Hello everyone!
Today I am shaken. I am shaken by national events and shaken by the sudden death of a friend that I was not expecting.
Last night very late I found out about my friend and then one of the last images in my head
before going to bed, finally, at 12:30 am, was the burning Wendys in Atlanta. Note to self: no
social media before bed from now on. Sleep was fitful at best.
I woke at 6 am exhausted from lack of sleep and many emotions. No one should ever have to
die in a jail cell alone, especially someone with a fragile heart (and I’m not talking about our
physical heart). Our nation is reeling from the effects of long entrenched racism and the
infection has finally boiled over. We have ignored the infection in our Nation’s system and now
we must deal with the aftermath.
Shaken. What is the good in all of this you ask? I will speak personally first and then to the rest
of us.
For me, my friend’s death is a reminder that even when people love Jesus, they don’t always
choose well. Ladies as a word of warning, I implore you to choose your male partners well. They will either build you up or they will destroy you, there is no middle ground. Sometimes people make choices that kill them. Sometimes they take on people that get them killed. Yet, this does not change Jesus’ love for this person. I assure you that my friend, who I will not name, is with the Father and her fragile heart is whole. The evil that I have no doubt manipulated and
controlled her these last few weeks could not follow her into the presence of the Father. For this, I am grateful and thankful. I know I will see her smiling at me again some day and she won’t be hurting anymore. I am shaken, and I have hope.
Our nation is shaken. I am shaken watching it unfold. I have hope. I have hope because this
was a long time coming. Things must be shaken for anything to change and change is coming!
Allow me to elaborate.
The Revolutionary War shook us. The Civil War shook us. The World Wars shook us. Vietnam
shook us. The Civil Rights movement shook us. The Cold War shook us. 9/11 shook us. The
long standing wars in the middle East have shaken us. The rise of extremism shook us. We are not strangers to being shaken both at home and abroad. We need to be shaken and we need to finish what the Civil War and the Civil Right Movement started. We need to allow the shaking to destroy the works of racism in this nation. This is an old enemy. This enemy goes back longer
than our history to ancient kingdoms and dominions of old. This enemy has allowed America to build an economy and a system on the backs of others in much more subtle ways. Although slavery was technically abolished by the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution, the systems that brought slavery remained, even to this day. Modern day slavery in America via human trafficking is one of the most lucrative “businesses” in the country and the world.
Police brutality towards people of color goes all the way back to the days before the Confederacy where "police” were used to hunt down and punish runaway slaves. Even after the Civil War that the Confederacy lost, the South still chose to celebrate people who did not stand for right, good and justice and allowed groups such as the KKK and others to flourish, unchecked and
unchallenged. The system, the enemy, still remained. And that enemy wounded America very badly and that wound developed an infection and that infection spread. Bad things do not stay
hidden for long. They find their way to the surface and this infection has been finding its way to the surface since at least 2015 in our modern era. This infection surfaced in the form of extremism in 2016-2017 with the never- before-seen outspokenness of far right Nazi extremism and violence. America’s heart was very sick. And in 2020, America is shaken once again by both COVID-19 and the old enemy, racism. I say this to all fellow Americans, I know 2020 seems like an apocalyptic, fictional novel but this is to be our banner year. Stay with me!
I have hope in this shaking! This shaking is different and it will begin to heal our wound and the infection of our heart. There is a difference in the atmosphere. This was the last straw so to
speak! Although evil is trying to usurp the movement to bring racism down in this country and attempting to control the narrative and create chaos on two sides, evil will come up short handed. Why? Jesus is in this shaking. The King is doing the shaking. This is not the work of
any one man or woman. This is not the work of any political party. This is not the work of an
extremist groups (although they are trying to hijack the story), this is the work of average
Americans; black, white and brown. This is the work of communities, churches, school kids,
suburban moms, professionals, and blue and white-color workers. This does not belong to the
Democrats, the Republicans, or to our President; this belongs to Americans, We the People. We
the People will prevail! This movement belongs to the King and He always prevails! He has
come with righteousness, justice, peace, and love to the People. He will sweep racism from its
platform and everything connected to it! Get ready! We the People will be whole once again. We the People will get to rebuild our nation as it should have always been. We the People will be
free!
With hope,
Elizabeth