11/11/2023 0 Comments If i perish i perish![]() ![]() Why don’t you let the lives of people like Esther, Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego, Abraham, Stephen, Paul, etc. So, my dear brothers and sisters in Christ, what has Gold told or put on your heart to do but you are sitting on due to fear? Isn’t that the reason for our existence anyways. Knowing fully well that God is with us (Emmanuel) and directs our lives.Įven if we indeed perish, at least we did while doing the right thing and bringing glory to God. For if you remain completely silent at this time, relief and deliverance will arise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish. What this resolve, Esther went before the king. Yet we cling to our lives like we own it. We would rather disobey God than lose this life forgetting that He holds the key to our lives. ![]() Perhaps you were simply born for such as time as this.Įsther decided that helping her people was more important than pleasing the King of Persia. She was encouraged by the words of Mordecai, “And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?” (Esther 4:14) She could have died if things didn’t work out. I wonder how many ideas, dreams, and goals have gone unfulfilled because we were scared it wouldn’t turn out well, so we didn’t bother to start. I miss that and know that I am not alone.I wonder how many truths have gone unsaid because we were scared of what people will say or react. How do we move forward when we allow ourselves to be stuck in an emotional and intellectual space that breeds contempt instead of community? Is this what we have become? The canopy created by tree-lined streets filled with people and organizations that welcome innovation and divergent thinking for the fruitful outcome of sanctuary and protected growth is not here anymore. It is the worst kind and the children are watching. How do we heal from years of harm when we remain enamored by political rhetoric, where violence is ignored and self preservation is normalized as common uplift? We teach about fallacies (ahistorical, legalistic, individualistic, fixed and tokenistic) in the classes where I have led and somehow we are in a moment where all five are colliding to form one giant fallacious iceberg. We are experiencing divisiveness and shamefully deceptive storytelling that ignores our history, dismisses the need for process and leaves all of us vulnerable to destruction. These early battles for Civil Rights are now a fight to simply be civil…to see each other’s humanity and consider that beneath the tip of every iceberg is a mountain or maybe a volcano of other stories that may never be told. Every person and group of people who comes into this community bears witness to greatness…making profound sacrifices to be a part of it in wildly hostile environments and in pursuit of equality, equity, and excellence. Whether we elicit the school histories of Mamie Tape in 1885 or Sylvia Mendez in 1946 or the immigrant, Black and brown children of Witherspoon-Jackson in 1947, we are all made better when we grow to value difference. On the surface, it convinced us of individual genius but deeply embedded in the shallow message of anti-social distance created by an MP3 player and headsets was a unique thread of interdependence and community. A 5-year ad campaign for Apple, challenged us to see diversity as strength even as it corralled us into accepting a new definition and standard of meritocracy. As an educator and colleague of people who are being demonized for promoting change, this school year feels like I have suffered a personal assault.Ĭhange makers have the awesomely terrible task of thinking different. I feel like Esther standing before her judge and in protest. 14 For if you remain completely silent at this time, relief and deliverance will arise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish. I wonder where is the thinking that is supposed to parallel the critical in public discourse. One day after another senseless mass shooting, the semblance of a mob that endorses rudeness is making me feel sick. ![]() What is it about bad situations that make them usually go from bad to worse and worse to unbearable? …and so will I go in unto the king, which is not according to the law: and if I perish, I perish… (Esther 4:16) ![]()
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