Faith Challenges: It Ain't All Comfort

We were ready for 350 people at our community Thanksgiving drive-by meal. We didn’t plan for quite enough. One car beat Ervin to the church, even though we had posted we would start handing out food at noon. I don’t know what time Ervin got here, but he was putting turkeys in the oven as early as 4:15 last month. You don’t simply beat Ervin to church on a day like our Thanksgiving meal. I had told Ervin we would have people showing up early, but neither of us expected anyone to be waiting when he arrived. We had planned to go ahead and deliver plates as we had them ready, so as to keep down the number of cars in line. By noon, when we were supposed to start, we had sent 150 plates out the door. I made a few trips to Food Lion, as did Karen and at least a couple of others. We ran through our 550 clamshell take-out plates and Buckey managed to requisition us some more. Those 10 turkeys Ervin had cooked, cut, and heated up to serve were gone by 1:00 pm. Three extra hams and so...

I turned on my computer this morning to a message from Microsoft to the effect of, “If you are seeking to educate yourself on issues of race in the US, we have put together a list of resources.” Normally, they are trying to encourage me to check out their search engine concerning some geographic location, geological formation, or culturally significant image. I normally ignore the suggestion, but today I was intrigued. I was intrigued mainly because here was a major US corporation prompting discussion on a social issue which is very important to many people, an issue we really cannot afford to ignore as a nation that is very divided. Clicking on today’s option sent me to images of the covers of the following 23 books: How to Be and Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi; Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehesi Coates; So You Want to Talk about Race by Ijeomo Oluo; Me and White Supremacy by Layla F. Saad; Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You by ...