find your voice

What’s the truth you’re hiding today to fit in? Even if you only say it aloud to yourself (or if it's not safe to say them in other spaces), take a moment and speak those words into existence.

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 on Unsplash

Mark 6:25-26

Immediately she rushed back to the king and requested, “I want you to give me at once the head of John the Baptist on a platter.” The king was deeply grieved, yet out of regard for his oaths and for the guests, he did not want to refuse her.

How many times have I let the rules or the promises keep me from doing or saying what is right?

I read a sentence the other day that’s stuck with me because I see the wisdom in it, and I see the difficulty of it.

“If you can find a way to be ok with being disliked, you will be unstoppable.”

There is truth in that, truth for Herod, truth for us. I want to be liked, and at the same time am unsatisfied when I’m pushed to the side for saying unpopular things.

I wonder what it would look like to be compassionate and just while being disliked for it. There is so much power in being a part of something, and there is so much empowerment with speaking and living meaningful truths despite their unpopularity.

Herod chose to save face, to be a part of the in-group, rather than do what was right. He was a coward, I can be a coward as well. All that power, and he was afraid people would laugh at him or think him powerless if he refused a request that aggreived him.

Belonging matters. Belonging to groups that allow us to grow, change, and speak the truth when it matters, matters even more.

What’s the truth you’re hiding today to fit in? Even if you only say it aloud to yourself, take a moment and speak those words into existence.

-Jason Whitehead