When it Hits Home
I don't usually write responses to these sorts of things, even the biggest ones. Not because I don't care, but because I don't ever know what to say.
But this time it hit 20 minutes from my house.
Twelve police officers, twelve people shot, five killed. In Dallas.
How many times can we stick #BlackLivesMatter or #BlueLivesMatter or #AllLivesMatter on our tweets before we actually realize that's true? The value of life can't be summed up in a million hashtags. Prejudice exists, and it's good that we've brought attention to that. But now all we're doing is bringing attention to it instead of fixing the problem.
The problem didn't start with gunshots and protests. It didn't start with national outrage or Twitter trends.
It started with hearts. It started with people.
It started with people who didn't know the value in others. Maybe because they didn't know the value in themselves. The more we shout "#LIVESMATTER," the less we hear "you're valued."
Regardless of how many times we demand that lives matter, if we don't know why, it won't last. When we view people behind filters of race or occupation, when we push people into categories, we no longer see them as people. We no longer see them as lives. They become numbers and statistics. We can't love numbers and statistics.
Shouldn't that be what it's about? Instead, we've made it about tearing every other side down.
But this time it hit 20 minutes from my house.
Twelve police officers, twelve people shot, five killed. In Dallas.
How many times can we stick #BlackLivesMatter or #BlueLivesMatter or #AllLivesMatter on our tweets before we actually realize that's true? The value of life can't be summed up in a million hashtags. Prejudice exists, and it's good that we've brought attention to that. But now all we're doing is bringing attention to it instead of fixing the problem.
The problem didn't start with gunshots and protests. It didn't start with national outrage or Twitter trends.
It started with hearts. It started with people.
It started with people who didn't know the value in others. Maybe because they didn't know the value in themselves. The more we shout "#LIVESMATTER," the less we hear "you're valued."
Regardless of how many times we demand that lives matter, if we don't know why, it won't last. When we view people behind filters of race or occupation, when we push people into categories, we no longer see them as people. We no longer see them as lives. They become numbers and statistics. We can't love numbers and statistics.
Shouldn't that be what it's about? Instead, we've made it about tearing every other side down.
In the midst of this, my favorite social media post is from Olan Rogers. It isn't long, but it means more than a lot of 1000 word Facebook posts out there.
There is so much potential for this country to be something special for generations to come but it all comes down to this one. We start listening to one another. We start to understand one another. We start to love one another.
We need faith to believe that God is still working. We need hope to see that change can happen. We need love know that lives matter.
Lives matter because each one was individually crafted by God. Lives matter because each one is loved deeply by Jesus. Lives matter because each human being on this planet is worth dying for. Maybe if we realized that, people would stop killing people.
I hate that things like this happen. But I have hope that we can get better.
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