This week we invited the youth and friends to come over to make #protestart. Honestly, we all feel pretty helpless for the situation just over the river. It feels so close, so painful, so personal: and yet none of us can get there. To friends or family, to places we love, to help.
So when I saw that @raise3fingers was doing a push for protest art, I thought we could try. We could at least contribute what we have or what we are; what we hope for and wait for.
So a group of non-artists gathered around to make art.
And as I watched “Save Myanmar” be written over and over, and as I wrote “Save Myanmar” on my arm; I thought of America. I thought, “Oh, save America, too.”
Because we’re still watching the unfolding of the Chauvin trial. We just heard about another mass shooting. We just saw #dauntewright murdered before our eyes.
Oh, Lord, save America, too.
And for a moment, I wasn’t sure where to place my allegiance. Where to place my prayers. Where to place my posts and my words.
But I can love both. I can love Myanmar, pray for Myanmar, and hope for Myanmar. I can ask you to care about Myanmar.
But I can also love America, pray for America, and hope for America. I can ask you to care about America, too.
I believe in a God big enough to love both and all. Every pain that we’ve all felt in 2020 and 2021–from sickness, from loss, from murders, from injustice, from broken systems, from death, from cruelty–every pain, He can carry. And He does.
In Isaiah 58, “Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?”
Every yoke, friends. The wickedness and the oppression stretches near and far, but this is the fast He has chosen.
Let’s break every yoke. Let’s fight for all the oppressed. Let’s loose the bonds of wickedness everywhere.