Monday, October 12, 2020
As we consider El Dia de la Raza 528 after Columbus stepped onto Hispaniola, the island now divided between the countries of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, it is also important to remember those who unlike Cristobal Colón as he was called at the time, reached out to the native population and cared for them.
The Spanish priest Bartolome de las Casas first participated in the conquest of Cuba and held Indian serfs, but like John Newton, he realized that what he was doing was wrong in the sight of God and worked for the better treatment of the native population.
His book Historia de los Indies was more than a chronicle of what had occurred; it was also a prophetic interpretation of events that carries true today. We are reaping what we have sown: environmental degradation and the tragedy of our treatment of native peoples even today as border walls destroy Indian gravesites and the beauty of the land created by God.
Prayer for the Day
Living God, unlock our hearts so we feel the breath of your Spirit,
Unclench our hands so we reach out to one another.
Open our lips so we are able to drink in the delight of life,
Fill us with your call to justice and mercy.
Unclog our ears so we hear you in all humanity,
Singing your song of a new life.
In the name of him who sang your song of new life,
Even Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.
Thoughts for the Day
Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly now, love mercy now, walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.
The Talmud
. . . there’s a sickness
worse than the risk of death and that's
forgetting what we should never forget.
Mary Oliver, poet, American Primitive (1935–2019)
For not from the east or from the west
and not from the wilderness comes the lifting up;
but it is God who executes judgment,
putting down one and lifting up another,
Psalm 75:6–7