Slave Song
Theme of the Week: The Risk of Reconciliation
Johann Christoph Arnold
Friday, June 21, 2002
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Slave Song
Theme of the Week: The Risk of Reconciliation
Friday, June 21
Key Bible Verse: "But I say, love your enemies! Pray for those who persecute you!" (Matthew 5:44). Bonus Reading:Matthew 5:43–48
When I marched in Marion, Alabama, with Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1965, a young man, Jimmie Lee Jackson, had been shot eight days earlier. State troopers had converged on the town to break up a rally at a church there. White onlookers smashed cameras and shot out street lights while police officers attacked the protesters, some of whom continued to kneel and pray on the steps of their church, with clubs.
Jimmie tackled a state trooper who was mercilessly beating his mother. He was shot in the stomach and clubbed on the head until almost dead. Denied admission at the local hospital, he was taken to Selma, where several days later he died.
At the open-casket viewing in Selma, the mortician had been unable to hide the inch-wide and three-inches-long wounds running above his ear, at the base of his skull, and on top of his head.
We sat on a window sill at the memorial service, overflowing with more than 3,000 people. We heard no note of anger or revenge. Instead, a spirit of courage emanated from the congregation, especially as they sang the old slave song, "Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me 'Round."
—Johann Christoph Arnold in Seventy Times Seven
My Response: I've kept my convictions about racism from making me vengeful by …
Thought to Apply: The glory of Christianity is to conquer by forgiveness.
—Source unknown
Adapted from: Seventy Times Seven (Plough, 1997).
Copyright © 2002 by the author or Christianity Today International/Men of Integrity magazine.
Click here for reprint information on Men of Integrity.
May/June 2002,Vol. 5,No. 3
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Lord, make me willing to endure discomfort in order to reach out as a reconciler.
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