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Derek Chauvin’s Eyes

Derek Chauvin’s eyes flashed, cutting through the judge’s bland intonation of guilty…guilty…guilty. That moment in a Minneapolis courtroom on April 20 signaled what I believe to be a historic shift: Twelve ordinary Americans—six people of color, six white—reached unanimous agreement about what they saw in the killing of George Floyd. They called it murder. These everyday folks, with a decidedly mixed bag of preconceptions about race, were able to process two weeks of testimony from 45 witnesses, reason together face to face, and arrive at the same conclusion. This happened in a nation with a history of aggressively denying the

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Learning from a Racial Unity Fail, Pt. 2: No More Crumbs

Starting in December, the Lord repeatedly brought me to a passage in Ezekiel 9. The prophet was recounting a vision from God in which he was carried in the Spirit to Jerusalem. Here in the holy city, Ezekiel witnessed something that would have horrified any devout Jew of his time: The glory of God lifted from the Temple and paused at its threshold. Then poof—it was gone. Before the glory departed entirely, however, the prophet saw a “man clothed in linen” holding a writing kit. The Lord commanded this man to “Go throughout the city of Jerusalem and put a

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Learning from a Racial Unity Fail, Pt. 1: It’s Deep, Y’all

The Black South African singer possessed a rich, nuanced voice. Mature in her faith and gracious in manner, she repeatedly yielded the mic to the white South African woman with a thin, average-quality voice who kept asserting a front-and-center role during worship. I watched this dynamic unfold at a small, interracial Christian healing service in Johannesburg, South Africa, several years ago, growing increasingly frustrated. The Black singer was a recording artist with a powerful presence, and she could have blown the white woman off the stage. Yet she honored the sacredness of the moment by refusing to engage in a