Wednesday, December 15, 2010

People Who Just Wouldn't Shut Up....




....have always been my heroes.




Harriet Tubman spoke out against a system that bought and sold people, her people, even her own family. And her fearlessness gave force to her words. She didn't desire her own freedom so much as to leave others behind. They put a bounty on her head to scare her into silence and submission. But no one ever got to collect.

Rosa Parks sat in the wrong section of the bus. The white section. She was told to get up. She didn't. She was tired from working all day, tired of being a second class citizen. Her actions were louder than words. She went to jail. For sitting on a public bus. In America. But America heard her loud and clear. They tried to marginalize her and they failed. Her civil disobedience led to the Montgomery Bus Boycott that made her an international symbol of resistance.


The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr had a dream. And he let the whole world know from whom it came and who would make it come true. And they shot him 'cause he wouldn't back down.
Because he kept showing up places and talking about equality and justice.

John the Baptist took on the world. When the world slept in houses. He slept in caves. When they were clothed in soft linens, he wore camel skin. When the most respected religious men of the day came out to the Jordan, he called them a brood of vipers. He also told a king to repent. They had to cut off his head to silence his tongue.


And then there's my Savior. Whom even death could not silence. Nor the hordes of hell.

Let's me and you be these kind of people. The kind that don't shut up. Let's “Speak up for those who cannot sp
eak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute. Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy.” Proverbs 31:7-8

Let's be voices for the voiceless.

Deal?




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