Last night Emmaus wondered how one could tell from where Daddy
is. You see, Emmaus believes a person’s hair indicates a lot about their
origin. He said, "Well, Ezra and I have curly hair, so we are from
Ethiopia. Daddy is bald, so it is hard to know!"
The
day before he had asked, "Where is the black girl from in the movie,
Courageous, her family is different from ours. Is she also Ethiopian?" I answered that hers may be an African
American family, who has a more similar hue of skin to each other than we do.
Ezra
announced, "Emmaus and I are black,” then she flipped her palms forward
for me to see, "but I'm a little white."
The
movie, Courageous, has a sound track and theme song to match. We listen to the title song EVERY day
on the way to preschool, at Zion's request. These are the words, "We were
meant to be courageous, we were meant to lead the way, we were meant to be the
generation that finally breaks the chains...." then Casting Crowns goes on
to sing, "Seek justice, love mercy, walk humbly with your God...in the war
of the mind I will take my stand in the battle of the heart and the battle of
the mind...we were meant to be courageous!" Well, God is good to do brilliant things under my radar, I
didn’t even think about the meaning of the words our children sing every day at
the top of their lungs until recently. This is the theme song for their lives and ours. God’s grace is equipping our children for
battle, to lead in truth for their generation.
The
societal swing of the pendulum of racism is a dizzying torment to the heart our
Creator gave us to love each other and rejoice in the beauty of our unique
colors, cultures and preferences. The phenomenal layers of unique
characteristics are celebrated amongst our children freely. It is when they are told how to think
with hearts held captive to manmade rules of correctness, laced with a guilt or
victim mindset, that they enter a realm of confusion. Theirs are minds less
fettered by man's tampering.
My
daily goal is to fill our children with all that speaks life from God's Word;
and the way they live their thoughts out-loud to us, is our daily portion of
getting plumb line with who God is and how beautifully he created each of one us. As if to have the last word on this
subject Emmaus asked, “What color chocolate am I?”…the sweetest kind, most
definitely!
