The final straw!
June 4th I attended a BLM protest rally. I really enjoyed it. I posted on Facebook about it and got an overwhelming response. So I feel like I should share more about what happened through that experience. I have always been a live and let live kind of guy. You know don’t bother me and I won’t bother you. Honestly, I thought it was a good way to live, but 3 recent events have started me to rethink that line of reasoning.
The first thing that happened was about a year ago. I met a pastor from Myanmar and we became quick friends. He has a ministry, on the other side of the world, to the unreached vBuddhist in the villages of Myanmar. Our friendship has made me realize exactly how small our world truly is. Together we have been feeding the starving villagers who have been devastated by the global Covid-19 pandemic.
The second event to help shape my thinking is the Covid-19 pandemic. This tiny virus has had such a impact on the world. It has turn peoples lives upside down, literally over night. People have lost jobs and family members, they have lost freedoms they didn’t even know they had. Like the freedom to go to church or go out and eat with the family after church, we had lost the freedom to celebrate mile stones with our loved ones and our graduates had to go with out any celebration. When I look back over the last 4 months I come to realize the amount of freedom I actually have.
Finally, the Black Lives Matter movement of late is the latest thing to help reshape my thoughts. Over the last few years I have watched on tv, with indifference, the news stories about police brutality and the deaths of POC in their custody. However, when I saw the video of George Floyd’s murder at the hands of police, something reminiscent of rage over came me. I could no longer be indifferent to innocent, even not so innocent, people being indiscriminately killed simply because of the color of their skin.
All this has given me a new perspective. I see the world around me with new eyes. Eyes I didn’t have a year ago. The world I live in is getting smaller and I can now longer ignore people on the other side of the world who are starving nor can I be passive while my rights and freedoms are systematically being stripped away. In addition, I can no longer sit idly by and watch the systematic inequality and inequity of POC.
Please join me in action.
Feed the hungry villagers of Myanmar
