="(L)”>waits for the Lord    more than <span class="crossreference" data-cr="#cen-ESV-16147M" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 0.625em; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;" value="(M)”>watchmen for <span class="crossreference" data-cr="#cen-ESV-16147N" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 0.625em; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;" value="(N)”>the morning,    more than watchmen for the morning. – Psalm 130:1-6


Prayerfully,
Sheila