deu11-08

15 April 2007

“SOME WORDS BEFORE CROSSING OVER”

Deuteronomy 11:8-12

This morning. We need a family conversation abut the things that have transpired in the past week out in the larger world. 

I know, in one sense , you are probably tired of the conversation being rehashed but in a very real way, as long as you live, this is a conversation you will never finish having.

Crossing over. Life is a journey and we are always on our way.  One of the biggest heresies in life is to worship and bow down at the altar of arrivedness.

This past week, and I apologize for not telling you to watch it, Roots was replayed on television.  I watched with my children.  They need to see what kind of world they inherited. 

We are often fooled into thinking that we are there.  Wherever there is.  The truth is the progress in any level is elusive.

David and I were coming back from Winston-Salem.  I overheard a conversation between two men behind me as we were taxiing to the runway.  It seemed appeared as though one of the men was concerned about not hearing the engine running as he thought it should be.   (I appreciated his concern)   The other man behind him spoke calming with assurance.  Actually, you do not use the engine to taxi the plane uses hydraulics.  The engines are not cut on until we are taking off.   His certainty calmed the man and own anxiety that happened because of proximity.   I was writing in my journal.

It’s a good thing to be in proximity to someone who has the answers from experience.

We all need someone sitting next to us that has experience and knowledge.

Thank God that the Israelites had Moses to talk to them about what they were getting ready to experience.

WE are not prepared to face the promises of our future.

It is somewhat disingenuine for the conversation to be shifted to a segment within our hip hop culture.  I do not have time to time about this morning fully but suffice it to say, within the context of loving relationships, there are honest things that need to be shared and that can only be shared within those loving contexts.

We do have to make conversation around our own issues on the matter of gender.\

Two things need to be said here.

First, we must admit we have participated in the denigration of our women.  Mothers, wives, daughters and sisters.

The race cannot be freed nor liberated as long as we hold values that inherently push women down or back.

Secondly.  We have to admit that we have done so poorly with our own boys that we are now afraid of them.

We do not have to choose which of these things are most important to us.  We have to most incessantly on both sides.

Moses says to the Israelites,   "The land that you are going into is not the land you came out of."

Restricted.

God is yet ahead of us.

Let us march on, ‘til victory is won.