A Message to My Community
There is a tone rising in parts of our community that gives me pause.
A tone shaped by pain, but drifting toward payback.
A tone that sounds like justice, but carries the weight of vengeance.
I understand where it comes from.
Our history is long.
Our wounds are real.
Our memories are not imagined.
And when a people finally find their voice, the first sound that rises is often the sound of hurt.
But pain is not a compass.
Pain cannot lead a nation.
Pain cannot build a future.
And vengeance — no matter how justified it may feel — is not ours to carry.
“Vengeance is the Lord’s.”
When human beings try to pick it up, it burns us from the inside out.
Nothing good grows from revenge.
It cannot heal.
It cannot be restored.
It cannot lift us into the future we want for our children.
We were not created to dominate anyone.
Not to flip the script.
Not to become what once harmed us.
Not to replace one hierarchy with another and call it progress.
Our strength has never been in payback.
Our strength is in wisdom, dignity, unity, and the ability to rise without becoming the thing that tried to break us.
Justice is not revenge.
Restoration is not retaliation.
Compensation is not domination.
If we want a world where our grandchildren can breathe freely, then we cannot build that world with the tools that once oppressed us.
We rise by a different road.
A higher one.
A wiser one.
A road that honors God, honors our ancestors, and honors the future we are trying to build.
Strength Without Vengeance
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