Saturday, April 9, 2022
Taken on June 19, 2021, for The New York Times, Amber Bracken’s photo titled Kamloops Residential School was named World Press Photo of the Year on Thursday[7 April 2022]. (Amber Bracken for The New York Times/World Press Photo via AP, via CBC)
Psalm 97:1
The Lord is king! Let the earth rejoice; let the many coastlands be glad!
Romans 14:17
For the kingdom of God is not food and drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.
Words of Grace For Today
If we live now in God’s Kingdom, not for food and drink, but for righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, then how can we think that God’s Kingdom is here already – or ever -, when such things happen as genocide through the kidnapping, jailing in ‘enlightened schools’, and indoctrination or death of young indigenous children, and the so many other blatant injustices that are perpetrated by our leaders, our own police, our own courts, and of course everywhere else in the world as well??!
On that hillside near Kamloops, the evening specular light of the sunset and the rainbow set in the sky speaks more loudly than we can think possible. Therein we see a clue.
While the dark past is marked having been discovered and uncovered and declared and denounced loudly around the world, God provides the specular light of beautiful life, the rainbow of hope, and the talent of photographer A. Braken at the right time to capture all in one photo the horror of the past and the goodness of the present and the hope for our future.
We would like to see perfect beauty all around: NO MORE destruction of other humans, no more war, no more violence, no more lies and deceit and destorying of people. Yet God provides us freewill. From that always flows the possibilities that we humans seem incapable of passing up, the possibility to try to get ahead at other people’s expense, death, and extinction.
Thank God for specular light.
Thank God for rainbows.
Thank God for photographers of great dedication and talent, and so many others, who remind us of the goodness of life and of the hope for our future in the face of …
… well, in the face evil,
especially evil in us, which we see most clearly as reflections in others’ evil deeds.
Today, why not: let us work diligently and intensely to live righteousness and peace and joy
remembering always that such living is only possible in the Holy Spirit.