How do I know I’m loved? I know I’m loved by how much you were willing to pay for me. The ultimate sacrifice. When God got ready to show how much you were worth, he gave his son. Then how can you have low self-esteem? How can you devalue what he has value when he paid the price that redeemed you from your sin? Love holidays cuz you have great food and you have great fun.
People come over. I like to entertain and have a good time. Fourth of July is one of those times. I recognize the greatness of this country and uh and we come over and we have food and we have cookouts and we have activities and it’s fun and my wife and I have hosted all kinds of families and all kinds of friends and our kids bring people we don’t even know and we’re feeding everybody.
Strangers, I don’t know whether they’re serial killers, but I feed them. If they come in there and they’re hungry, I feed them. We we relish all of the things that stand behind this country. And although I am thankful, I also have to realize that what we are celebrating is not my liberty because as an African-American, we were not freed when they were free.
And I have to understand that and be able to embrace that and be able to c celebrate something that my ancestors had to wait hundreds of years to really enter into. I’m reminded of the hardships that they went through and what they had to endure and what happened to them. And we are finally in this country starting to recognize that we all enjoyed the liberty, but it didn’t all happen on the same day.
And we can celebrate each other’s liberty even though they came at different times. And that does not negate the greatness of this country or the power of who we are as a people. It is just honest. It is just honest. It’s as honest as marriage is that sometimes both of you are not equally in love at the same time.
It’s as honest as parenting is. You love them all, but there’s one child that drives you absolutely crazy. And that doesn’t mean that you’re not a good parent. It’s just being honest. We like nice, neat, pretty little stories, but that’s not the way it goes. Dr. King was right when he said, “No one is free until we all are free.
” And then we really enjoy freedom. Suffering must never be wasted because freedom is a bloody business. Freedom is a bloody business. The women winning the right to vote was a bloody business. Freedom for people of color was a bloody business. Freedom to come to this country was a bloody business.
