November 17, 2022
It takes courage to stave off discouragement. It takes faith to reach beyond pain. And it takes love to wrestle with disappointment instead of surrendering to it. Brave women wail; and we all are better because of it.
Natasha Sistrunk Robinson and an ensemble of Women of Color invite you to engage their reality in a collection of essays, poems, liturgies, and historical reflections, entitled, Voices of Lament – Reflection on Brokenness and Hope and in a World Longing for Justice. Contributors include global leaders, award-winning authors, theologians, church and community leaders, poets, and artists.
Natasha, featured in a Christianity Today interview with Kimberly Deckel, shared:
After reading the book of Jeremiah, a particular passage “really jumped out at me,” says Robinson. It was 9:17–21, “where God tells the prophet Jeremiah to call the wailing women to wail until they are exhausted from crying so much. They’re wailing because the men have been taken out of the public square, and the children have been taken out of the streets, and ‘death has climbed in through our windows.’”
The story seemed very relevant to the moment. “Death was a thief climbing into our windows too,” says Robinson. “It was all around us, with the reality of the pandemic on top of all the racial injustice of that year.”…
As a Black woman, I was thinking about all the ways that our men had been taken out of the public square—whether by violence or mass incarceration, and so on. And of course, this is the George Floyd summer.
Psalm 37 ended up being an encouragement to me, in conjunction with the text from Jeremiah 9. God is very clear that he’s going to deal with the righteous, and he’s going to deal with the wicked, and he’s going to deal with them very intentionally.
(October, 26, 2022)
The book is a beautiful choir of voices. Ifueko Fex Ogbomo, a self-employed Nigerian writer, poet, performing artist, author, and sickle cell activist is one such voice. Watch and listen:
For her internationally acclaimed work in the performing arts, Ifueko was classified as an “Alien of Extraordinary Ability” and awarded United States permanent residency in 2017. She enjoys sharing the gospel through storytelling. Follow Ifueko on Instagram and Twitter: @inspirologos
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