Tuesday, January 31, 2006

RACE RELATIONS

Last night Coretta Scott King, wife of Martin Luther King Jr., died. And yesterday, 4 white cops kicked and beat a black man and were caught on videotape here in St Louis doing it. The black man was originally running from the police, but when they caught him, instead of just cuffing him, they pushed him to the ground and started kicking and hitting him. Anyone I talked to who watched the video (including myself) said that it was clear that the cops were completely inappropriate in their actions. And it was a BLACK man that they were hitting and kicking. Hmmm. Race relations are bad in this town. Race relations are bad in this country. Racism is alive and well. And it reaches into our churches, where there is more segregation in the church than in any other arena in society. If you read the book "Divided By Faith" by Michael Emerson, you can see this proven. Segregation fosters racism, so segregation in the churches is not the ideal. Furthermore, how are we going to learn to relate with other races, especially in the church where all believers need each other and white brothers and sisters need black brothers and sisters?

Friday, January 27, 2006

DEPRESSION

Its interesting. Our pastor has decided to spend Sunday evenings in January discussions the topic of depression, and we have had twice as many attenders each week as we would normally have on a Sunday night. And there's also been no lack of people to share their stories of their struggles with depression. This is something we believers are often scared of talking about, because we are supposed to have joy in our lives at all times. And true, we are supposed to always be full of joy, but we are also always supposed to be full of love, and we aren't there in that one yet either. Depression is something that affects our joy, and just like someone else struggles with being full patience or with love, we who struggle with depression have a hard time being full of joy. But we often don't give ourselves very much room to fail in the area of joy.

Tuesday, January 03, 2006

LEARNING HOW TO LOVE PEOPLE WHO ARE POOR

Wow! Its been 3 weeks since I've written. Those holidays distracted me. Sorry! I hope people will still check the blog!

I am learning a lesson about the words that I choose to use when I am dealing with people who live in poverty. I know how there are some words that have been used with me in my past that are words that have a great meaning attached to them. Like if someone uses any kind of word that implies that I am selfish, then I am very sensitive because that is something that I have been called in the past and it had a lot of pain associated with it. Well the same thing applies if I am dealing with someone who is poor and I use the word "beggar" even if I say "I don't want you to look like a beggar." I did this and my friend went bezerk and was mad at me for weeks. That was a buzz word so that she couldn't even hear what I was really saying because of what that word meant to her. So that is something for me to know for the future.