Quiet Time: Racial Reconciliation

Dear God of Love and Justice,

Luke 12:33 asks us to sell what we have and give to the poor — but Martin Luther understood that the deepest poverty is not always material. Sometimes the greatest poverty is being unseen, unheard, dismissed because of the color of your skin. Jesus calls us to empty our hands of the treasures we clutch — our comfort, our silence, our carefully curated ignorance — and fill them instead with the work of reconciliation.

In 1963, eight white clergy in Birmingham told Dr. King to wait. To be patient. Luther himself wrote that the church's task is not patience with injustice but bold confession — the kind that costs something. The purses that do not wear out are not sewn from good intentions. They are stitched from showing up at the school board meeting. From learning your neighbor's name and then learning their story. From sitting in the discomfort of a conversation you would rather avoid because the person across from you bears the imago Dei — the image of God — and that image demands more from you than politeness.

Guide me today, Lord, past the moth-eaten treasure of my own ease. Show me one concrete step — not a slogan, not a sentiment, but a step. Teach me that reconciliation is not a topic for discussion but a table where I must sit down and stay.