Break My Heart for What Breaks Yours

I have been wrong.


It is in my nature to observe and listen, to gather more information before speaking. The more I learn on a subject, the less I feel qualified to speak—what could I possibly offer to the conversation besides more ignorance, another voice in crowd screaming out into the abyss? There is no wisdom here, no expertise. Surely there are better, older, wiser, smarter, more eloquent individuals than I to address these issues.



I have hidden behind cowardice disguised as humility.



No one feels qualified. Moses said, “Please, Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither recently nor in time past, nor since You have spoken to Your servant; for I am slow of speech and slow of tongue.”
‭‭(Exodus‬ ‭4:10‬ ‭NASB‬). Even now the nagging, sinful insistence in my head rebels against this: does your arrogance know no bounds, Andra? Comparing yourself to the great biblical father MOSES? It is not lost on me that when I felt compelled to write this, to finally speak, God lead me directly to the chapter and verse where He replied to Moses then and to me now:  “Who has made man’s mouth? Or who makes him mute or deaf, or seeing or blind? Is it not I, the LORD?” ‭‭(Exodus‬ ‭4:11‬ ‭NASB‬‬). I pray now that the Lord will be, too, with my mouth and teach me what to say. And I once again implore Him:



Break my heart for what breaks Yours.



The disquiet in our souls after these past few weeks were by divine design. We know that what is happening in the United States and in the world is not what God intended for us. Jesus came to conquer sin and death and it has settled over us all, stifling and oppressive until we cannot move from it, cannot breathe.



“I can’t breathe.”

Why did it take this long for us to hear the voices? How much longer will it take us to act?



I did not watch the video of George Floyd. In all media I consume, I am as deliberate (if not more) in what I ingest mentally and spiritually as I am in what I put in my body. I know that violence weighs heavily on my soul in such a visceral manner—my stomach churns until I feel physically ill, my temples throb with the pulse of the memory replaying again and again to the beat, imprinting itself deeply upon my psyche. God is doing once again what I have asked: He’s breaking my heart. Because I can say with all conviction that our Father, our Creator is damaged this week, and He demands that we not look away.



For too long we have couched our responses. We have justified violation of God’s Law, one of the commands He deemed important enough to write down (twice) and say countless times:



Thou shalt not murder.



Jesus both expounded and simplified this concept by saying “And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” (Matthew 22: 39-40 KJV). Yet somehow we dream up the most stunningly obtuse of justifications, from unrelated violations of human law in the past, to trying to sympathize with the fear the perpetrator must have felt (though we know we were not given a spirit of fear, but of power and love--2 Timothy 1:7). Anything to soothe our troubled spirits from feeling the unease that a lifetime of biblical teachings and the Holy Spirit stirs inside each of us. Until someone so above reproach had to die in such a painful, humiliating, and public fashion that even the staunchest defenders among us have nothing left to offer.


The silence amid the tempest has been particularly deafening. Mine own included.


Now the only responses our battered hearts can offer up are feeble even to our own ears. “Rioting and looting are never justified.” When you hurt someone, you don’t get to judge how they react in their hurt. And make no mistake, we allowed this hurt to occur. Again and again and again as we made our excuses and criticized how they protested, how politely and peacefully they requested justice. We allowed it to fall on deaf ears for years. How unspeakably horrible is that? Voices crying out to the God of Justice to be delivered from His own people, and we have the audacity to fuss about the manner in which they do it? The level of presumption is truly breathtaking.


“Not all cops...”


Well of course not all police officers. We aren’t discussing all law enforcement just as we are not discussing every life, every murder, every individual on the planet; just in the same way, we are speaking precisely of that. Every human life has value to God the Father and deserves honor because He demands it. He does not plead with us, He commands it—how yet do we still feel compelled to argue with it? It isn’t even anything as nebulous as an embryo. The lives we are discussing are fully actualized black men and women begging us on behalf of the Father we share to grant them the privilege of living. Should we never be so damnably arrogant, so condemnably elevated in our own esteem that we believe we have authority over such matters as life and death.


God is angry. And He is hurting. He is furious with how long we have let this go on, how long we have tolerated injustice in this world. Perhaps not all police officers, but how many? How many is too many? Do we have a number? And how does that percentage stand up to how harshly and swiftly we condemn other groups on the sins of the few?


There is no party of “law and order”, because as Christians we are beholden to the Law of God, and through such we have shaped and are shaping the laws of the land. Like us, society is meant to learn and to grow—the Bible is a meditative text for a reason. It is a living, ongoing gospel that we could not possibly ken from one skim, a one and done checklist. We are meant to go back over it time and again, discovering intention and meaning with every visit.


And yet some concepts God put so unambiguously, so heavy and bluntly that there is no room for interpretation, misunderstanding, or argument:


Thou shalt not kill.


Cycles of destruction and rebirth are kind of a theme in the Bible. We see nations rise and fall only to rise again, a sort of purification through fire—we are refining ourselves as individuals and as a group. Each time letting a little more of the unholiness of our sinful humanity fall away so we are just that much closer back to the original relationship God intended for us. Do not mistake the groans from the pains of childbirth, for He is using this for His glory, to give birth to a new creation in us, hopefully a little less damaged, less broken, less marred by sin.


I worry I am not making any sense. That my words are crazy or rambling. I am no prophet; I won’t be cutting off my beard to burn or attack with a sword, though I could see myself laying on one side for a few years. Maybe if I do, I could speed run through this catastrophe of a year and come out on the other side. It certainly sounds easier than enduring this God-awful heartbreak.


If we speak in truth, we have nothing to fear for God is with us. Men will condemn you. Speak anyway.


Speak out for justice. Speak out for the voiceless. Speak out from your positions of privilege, in knowing God through Christ Jesus the son, in calling yourself followers of Christ. Cry out, let your voice be heard among the many and demand better of the world. Father, please we beg You:


Break our heart for what breaks Yours.

--Andie