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A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with the Revd Azariah France-Williams

Good Morning.

On this day in 2005 the activist Rosa Parks died at the age of ninety two. In 1955 Rosa lived in a world which carefully governed black bodies, giving prominence and dominance to white bodies. These laws stretched across society During a bus journey, if a white passenger requested a seat and a black person was occupying that seat, the black person would be required to get up, move to the back of the bus and stand for the remainder of the journey if there were no rear seats available. One day, Rosa was asked by a white passenger to stand and move, and she refused. This sparked a bus boycott and the American black civil rights era began in earnest.

What was it that motivated her ‘no’, at the risk of her own freedom? It was that she had a bigger sense of ‘yes’ to the freedom of all; white and black. She had seen the promised land. Mere weeks before, she had engaged in a conscious act of civil disobedience, she had witnessed black and white people sitting together as equals. It was at the Highlander Folk School which was an integrated setting where black and white people sat, ate, and taught together for a common purpose. She had never seen this before but she could not now unsee it. Segregation is sin. The Early Church Father Cyril of Alexandria wrote ‘Satan has broken us up.’

Gracious God, empower us to see that a better world is possible, to nurture those places where we have influence, and, seeing and encountering all through your eyes, play our part in making a world on earth, as it is in heaven.

Amen.