sifting

What is a grain of scripture that you have salvaged from oppressive doctrines? How does that sustenance nurture your life today?

Psalm 80:5

You have fed them with the bread of tears and given them tears to drink in full measure.

Drinking of tears can feel incidental during times of deep grief. I have felt water logged and drenched in sobs.

Bread of tears, though, feels all together different. 

The Psalmist speaks of sustenance-made-anguish. Intended nutrition we break off, chew, and swallow in our own portion. It’s baked in suffering.

Systemic oppression works best at the suggestion that it came with the grain, as though it is God ordained.

There are moments as a Christian living from the margins, that I don’t want to consider Scripture at all. The echoes of deep harm can accompany each word I read.

It’s in the sifting of the wholesome, life sustaining grain from the bread of human-made-doctrine that liberation is often found.

I pause this morning with gratitude for those who read and consider scripture from the margins. I pause with gratitude for you.

What is a grain of scripture that you have salvaged from oppressive doctrines? How does that sustenance nurture your life today?

–  Dax Franklin-Hicks