Piloting Faith: When is "Someday?"
A Word for the Day...
Today we celebrate Juneteenth, also known as America's second Independence Day. Juneteenth is the oldest known celebration honoring the end of slavery in the United States. On June 19, 1865, Union General Gordon Granger led thousands of federal troops to Galveston, Texas to announce that the Civil War had ended, and slaves had been freed.
But this year we celebrate emancipation amidst a national reckoning on race prompted by the police killing of George Floyd and the national demonstrations that followed. In a recent special message to his congregation, Rev. Dr. Otis Moss III recalled the protest song "We Shall Overcome...Someday." He spoke of his heartbreak, his anger, his exhaustion. And then he said, "When is someday?" When is the day that we overcome racism? When is the day we stop killing black and brown people? When is the day African American women and men are truly, finally free?
When is "someday?"
As a white southern woman, that is my question to answer. "Someday" becomes "today" when I fully own my role in supporting systems that oppress black and brown people. "Someday" becomes "today" when I stop pretending that everyone has equal opportunities to earn money, generate wealth, and live with financial security. "Someday" becomes "today" when I use my resources, my influence and sometimes my body to promote and protect black and brown people who live with oppression and violence I only visit from time to time.
When is "someday?"
This is your question to ask too. It's all of our question as citizens of a nation that declares all people to be of infinite worth. When is "someday?" Please, before more sacred, beautiful lives are lost, let us work together to make "someday" come today.
I hope you can join in an online observance today at 12pm ET called "And Still We Rise."
We are in this together,
Rev. Cameron Trimble
Author of 60 Days of Faith: A Devotional
Prayer for the Week
May God give you grace never to sell yourself short,
grace to risk something big for something good,
and grace to remember that the world is too dangerous
for anything but truth and too small for anything but love.
Amen.
- ELCA The Lutheran Center Chapel