One Love, One Race: Sunday Devotion #6

Malachi 2:10: Have we not all one Father? Has not one God created us? Why then are we faithless to one another, profaning the covenant of our fathers?”

I remember the day a black coworker at the local telephone company asked me how I could love the “white man’s God.” I responded that I didn’t think of God as belonging to one race. It never crossed my mind that I was a different race from my heavenly Father.

Yes, the pictures of Jesus in many black houses were of a blond, blue-eyed, bearded man. But, because I read in my Bible that I was made in His image, I knew somehow even at that the tender age of nine that each one of us that God created was a part of Him, so He couldn’t just belong to one race.

I did know that there were different races of people, as it was some young white students from a local Bible college who came into pour neighborhood and taught us Scriptures, and my favorite was, and still is, “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sins of the world” (John 1:29). There was something about this young man in Jerusalem who was willing to die for my sins that captivated me, and my heart fell in love with him.

That relationship t has lasted nearly 60 years, and it has nothing to do with race, for Galatians 3:28 informed me, “There is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male and female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

I have lived nearly 69 years in brown skin in America, and I learned early in my life that the color of my skin mattered, and that black people were seen in a lower light than whites. I was in the seventh grade when the town gave the black children the white children’s old school, and they built a new, modern school for the white children.

I asked why that happened because it made me feel so unloved, and my mother basically told me to not ask questions. It was in knowing that God loved me as one of His children that made me understand that I was valuable, no matter the color of my skin.

Today, as I watch young and old people of all races and ethnicities march around the world for racial justice, I am reminded that change and restoration will only occur when we all see each other’s humanity, recognize each other’s spirit. Seeing people of every race run miles for Ahmaud Arbery gives me hope that love will defeat hate and that enough people will come to see that we are all wonderfully and marvelously made by one Creator that respect, justice, mercy, and unfailing love with become “a mighty flood of justice, an endless river of righteous living” (Amos 5:24.)

Philippians 1:6 And I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns.