Not a bump in the night. Not a burning smell. Not a bright light. But deep inside, I felt my heart turn a flip. It squeezed. It shifted. It jolted. It raced.

In the darkness of my hotel room, I remembered I was away from home, my husband, my family. Fear turbo-charged the beating in my chest.

Against everything we’ve ever learned about emergencies, I stood up and debated my options: A. I could call 911 and have paramedics monitor me while transporting me to the hospital*; or B. I could pull on clothes, grab my suitcase, Google the directions and get myself to the Emergency Room, or C. I could wait until I passed out and housekeeping could discover me in the morning.

What is this?

That’s the question for the times that arrests our hearts.

As we speak, organizers trumpet the 250th Anniversary of the United States of America. Our nation’s leaders appeal to the masses for a religious revival, while a record nightly average of 60,000 people, apprehended sometimes for nothing more than looking or sounding undocumented, are languishing in very profitable, detention centers, human warehouses. The highest court of the land determined that race can’t be use to analyze the effects of racial gerrymandering and voter suppression, when it eviscerated the 1965 Voting Rights Act in April. Promptly thereafter, Tennessee, and Alabama initiated changes that could affect the collective votes of black voters for generations. The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) has indicted the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) claiming its payments to undercover operatives in the Klan constitute a fraudulent use of donor funds. And a court found that grants cut by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) were illegally based on protected characteristics such and as race and gender. Supporters of our President presented him with a statue overlaid with gold, sparking social media posts on everything from the Golden Calf to Nebuchadnezzar’s statue, but really prompting more questions as to corruption and access. And, while overlooking potential corruption, other supporters are seeking to impose a National Day of Rest, a Sabbath.

Absolutely no irony detected here. For America’s 250th birthday, it has renewed its commitment to contradiction. The very core of American incongruity has risen to the occasion, consistent with its history, but not its creed. And while some pray on the National Mall, our hearts are racing and many of us are standing in the middle of the living room, immobilized. What is this?

The morning after my scare, I thanked God for my life. I could have left this world in a quiet heap behind the steering wheel (I chose option B), but God saw fit to give me more time. I then remembered that the day before, a male colleague had threatened my bona fides. When I disagreed with his aggressive and competitive ideas against another woman, my system flooded with adrenaline. As a black woman director I wanted to neutralize this guy. I wished for allies whose organizational savvy could help me execute like a cold boss. With those designs on my mind, I fell asleep, until my heart skipped a beat at 1 A.M..

As a founding document of America, the Declaration of Independence identifies the equality of men and the right to “life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness” as obvious truths that need no explanation. After 250 years, however, with both our historical shared beliefs and future ideals in question, there are no “obvious truths.” According to American History Central and the National Archives, the Second Continental Congress created the Committee of Five to state the reasons for independence. The committee consisted of Thomas Jefferson (deist, lawyer, scientist, and plantation owner from Virginia), John Adams (unitarian and lawyer from Massachusetts), Benjamin Franklin (deist, scientist, and printer from Pennsylvania), Robert R. Livingston (Presbyterian and merchant from New York), and Roger Sherman (congregationalist and lawyer from Connecticut). The committee designated Jefferson to write the initial draft.

“Thomas Jefferson was a deist,” said Vanessa Williamson, Senior fellow, Governance Studies at The Brookings Institution. “He was not a sort of an active Christian, and many of the founders doubted, largely in their private letters, but in writing, that God was an active presence in the day-to-day lives of man.”

“And it is worth pointing out that as much as we talk today about the beautiful phrase about things like ‘all men being created equal,’ at the time of the Revolution, most black men fought on the side of Britain,” said Williamson.

“Because it was Britain that they thought, and at the time quite correctly, was more likely to live up to the goals of emancipation no matter what our founding documents had said.”

Despite the inspiration and rallying cry of the Declaration of Independence, it failed to attract most black men. For black men, slavery represented their reality, but for plantation owners who signed the Declaration of Independence it represented their economic reality.

In celebrating the 250th Anniversary of The Declaration of Independence, we need to contemplate the dog whistles of Make America Great Again, the ideology behind Christian Nationalism, the authoritarian and intimidating attacks on democracy and civil liberties, the changing narrative on religious liberty, the whitewashing of history, and the elimination of diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. Does the preamble of this founding document reflect the best interest for white educated males with means in America, or Americans as a whole today?

As one Jamaican commentator noted, “The refusal is not about history — it is about fear of accountability.”

The resolution is sweeping in tone, and deliberately broad. By contrast the Caribbean Community’s CARICOM’s 10-Point Plan for Reparations, drafted in 2013, is far more specific.

CARICOM demands formal apologies from European governments, repatriation programs for those who wish to reconnect with Africa, and targeted initiatives in health, education, and debt relief. It insists on psychological rehabilitation for descendants of enslaved peoples and on technology transfer to bridge the development gap. In short, CARICOM offers a roadmap for repair, while the UN resolution provides the moral declaration.

The difference matters. Recognition without repair risks becoming another empty promise. For Jamaicans, the CARICOM plan’s emphasis on health and diet is especially urgent. The plantation system left us with salt heavy, starch-heavy foods that still dominate our tables. Hypertension, diabetes, and other chronic illnesses are not simply lifestyle choices, they are the bitter inheritance of slavery. Reparations must therefore mean more than money; they must mean healing of body and spirit.

Jesus himself taught, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.” Naming slavery as humanity’s gravest crime is part of that truth-telling. It liberates descendants from silence and denial.

And in Joel 2:25, God promises to “restore the years the locust has eaten.” Reparations are a human attempt to restore what centuries of exploitation consumed — land, health, dignity, and opportunity.

Even the question of diet finds resonance in Scripture. Paul reminds us in 1 Corinthians that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit. A reparatory agenda must therefore include health justice: access to nourishing food, wellness education, and the dismantling of systems that profit from sickness.

Descendants of enslaved Africans continue to live with the scars of history — poverty, cultural disorientation, and systemic inequities.

Reparations, then, are not abstract. They are about dignity, health, education, and truth. They are about clinics in our communities, schools that teach African history, programs that restore cultural pride, and economic initiatives that free us from debt.

The UN resolution is a welcome step, but Jamaica must press forward with CARICOM’s plan. We cannot afford to let this moment pass without insisting on tangible repair.

Trump Administration lawyers argued that the high court should reinterpret the meaning of the words, “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” to mean only those who hold full political allegiance, not merely physical presence. On the surface, this appears to be just another spasm in the cyclical American nativist movement. However, a closer look at administration arguments reveals a malicious scheme to undermine and redefine American citizenship.

The administration tipped its hand when it admitted white South Africans, while denying other, truly oppressed people from Africa, Asia and Latin America. In doing so, the administration also used its power to determine eligibility.

Rights are like air; you don’t miss them until they are gone. Understanding where this right came from can help us understand why it is vitally important that we protect it.

Many Americans had anxiously waited to see if Lincoln would carry out his threat made 100 days earlier, when he signed the preliminary version of this measure. He had given the wayward southerners 100 days to end their rebellion or potentially face losses valued at billions of dollars: the men, women and children they enslaved, their “human property.”

Within two years, the process started by Lincoln had concluded as Congress enacted the 13th Amendment, officially ending the long nightmare of slavery. However, ending slavery was the easy part. Determining what to do with African Americans exposed the racism that characterized the paradox which is America.

Emancipating the nearly four million African Americans from chattel slavery highlighted a problem present from the founding of the nation. As those 55 white men representing 12 of the 13 disjointed colonies came together to write the Constitution, the disagreements between the Federalist and Anti-Federalist nearly tore the new nation apart. The document that the “Founding Fathers” created left several important questions unanswered. The architects of the constitution ignored the nearly 800,000 Africans in their midst.

After the Revolutionary War, several statewide movements to emancipate their enslaved residents erupted, making slavery a regional issue with national implications. The status of blacks remained shrouded in legal and ethical limbo. The 10th Amendment gave states all of the powers not specifically designated by the federal government. States had the right to determine citizenship rights for African Americans. Americans received citizenship from the states, and this citizenship was then accepted by the federal government. Therefore, Americans had a form of dual citizenship in which you were a citizen of the state wherein you resided, and then a citizen of the US.

In 1857, an enslaved man named Dred Scott sued his owners for his family’s freedom. His owner, a military doctor, had taken the Scotts to Wisconsin and Illinois, two states where slavery was constitutionally outlawed. You know the story of how Dred Scott’s case went all the way up to the United States Supreme Court.

In his infamous and devastating opinion Chief Justice Roger Taney concluded: “A free negro of the African race, whose ancestors were brought to this country and sold as slaves, is not a “citizen” within the meaning of the Constitution of the United States… Consequently, the special rights and immunities guarantied (sic) to citizens do not apply to them. And not being “citizens” within the meaning of the Constitution.”

In other words, African Americans could not be citizens nor be extended citizenship rights. Ignoring the undergirding principles of equality and freedom enshrined in the Constitution, the high court said Africans, though born and nurtured in America, could not be extended the rights, privileges and immunities of citizenship.

Even after being forcibly wrenched from their African homelands and forced to work as chattel slaves, African Americans were legally nonpersons and aliens in America.

• First, they wanted to enshrine equality before the law. Therefore, they armed American citizens with the ubiquitous “Equal Protection” clause. This weapon ensured that every American citizen would receive equal, impartial justice from the courts.
• Second, they wanted to end dual citizenship. Federal citizenship superseded state citizenship and your rights and status as an American, cannot be abridged by state power. The 14th Amendment was clear; anyone born or naturalized in the United States is a citizen of the United States and the state wherein they reside.

