There are moments in history that force us to ask not only, What happened? but Who are we becoming?
Watching masked members of a white nationalist group march through our nation's capital during America's 250th anniversary celebration was one of those moments for me.
As a Black woman, I cannot watch scenes like that from a distance. They are not abstract. They remind me that, for many Black and Brown Americans, history is never as far behind us as we sometimes wish it were.
These moments stir grief.
Not because hatred is new, but because it still finds room to breathe.
What grieved me even more was the realization that many people have become so accustomed to images like these that they barely pause. We scroll. We shake our heads. We move on.
Followers of Jesus cannot afford that kind of numbness.
Scripture never calls us to ignore evil. It calls us to overcome evil with good. It calls us to love our enemies while refusing to participate in what destroys the image of God in another person. Those are not competing commands. They belong together.
Loving our enemies does not mean remaining silent about injustice.
Seeking justice does not require us to surrender compassion.
Both can exist at the same time.
I do not want hatred to harden my heart. I have seen what bitterness does to people. It slowly makes us resemble the very things we oppose.
Instead, I find myself praying.
I pray for the safety and encouragement of those who felt threatened by what they witnessed.
I pray for my Black and Brown brothers and sisters who carry the emotional weight of seeing reminders that some still question our belonging.
I pray for our nation, because division is not healed by pretending it does not exist.
And perhaps the hardest prayer of all, I pray for those who marched.
Not because their ideology deserves sympathy. It does not.
But because Jesus has never asked me to pray only for people who think like me. He asked His followers to pray for their enemies. That is one of the most difficult commands in Scripture because it requires us to believe that no heart is beyond God's reach.
Transformation is possible.
Repentance is possible.
Redemption is possible.
History gives us examples of people who walked away from lives of hatred because someone refused to stop believing that God could change them.
As Christians, our hope has never rested in governments, political parties, or national anniversaries. Our hope rests in the Kingdom of God.
That hope is neither passive nor naïve.
It compels us to tell the truth about evil.
It calls us to protect the vulnerable.
It requires us to pursue justice with humility.
It invites us to keep loving when hatred demands retaliation.
America's story is still being written.
So is mine.
So is yours.
The question is not simply what kind of nation we are becoming.
The deeper question is this:
What kind of people are we becoming while we write the next chapter?
My prayer is that we become people whose courage is rooted in truth, whose compassion refuses to grow cold, and whose hope remains anchored in Christ.
Because hate has never had the final word.
Jesus does.