One Blood

We spent part of our weekend with Chris and Erica's family. We went to the "Lights Before Christmas" at the Toledo Zoo, and then headed north to the Detroit area, where we spent the night before visiting the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn. We enjoyed the time together, our kids had fun swimming and playing with cousins, and Yikealo got plenty of time playing with Legos in one of the exhibits at the museum. An idyllic little get-away, really, except for one thing...

 There is a large section of the Henry Ford Museum that is dedicated to the Civil Rights movement. I simply cannot wrap my head around the fact that just a few short years ago...within my parents' lifetime, actually...it would have been illegal in some states for MY CHILDREN to use the same drinking fountain that I used, for them to sit in the same bus seats that I sat in, for them to attend the same school that I attended. I get a sharp pain in my stomach as I walk past the glass cases showing Ku Klux Klan paraphernalia. I look into my boys' gorgeous brown eyes, hear their high-pitched little voices, and wonder how anyone could think that they are anything but beautiful creations in the image of a holy God. The museum has the famous bus where brave Rosa Parks finally reached her limit and refused to give up her seat just because she was sitting across the aisle from a caucasian man. We happened to be there on the 57th anniversary of her courageous stand against tyranny. We climbed onto the bus and sat listening to Rosa's voice speaking overhead, "I would have to know for once and for all what rights I had as a human being and a citizen." I glanced across the aisle and noticed my "black" son sitting in the same seat as his "white" cousin and started to cry.

I cried again, a little later, as I stood inside a replica of a segregated bus station and listened to Martin Luther King telling me that he had a dream. I am so thankful for people who stood up to injustice and paved the way for my family to be accepted within the "norm" of modern American society. I am also thankful for a loving God who told the truth in His Word....long before Rosa Parks took a stand in December of 1955.

"God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that He is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; neither is worshipped with men's hands, as though He needed any thing, seeing He giveth to all life, and breath, and all things, and hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determnined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation; that they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after Him, and find Him, though He be not far from every one of us: for in Him we live, and move, and have our being....For we are also His offspring."

So thankful that my children are growing up within the context of an extended family that looks like this!

 (Zavier, Yikealo, Sintayehu and Jordan, hand in hand on Thanksgiving Day.)