Kudos to our beloved Maxine Waters for convening today's forum "Standing in The Gap"...with four of the mothers who sons and a daughter were murdered at the hands of police and one wanna-be police, #EricGarner, #MikeBrown, #EzellFord and #AleshiaThomas. The mom of #TamirRice would have been with us but she had legal matters to attend to with that case.
As I sat there listening to their stories, I felt this sense of....'this shit is really real." I mean I knew it was real, but they were no longer sound bites on CNN or flashes of frustrated faces on split screen in between BREAKING News reports. These were real moms, bearing a weight and burden no person should have to carry. Yet in the midst of their grief...they still held up the responsibility of pushing forward to fight for Justice...in the face of so much Injustice.
Their words were life giving, life changing, and life impacting; some of which I tweeted that you can read on my feed at Twitter.com/@Revjuju
Their presence, for me, gave new meaning to the often quoted text "Maybe you have been called for such a time as this." (Esther 4:14) We all want to be Esther....brave, courageous, willing and fearless ... But what if becoming Esther means living thru your worst possible nightmare; while literally holding up the banner and crying out "no justice, no peace".
Clearly God is using them to help some who face similar grief, but God is also using them stir up those of us, who have the privilege of not walking that particular journey, so that we recognize our responsibility to rise up and fight alongside them against Injustice.
In the words of #SabrinaFulton, the mother of #TrayvonMartin, who pointedly addressed the several hundreds (or thousands...it was a very large banquet room) of people, when she said "We have talked about us, now let's talk about you...here is how you can do your part..." She charged the crowd to do more than just hear the story but urged us to engage the process....Register to Vote and then Go Gote, to get back to serving on Jury Duty so the court room does represent "a jury of our peers", and advocate for policy changes. These were just a few actions she outlined, as tangible ways we can actually Stand in The Gap.
They could have made this day about their pain...but instead their pain became the fuel for their mission...Justice.
My hope and prayer is, May we all find our place in the Movement, Moment and Mission...of Justice.
Rev Juju
