Freedom A Call to Healing

The ideals of freedom and justice for all are innovative notions that can be found at the heart of America. These ideals are embodied in the Declaration of Independence and protected by the Constitution. However, freedom and justice for all, especially for African Americans, has been elusive. We have fought to obtain it through social movements and struggles risking our lives, blood, sweat, and tears.

The Civil Rights Movement began to address the laws, customs, and practices that oppressed African American people. On the contrary, our need for emotional, spiritual, and physiological healing has never truly been addressed. We are a very resilient people! Although, currently, we have more "physical" freedoms than we ever had living in the United States. We have never really had the opportunity to experience absolute freedom from the bondages that still hold captive many of us, in our minds. To maximize these freedoms and opportunities, we have today, we must address and be healed from the centuries of trauma and destructive programming that continue to exist from chattel

slavery.

In America's history, other people groups seem to get the opportunity and empathy to mourn and build memorials after trauma occurs in their lives. All except the black race. We have experienced sustained trauma mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually living in the United States. After enduring centuries of being enslave, Jim Crowe, segregation, and the systematic racism of today. We are expected to just pick up the pieces of life, adjust, and live as law-abiding citizens. We are supposed to live in self-denial

with multiple generations worth of trauma and destructive physiological programming, as if the scars we are carrying are healed or just don't exist. Thus, the most important component we need as a community is hope. This is the hope of redemption offered by a loving and merciful God. He is not a God who only visits us for a few hours on Sunday mornings, nor a God to be called upon only in times of distress. He is a God who eagerly awaits a personal and constant relationship with each of us through His son Jesus Christ.