Equal?

     Yesterday, I enjoyed a day I would have never experienced without my son. As many of you know I am in Birmingham, Alabama with my son, seeing my daughter from Peru. Brittne is in the states to be in a wedding for a friend she served with in Peru. She had some wedding obligations yesterday morning and Bryce couldn’t stand not doing anything. So, after hurrying me out the door, he declared we were going to the Civil Rights Institute in downtown Birmingham. He is like his dad; he likes museums. However, he is like his mama in how he travels through them. He doesn’t have to read every word written inside the museum, unlike his dad! Overall, I can’t say I learned very many new things. I have seen how blacks were treated and I have seen many films and pictures showing the discrimination. However, the museum did give me a new understanding and appreciation for the injustice given to other humans by those of the same skin color as myself. I must admit, there were some moments I felt a little embarrassed about being white. Three things made an impact on my heart and will never fade away. First, I will remember the face of a thirtyish black man. We were standing at a wall and reading some events on a time line. We were looking at the same wall, reading the same words but you could see by his face that they had a greater impact on him. He had a better reference point than I did; he had lived it himself! A few walls away, the story of Rosa Park was displayed. I think we all know her story: a black woman on a segregated bus that refused to give up her seat to a white person. However, she was just an average black woman; forty-two year old seamstress. She had just had enough and she was sick of being wronged and stood, or should I say, sat her ground! She was arrested and charged. She had no way of knowing how things would turn out. She did not know that she would spur others to boycott the buses, or spur 7 men to take freedom rides against the segregation laws, or that she would be the center of national headlines. She did not know that she would become famous, win a Supreme Court decision, become a civil rights leader, or receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom Award from President Clinton. For all she knew she would be beaten or killed. She was just one person who took a stand, but one who changed a country for generations. She made an impact on others and on me. The last impact I experienced was spiritually. All the anger, fear, bitterness, physical abuse, piety, and belittling words and actions were not just from whites, but from white Christians! What we do in the name of Christianity sometimes is a disgrace! How God can stand to watch His children sometimes is beyond me!
     I feel relieved that each generation erases a little more discrimination towards black people. Do I think we still have some ways to go, YES! However, we are at least going in the right direction. However, we discriminate against people of all color. I wish we could judge each other by the person's heart and not what we see on the outside. As we walked out of the museum there were words; questions on the walls. Let me ask you some of the same questions. What impact has discrimination had on you? When do you discriminate? What qualities do you use to judge a person? When have you experienced being judged by an external fact? When have you stood for what is right, no matter the cost? Our society still needs people who are willing to take a stand for Jesus and for what is right! Are you ready to take a stand no matter what the consequence?

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves.

Philippians 2:3