Unfinished drafts
Worship sustaining the work, a FREE gift for your soul, & black maternal health
To be honest, I’m weary of being weary. 2020 was like the world’s longest Lent and now that it’s Easter I just want to be happy. But the world is still sick and suffering. The banal and the truly horrific all tumble together in my mind, and sometimes I try to sort it like laundry, piling it in order of importance. But some days they irrationally all feel equally heavy: the image of God is being murdered. I can’t find my son’s second shoe. Earthly justice is not justice. I forgot to add enough water to our overnight bread recipe and now we have an inedible brick. Poverty is forcing children from their homes, families are torn apart. My son keeps scraping off pieces of our floor which is slowly peeling up from water damage anyway. There’s a stain that won’t come out of my son’s shirt. I can’t be patient. I don’t think my children know enough scripture.
And the promise of Easter, that Christ is here, that he is risen, that we can go forward with Alleluia’s in our hearts joining in the work of making all things new – it seems very, very far off.
My sister sent me a music video of The Porter’s Gate singing, “Father Let your Kingdom, Come” featuring Urban Doxology, Liz Vice, and Latifah Alattas. I watched it this morning, rooted in position staring at my phone with my husband over my shoulder, tears streaming down my face ignoring my kids running in and out of the room.
I think I may have heard this song before. But I had not seen it. I had not seen a group of colourful people, whose skin tells a story of historical oppression and triumph and resistance, standing together, and singing with a deep-seated joy that does not come from looking at the chaos around, but from looking to our Father who is in heaven: “Let your kingdom come. You make all things new. . . In places we don’t choose.”
And I was humbled at such a precious, hopeful thing they were inviting me into.
All I could think of was Sanda Van Opstel saying to a bunch of “woke”, white, weary people,
“Don't be discouraged. The church is bigger than you. You don't have to save yourselves. You have every right to be sad and angry. But I'm here to tell you on behalf of my community: Move forward. I don't have time for you to wallow in your anger and sit in your room and journal; we have 7,000 people that are about to cross our borders. We have children dying in our neighborhoods. We have youth crying out and asking if you believe their lives matter. We have children in cages who have cried so much, they are numb. I don't have time for this narcissism.
You want to be sad? You want to be angry? Be sad and angry. But get off your ass and move...True worship cannot exist without justice. And justice is sustained in worship.”
I need to move. I’m trying to move, as I parent and write, and email, and question. But I am amazingly thin-skinned. I needed to remember this: justice is sustained in true worship.
I remember being taught to sing in a group, shoulder to shoulder at St Paul’s Missionary Baptist Church, a pale college outsider who was so mercifully, warmly, welcomed in. I remember the militant urgency of our choir director, who believed this very thing: that our job was to lead the worshippers into the throne-room of God, because they needed to see Jesus if they were going to make it through the week. I am learning of the painful history which led the Black Church in America to understand this fact - that you’ve got to do the work, and the work is long, and it is possible the work will not progress even an inch in your lifetime. But like all of God’s work in this slow kingdom coming, it’s about faithfulness. And on this long, weary road, you better find yourself some people you can sing with, or you’re going to get finished pretty quick.
My four-year old wanted to know why I was crying, and I tried to explain that I wasn’t sad (well, not really), I was happy (well, kind of) and that as I’ve gotten older, those two things are a lot closer together (and also he comes from a long line of criers). “Kids only laugh when they are happy and cry when they are sad,” he explained to me.
Frankly, most of the time, I just want to be a kid. Clean, straight lines: this is happy. This is sad. This is progress. This is results.
But this is not how life goes.
The work of motherhood is like this. The work of justice is like this. The work of writing is like this. The work of being reformed into the image of Christ is like this: one long journey that you must keep walking through even when the end is not in sight.
And that's why we need to pause every so often. We need to lift up our heads from our keyboards, from our kitchen sinks, our long commutes, our relentless emails, our carefully crafted petitions and appeals to those in power. We need to momentarily ignore the crushed goldfish crackers and squishy cheerios underfoot, the unfinished drafts, or the recalcitrant school board. Not forever. Just for a moment. Gather some people and learn from your leaders. Turn up the music a little louder and in the midst of the unfinished, the not-yet, sing some Alleluias. He makes all things new. Even in places we don’t choose.
PS: if you love this or learned something, consider supporting the artists by purchasing the album here or buying Sandra Van Opstel’s book The Next Worship . It’s good to compensate people when we learn from them, especially if what we’ve learned has come at great cost.
Help mamas thrive
It was black maternal health week last week -
Give a black mamma a black doula to advocate and support her - contact my friend Lavondria on how to donate towards this. Lavondia works with a nonprofit to provide this support, and there are many ways your donations can help.
If you’re like: wait, what’s this about again?
A FREE gift for your weary soul:
I have been deeply moved and encouraged by Elizabeth Berget’s writing about motherhood. She is a master at linking the mundane life of motherhood with the character of God in a way that will give you hope. She’s giving away a free month of devotions for moms if you sign up for her newsletter (you can also sample one of the devotional essays on her website). These are a beautifully crafted meditations on the nitty-gritty of motherhood, the image of God in us, and the character of God revealed to us. PS: You can also read her poem about mothers and Dante Wright and longing for a mended kingdom here, which I loved!
Loved the line, "Justice is sustained in worship." You can put The Next Worship on my birthday list! :)