Thoughts, Prayers & Art

Originally published April 7, 2025

Woe to you, America, land of plenty, where the fruit of the earth rots in silos while children cry themselves to sleep with empty stomachs.

Woe to the lawmakers who line their pockets with gold while ignoring the widow, the orphan, and the refugee at the gates. You call yourself a beacon of liberty, yet you cage the stranger and break the backs of the poor.
You parade in patriotic colors, but your hands are stained with blood of innocents gunned down in schools, of unarmed Black men and women killed in the streets, of civilians bombed in faraway lands by your drones and your dollars. You send thoughts and prayers, but legislate apathy and violence. You kneel to the idols of capitalism, white supremacy, and militarism, and have forgotten the God who calls you to love mercy, do justice, and walk humbly.
Your prophets cry out in the wilderness—activists, pastors, teachers, poets, but their voices are drowned in the noise of profit and power. The earth groans beneath your industries, the waters rise, and still you deny the signs of the times. The Spirit is weeping, not because you are broken, but because you refuse to repent.

There is still time, America. Time to beat your swords into plowshares and your assault rifles into tools of peace. Time to lift every voice and sing of freedom, not for the few, but for all. Time to turn from empire and return to beloved community. Time to love not with words or speech, but with actions and in truth.

God is watching. God is moving. And God’s justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.