There is neither Jew nor Greek; there is neither slave nor free; nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. Now if you belong to Christ, then indeed you are Abraham’s descendants, heirs according to the promise. – Galatians 3:28-29

I have this dilemma. So much to talk about and to write about, but so little time. So I will make some passing references and then dig in a little deeper another day.

Saturday Rebekah and I stopped in at Montgomery’s Legacy Museum and then the National Memorial for Peace and Justice – which focuses more specifically on the phenomenon of lynching that plagued this country for so many years.

The Legacy museum painted a vivid picture of slavery, and the exhibits did a powerful job of articulating the impossible to process cumulative weight of the brutality and festering evil that we so easily lose touch with when we simply read the facts and the numbers.

The photographs, and the stories, and the visceral connections forged between today and what happened not so long ago brought the history to life. And, more than inviting us to be witnesses, the experience left us feeling as if we were participants too.

We could have spent several more hours in the museum but we went on up the hill to the lynching memorial. There, having been confronted with the horror and the inhumanity perpetuated by so many regular people in broad daylight (often in response to a flyer or newspaper announcement that such a spectacle was scheduled), we wandered around the deeply moving monument.

Again, and achieved via the great slabs of metal representing county after county after county and state after state, there was this sense of weight – too much weight to bear – and we caught a glimpse of some of what it must mean to be be treated with such dispassionate brutality, for so many generations, and to feel that burden undergirding an entire people.

That’s probably enough for this post, I still have to process a lot of what we were exposed to. Take a few moments to scroll through the photographs. Then make plans to visit Montgomery yourself. You need to experience this.

“But let justice roll down like waters,
    and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” – Amos 5:24

Peace – and I mean that in every way – DEREK