Guest User 5/18/20 Guest User 5/18/20

Idols

One of the first lessons in Sunday School, besides the fall of Adam and Eve, was the story of the Ten Commandments. Every Easter, I would watch Charlton Heston part the Red Sea. Back then, idols were just big golden calf statues. I soon learned why there were so many idol references in the bible. Idols are things you worship. They are things you put before God. Most of us probably don’t think we have idols, but we do. We have made money our idol. We have put our jobs before our family. We have put our pursuit of wealth before our personal wellbeing. We have made social media an idol. We have made pleasure an idol. The bible says to put no other god before me. It's like God knows that we will make things more important than our relationship with him. He knows that we will choose entertainment over bible study. He knows we will choose to talk to our friends before we pray. The only way to turn away from idols is to first recognize we have them.

Guest User 6/19/19 Guest User 6/19/19

Juneteenth

Growing up in New Orleans, in many ways was like being raised in a time capsule. Field trips to plantations were apart of the Louisiana History curriculum. Reminders of slavery and the antebellum South were ever-present on St.Charles Avenue. Drums rang out from Congo Square on Sundays, and Juneteenth was celebrated right before Essence.

I don't think I truly understood the significance of Juneteenth until I was older because I was taught that the slaves were freed by the Emancipation Proclamation. I later found out that slavery simply got re-branded to sharecropping and indentured servitude. It was re-branded again through Jim Crow and redlining. More recently, it was re-branded through constitutional amendments and capitalism. Larger financial institutions rose up in the place of slavery to create the generational wealth gap. Consumer debt is one of the current faces of slavery's re-brand.

Today, as we celebrate and acknowledge the liberation of the Texas slaves, please understand that we are still struggling to be free. Just like those Texan slaves, we are waiting for news of freedom. Delay is not denial. There's still hope. Happy Juneteenth!