THE LAST RIVER MILE

I’m binge-watching a now dated Netflix series – “Designated Survivor.” In the story, an accidental U.S. president (played by Keifer Sutherland) urges government leaders to “choose to be on the right side of history” during a time of crisis. That’s an interesting and compelling concept…the “right” side of history.

It occurs to me that all history is recorded post-game. Historians look back on events and eras which have already taken place. As the adage goes, it is normally the victors who write history. For example, as a child growing up in the 1950’s and 60’s, I learned a particular slant on the history of “winning the west” in America. It was about the fore-ordained advance of “civilization” against the resistance of “savages.” It really wasn’t until I read Dee Brown’s BURY MY HEART AT WOUNDED KNEE, that I began to experience a whole different, genocidal slant on the same events. I had to unlearn the history of the victors. So, sometimes the underdogs prevail in how history is remembered. That can take time. It took centuries of fighting against histories which presented slavery as normal, natural, and even God-approved to get on the “right side” of that painful, dehumanizing story.

Whoever eventually records history, while it is happening it’s something of a gamble to determine the correct side of it. We seem to be in pivotal days right now. People are banking on vastly different outcomes, assuming that those outcomes will be vindicated by future historical recordings. I don’t have a huge amount of time ahead of me with my own little and very limited footprint in human history. So, this is how I’m rolling the dice for the last mile of my float trip:

-I choose liberty and justice for ALL, not just for the privileged, favored few.

-I choose welcoming the stranger over protectionism.

-I choose defending the marginalized and powerless over protecting the “rights” of the already powerful.

-I choose to believe that no one group, ethnicity, political view, or nation is favored by God over any other. (As as child in Sunday School I learned a little song that said, “Jesus loves the little children; all the children of the world. Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight.” I still believe that.)

-I choose to believe that the good news of Jesus the crucified and risen Christ is more about embracing and liberating than it is about judging and separating.

-I choose to believe that Jesus alone is Lord; no one and nothing else.

-I choose to believe that love wins in the end; not might, not wealth, not privilege and power. Only love.

Sure, I may end up on the wrong side of history with all this. I’ll take that chance.

I’ll see you around the next bend in the river.