Pastor’s Pen_April 24, 2022

A troubling phenomenon that grips our nation is gun violence. The Second Amendment is used in today’s culture as an excuse to bear all kinds of automatic or semi-automatic weapons. It is often stated that guns are used primarily for hunting and personal protection. Although there is some truth to these rationales, there are no recorded evidence to support them. No one shoots rabbits with automatic weapons, and a few uses automatic weapons for protection. Discharging AK47s for protection is ludicrous. When a rapid-fire gun is loaded and fired, an intruder would already have the upper hand.

No other nation in the developed world has a culture of gun violence like we have in the U.S. The Second Amendment protects the right of people to keep and bear arms.  It was authored when the colonists attempted to stave off the British Army from seizing weapons at random. That threat no longer exists. The overtly right-wing Republican gun lobbyists only care about their political agenda. It is time that our nation bring common sense to gun ownership. This world will never be safe until we “…beat our swords into plowshares and our spears into pruning hooks”, Isaiah 2:4 KJV. To the prophet, I exclaim a loud and hearty AMEN!

Pastor’s Pen_April 17, 2022

Christ the Lord is risen today, Hallelujah!

Two thousand and twenty-two years ago, something so astounding and inexplicable occurred that the world changed forever. Rationality and scientific methodology govern the world. The universe operates according to fixed beliefs. For instance, the law of gravity never alters because gravity holds our solar system together. The earth revolves around the sun, and in our orbit, as the third planet from the sun, our course never deviates. If it did, life as we know it could not survive.

Our modern minds look at the stories from the book of Joshua and read with bemusement about God answering Joshua’s prayer to cause the sun not to shine for a full day. In our present world, logic and order have replaced superstition to make sense of existence. Then comes the resurrection. It does not conform to any of the principles just mentioned. Yet, the eyewitness testimonies of the resurrected Jesus after the crucifixion are rock solid. Something happened on the misty morning of the first day of the week in Jerusalem. We cannot explain it; even the most theologically astute cannot adequately answer what occurred. The best scientific minds can only say, Christ the Lord is risen today, Hallelujah!

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Pastor’s Pen_April 10, 2022

In 1619, the first Africans were brought forcibly to the world newly discovered by Europe. They settled into Hampton, Virginia, as enslaved people to be bought and sold by Europeans as those enslavers pleased. All the founding fathers owned enslaved people. Thomas Jefferson even kept one as his mistress and fathered some of her children.  However, even at his death he did free his slaves.

Slavery was the backbone of America’s agricultural society. On April 12, 1861, this nation began a Civil War that fought to keep slaveocracy intact. When the South lost the War, the Emancipation proclamation and the 13^th Amendment gave enslaved people equality. Still, a century later, Reconstruction and Jim Crow segregation kept us as enslaved people without the name. But last Thursday, by a vote of 53 to 47, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson was confirmed by the Senate to the United States Supreme Court. Millions of African Americans and people of faith never ceased praying, and the wind shifted. I am reminded of one of the favorite sayings of the African American church, “He may not come when you want Him, but He will be there right on time.” Hallelujah and Amen!

Pastor’s Pen_April 3, 2022

The Senate has set April 4 as the time to consider Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s nomination to the Supreme Court.

Throughout the hearings, she presented herself as brilliant, calm, and incredibly patient with the inane questioning from the GOP Senators. They tried to paint her as soft in her sentencing of child pornographers and a stalking horse for Critical Race Theory. They all were obnoxious, but Ted Cruz was particularly objectionable in citing children’s books used at Georgetown Day, which he thought had a racial bias, and affirmed that Judge Jackson was a secret proponent of Critical Race Theory. It was evident that the Republicans were not questioning her fitness for the Supreme Court but pandering to Trump supporters in hopes of winning their next elections. This silly sham seems not to have paid off as at least one Republican, Senator Susan Collins, is prepared to vote for Judge Jackson’s elevation to the Court.

The only thing that will end this silliness is if the Trump supporters lose big in the primaries. In the meantime, African Americans and all people of goodwill have something to cheer about. The conclusion of Women’s History Month presented the nation that one brilliant Black sister bested the Lilliputians of lies–the GOP.