Jesus is nailed to the cross
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station 11: paying forward
Hear our prayers
For all who face torture and execution. Whose bodies, whose lives are deemed disposable, worth less than nothing.
For all who ache for the taste of mercy.
Hear our prayers.
BEFORE HOPE
by Lenora Rand
Before you have hope, deep hope, not cheap hope, you must put yourself in the bodies of those whose last shreds of hope have been robbed from their souls in the night.
Gone, just like that
in the moment when the policeman saw you were black.
When the border guard beheld brown skin. Not the fear. Not the “it’s life or death…”
Gone when the woman on the street spit on you because she thought your eyes were the wrong shape.
Or the man beat you because he didn’t like your sweet sashay.
Gone when the preacher prayed for you to be changed because God didn’t make you like that, couldn’t love you, like that.
Gone when greed paid off the politicians because money speaks louder than body counts and tears.
Before you have hope, deep hope, not cheap hope, you must first listen to the ragged heart beats of those who have had hope stolen from them over and over again. The ones who had so little to start with and then,
their fists pried open,
finger by finger,
the last pennies of hope,
stripped from their sweaty palms.
Gone.
Like that.
