“People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.” James Baldwin
My very first teachers were my parents, James and Adamae Lewis. Their whole life was based on transgression in love and truth. My parents, especially Mommy, were unafraid to live truth and love rather than tradition. God honoured this way of being by usually speaking to her first whenever He had a message for our family. Our Father clearly flouted tradition for honour in love, because He knew what no one else did: Mommy had long been fighting the agonizing battle to stay in love that Jesus also fought, and she did that with grace, often alone, repeatedly, and sometimes without grace, and I know this because not only did I experience it, but I do the same thing. It must have been difficult to feel somewhat invisible in that fight, but God honours while history absolves (her recent words that mean a huge deal to me this morning as God has opened those words up to me).
I love my parents and their strong love, their example of living for truth as best they could rather than for tradition. And I especially honour Mommy for her warrior’s heart of love. Piglet ask Sow wa mek it snout so long. Sow say “When you come you will see”. I am beginning to see. Thank you for your legacy.
Thank you to other teachers in my life for sharing in love. My favourite teachers are those who keep challenging us to learn how to transgress so that love can grow in truth. This has been your lifelong work, Teacher Marian (Susie) Carr, Dr. Keith Yearwood, Jennifer Doede. I pray that as the fire of love grows in you the strengthening flame will continue to ignite love in your students and everyone with whom you interact. And so truth in love will change this world.
I pray that God will remove the scales off of our eyes so that we may see the church as He sees it, and as He does may our giftings and its impact for the growth of love stir like a wildfire in our hearts. I pray that this mind will be in us as it was in Christ Jesus.
5 Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus:
6 Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God:
7 But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men:
8 And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.
9 Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name:
10 That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth;
11 And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
May our spiritual leaders teach the church to transgress in love, as Jesus did, with truth instead of being prisoner to tradition.
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Philippians%202%3A5-11&version=KJV&interface=amp
Nurturing Kindred 