A December garden is a blank canvas, flat and empty. The world in December is also a blank canvas, reflecting the small successes and monumental failures of humanity. This has been a troubled year in the United States. Painful divisions have deepened into canyons that seem to be unbridgeable. Racism runs as rampant as weeds, choking out understanding and empathy. Mistrust between many police departments and the communities in which they live and serve is poisonous and deadly.
As people of faith, we cannot allow weeds of paranoia and hate to drown out God’s Word. “Word of God. Word of Life,” we say after Scripture readings in our liturgy. I try to repeat those words several times in the course of a day to remind myself that my “words matter.”
This message is an excerpt of the Earth Wise column “Blank canvas” by Terry L. Bowes in the December 2016 issue of Gather magazine.
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