Valleys & Hills
What are the tools that you have to pull down the mountains and raise the valleys and build the world you wish to see?
Baruch 5:6
“For God has ordered that every high mountain and the ancient hills be made low and the valleys filled up.”
Luke 3:5
“Every valley will be filled, and every mountain and hill will be leveled. The twisted paths will be made straight, and the rough road smooth.”
Today I’m thinking about the valleys and hills of the bar chart showing wealth inequality in the US and worldwide. I’m thinking about who has access to healthcare and who doesn’t. Who gets to breathe clean air and drink clean water and who doesn’t. Who gets to make decisions about their bodies and who doesn’t.
I think it’s both encouraging and disappointing that for millennia people have been observing and naming the mountains of the wealthy and the valleys of the workers. On the one hand, I feel solidarity with them, the ancestors of old, who have been trusting in God to bring equity and justice. On the other hand, I also feel disappointed that those visions have gone unrealized for so long.
But I’m not someone who believes that we just sit back and wait for the will of God to be done. I believe that we have a responsibility to act with one another and with God to bring about the visions of justice and peace that we’ve been longing for. And HOW we go about taking action is just as important as WHAT we do. How we live into the dream will shape what the dream can look like. As Audre Lorde said, “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.”
What are the tools that you have to pull down the mountains and raise the valleys and build the world you wish to see?