Dust in the air

“In a divided society, only the church can model unity.” That’s the good news. The bad news is that the church frequently falls short of promoting ethnic respect or racial reconciliation. Truly born-again people, by God’s grace, can love one another. By experiencing the love of God through Christ, strongholds of bigotry are dismantled.

I didn’t grow up with racial stereotypes. I’ve been around different races during my whole life — Asian, African, Indian, European. Skin color has nothing to do with a person’s character, honesty, or personality. My last employer in Northwest Arkansas was a Black man. I’ve seen wonderful people of all colors and I’ve seen scoundrels from every race.

The quote that I opened with is from an African American brother, Joseph Garlington. Bishop Garlington pastors Covenant Church of Pittsburgh, Pa. He also happens to be a marvelous singer. He was on stage in many Promise Keeper rallies. He was a friend to my wife and me about the time we became interested in ministering in Africa. We were pastoring in Morgantown, W.Va. We relocated to South Africa and lived there for a year. We learned a great deal about race relations.

Suffering from racial injustice is real. There are very few things in this world that are automatic character assassinations, but racial prejudice is one of them. Like a killer, it twists a knife in the back of total strangers. It despises humans who are made in the image of God. It takes away the innate rights that inform law and ethics. It’s an affront to human decency. It is an evil that God hates. Why? Because the Lord loves justice.

This past week, dust and sand from the Sahara in Africa blew across the Atlantic. It came over the Gulf of Mexico and all the way up into Northwest Arkansas. It reminded me that in 1932 a dust storm towering 10,000 feet tall blew into Amarillo, Texas. The sky was so black you couldn’t see the sun. Farmers had plowed up land for wheat that denuded fields at just the wrong time, as a great drought extended into years, and just as the Great Depression began. It was a perfect storm. America was hit hard. Hunger was real and widespread. These agonizing times were depicted in the historic John Steinbeck novel and the gripping movie starring Henry Fonda, The Grapes of Wrath.

A huge cloud of dust is presently blowing across America. Unswept streets are littered with it. Irritating, choking debris infiltrates our homes. You can taste it in the air. It stings your eyes. It is all over us. Because of this, people aren’t seeing very clearly. The dust is obscuring the light, distracting from the real issues.

The real issue is our sinful hearts. We are sick inside due to our sin. We carry hatred in our hearts. We march with it in our streets. We swing with it at each other’s heads. We pummel each other with words spawned by sin. We think by invective and venom we can fix the wrongs of ancient injustice, but we become living proof the cycle repeats. Hatred has no power to stop more hatred. The sand and grit of it persist, ever-present.

We need to be bathed in pure water to wash the dust of historic hatred off of our bodies and out of our clothes. Our hearts need cleansing. We need Jesus to save us, to repair our wounded souls. We need a fresh baptism of the Holy Spirit’s power. We need to be baptized in the waters of repentance.

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Ron Wood is a retired pastor and author. Contact him at wood.stone.ron@ gmail.com or visit www. touchedbygrace.org or follow him at Touched By Grace on Facebook. Opinions expressed are those of the author.