The somber mood of Ecclesiastes continues in today's Daily Office readings with, "I saw under the sun that in the place of justice, wickedness was there." 3:16
Many are crying for order and justice today. The suffrages that are part of Morning Prayer ask God to "guide us in the way of justice and truth." The authors knew, to borrow from the familiar song, "you can't have one without the other." So, if we are longing for order and justice, we must start with truth.
I have much more expertise about being white than being black, so I will speak about that. We who are Caucasian probably need to ask ourselves a very, very difficult question right now to get at the truth about our nation's pain: Did we feel the same sense of urgent crisis when first viewing video of George Floyd that we felt seeing cities in flames? Answer slowly, not quickly, and to yourself only. If there was even a smidgen of difference in our deepest hearts, it shows a degree of resignation to something God abhors. Sadly, I found a smidgen of difference in my own heart.
It won't work to just say, "Let's all be color blind starting today." There's too much buried too deep that influences behaviors. We need the spade of vulnerability and the shovel of honesty. Someone will have to show the nation how to do use those tools. Maybe it's us. We know how to get help from the Master Gardener who created us all.
