Tears and More Tears!

Glued to the television, I went from moments of great tears to other moments of great tears! It was impossible for me to not share the joy and excitement of so many throughout the country and the world.

While joy was expressed by many, the factors inducing those tears were as varied as the people. While I cannot identify all the factors influencing me, I am sure that one of the causes of my joy is my experience with justice, prejudice or otherwise.

I grew up in a city without many minorities. I knew of only one black family in a city of more than 50,000 people. Racial injustice was never an issue, not because it was not real, but because the existence of racial injustice seemed to be ingrained into the culture.

It was during the my years in the seminary when racial injustice surfaced as a major issue, thanks to Dr. Martin Luther King. It was somewhat of a momentous occasion in my life! My prior existence of ignorance was blown away and with the new insight, I started to see myself as one who would support racial justice as a priority for all sorts of reasons, not the least of which at that time was religious. How could one be called a Christian without equal love for everyone. It became a cause!

And from that beginning, I then saw that religion can best be understood as rooted in justice. If God were the God of all, then how could anyone be less than equal before him and, of course, each other.

All sorts of injustice evolved into a common cause of promoting equality. In turn, the injustice supported by the de facto actions of the Church became noticeable. And eventually, it has become a cause of great sorrow.

So today I am very tearful because I lived long enough to see some resolution to this tragic history in our nation.