“Do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.” ~ Matthew 6.34

And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his  span of life?  ~ Luke 12.25

“More enslaving than our occupations, however, are our preoccupations. To be preoccupied means to fill our time and place long before we are there.”

~Henri Nouwen, Making All Things New: An Invitation to the Spiritual Life

Would that have happened if he or she were black/white/red/yellow/brown/beige?  In America, the social coloring of one’s skin determines everything: our character and potential contributions to society; the manner in which we will be perceived and treated; the number and nature of our social rewards and punishments; the interpretation of our past and the social predictions of our future. It is all about race or at least we make it so.

We worry about race and what it will do to us.  It is a form of mental torment as we imagine the worst case scenarios when race is involved.  We become the lawyer, judge and jury of our lives and all of them believe we’re guilty.  We discount Christ’s witness of our worth through His death for us and our personal testimony does nothing to reassure us.  We resolve that life will not work out for us before we go to bed at night and it is often our morning meditation.  Life is not fair. Justice will not prevail because race always wins. 

But, if this is our conclusion, why worry at all?  If the outcome will not change, if the last will never be first and the first will never be last, if we will always be down and out, always be the victim and never the victor then why worry ourselves over the details?  If our life will not work out for our good then, why even think about it?  Why give one day or hour or minute to what race will do to us if we cannot undo it?

I believe it is because there is inside of us a truth that says that we can, that there is something more to us than what we have been told or even what we tell ourselves.  Now, if only we could think about this.