Hi everyone,

Wherever you find yourself this week, we hope that you are discovering that there is hope in the midst of whatever waters you are wading through, and that you are not going through them alone. There is a God committed to justice, love, and mercy, and people who are too. As Tamice Spencer-Helms notes in Faith Unleavened, the wilderness is a place where we can find community and Jesus. Hallelujah and amen to all of us being beloved and essential to our father.

And with that, on to our highlights this week as we leave colonized faith for the kingdom of God.

Jonathan’s recommendations:

• When the US government assured the stability of the deposits at the recently-collapsed Silicon Valley Bank, I read this piece from Talia Lavin like an imprecatory Psalm. In it she tells the story of the 1914 Ludlow Massacre, where Federal and state troops killed 25 people in the violent suppression of a Colorado mining strike. The miners, employees of the Rockefellers, were seeking only the labor protections already legally owed to them. Rather than pay his workers, John D. Rockefeller paid the salaries of state soldiers to burn, murder, and terrorize the men, women and children who would dare rebel against the system imposed upon them. Lavin reminds us that in the same way the federal government did not come to save starving families in Colorado in 1914, they are not coming to save the people in the 32 states that cut SNAP benefits this month. Instead, it has directed its resources toward saving the Rockefellers of today, just like yesteryear. The US privileges those with wealth and power to the detriment of the poor and marginalized. What grieves me afresh today is that we have yet to learn that this is no way to live and nowhere near what God intends for us.