Yale Law Professor Keith Whittington argues the 14th Amendment did not invent birthright citizenship — it only reaffirmed the right after it was denied to black Americans in the Dred Scott case. Whittington argues that before Dred Scott, birth on United States soil alone was enough to prove citizenship. Before the 14th Amendment, the exceptions for ambassadors and the like were narrow, not a general rule denying citizenship to outsiders.

Current defenders of birthright citizenship relied on Whittington’s writings during their oral arguments. Democratic legislators point to a 1952 statute that granted birthright citizenship using the same language as the Amendment. They argued the 1868 meaning of “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” does not matter, because the public, in 1952, thought birthright citizenship included the children of undocumented immigrants.

In many ways, this fight mirrors the debates currently raging within Christianity. In Acts 16:31 (Amplified Version) says,

“And they answered, ‘Believe in the Lord Jesus [as your personal Savior and entrust yourself to Him] and you will be saved, you and your household [if they also believe].’”

Once we accept Christ, we become a part of His kingdom and family. Though we may still be dealing with sin and other issues, we remain part of His divine plan. 1 John 3:2 in the Living Bible says, “Yes, dear friends, we are already God’s children, right now, and we can’t even imagine what it is going to be like later on. But we do know this, that when he comes we will be like him, as a result of seeing him as he really is.”

We are citizens of God’s kingdom when we accept Christ. Don’t allow anyone to try to take that citizenship from you. Paul tells us in Galatians 3:29,”

“And if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.””

You may not look, sing, talk, or worship like those who have come before, but if you are reborn, you are a citizen. Citizenship gives you rights, privileges and immunities. It is vitally important that the courts hold the line in this case for birthright citizenship. As Dr. King said, “a threat to justice here is a threat to justice everywhere.” If we allow our rights as citizens to be chipped away, we will soon look up and find that they are all gone. This must be the mountain we are willing to die on. This fight is about maintaining the US Constitution as it is written.

Some nations distort this value. They will embed their military headquarters inside hospitals, schools or in centers of civilian populations. This strategy is not to protect the vulnerable. The intent is to use the vulnerable as a shield. They lace their compounds with children. They decorate their headquarters with civilians. They use the sacredness of life as a shield so their enemies don’t attack their plans, or strategic centers.

That military strategy has been adopted as a political strategy. In the United States we are governed by a “Make America Great Again,” (MAGA) strategy. To be clear, MAGA is a political ideology. It supports the idea of small government, state’s rights, high immigration standards, and “America first” policies. At the same time these are political ideologies that marginalize the poor, endanger the immigrant, cap female progress, and insult minority communities. It is a dangerous political ideology that fuels fear, division and feeds upon the fragility of many in the majority culture.

Yet the genius of MAGA is not the strength of its ideological focus. It is the shield it uses as a barrier from critique. The leader of the MAGA movement professes no personal belief in God or personal conviction about the faith of Jesus Christ. Yet he touts himself as the one who is “bringing religion back to America” or “Making Christianity hot again.” MAGA claims the Bible as the reference for its principles, making social issues like gender identity and abortion, their target. They have sought to create an unholy trinity composed of Republican policy, patriotism, and Christian faith.

They look to create an image of an American Jesus, draped in the Stars and Stripes, who speaks English and who is partial to our way of living. The stealth of the strategy is that they have so aligned these distinct and separate values as one, that if you critique the one, you are then accused of attacking the other.

Christ and MAGA are separate beings yet they have sought to make them Siamese twins. Far from caring for church, sacraments, God or prayer, many have subtly used them as a shield. They house political schemes under the banner of the church so that in order to critique unethical policy, you have to attack the church.

And those aligned with them have been so deceived that they treat criticism of MAGA policies as an attack on God, religion or the church. And some don’t look to proselytize people into the way of Jesus, but they are MAGA evangelists acting as if embracing one is embracing the other.

The power and purity of the Christ movement is diluted daily through this unholy political association. Jesus maintained a healthy autonomy from earthly political association.

“My kingdom is not of this world . . . If it were I would fight for it.” Jesus is neither Republican nor Democrat. He is neither American nor conservative. His kingdom operates according to a separate set of values. Values that precede the American experiment and that will outlive time. You have the right to embrace whichever political worldview you choose. But you should never conflate it with the gospel of Jesus Christ and it should never be exalted above the gospel or the commandments.

We must divorce MAGA from Christianity. There needs to be a separation of assets and property. We should fight for theological alimony and push for full custody. The Christian movement will suffer irreparable harm and lose its moral power and prophetic voice if it stays in this unequally yoked merger.

For those exploring faith, growth in Christ offers a realistic vision of transformation — one that makes room for learning and change without denial of difficulty. For those who follow Christ, it guards against both despair and pride.

To grow in Christ is to live increasingly free; free to face oneself honestly, free to love others generously, and free to trust God deeply. This growth is not a burden to carry, but a life to receive — one day, one decision, one act of trust at a time.

Looks like real struggle: Some imagine spiritual growth as moral perfection or constant victory. Others reduce it to emotional intensity or spiritual performance. Scripture offers a more grounded vision. Growth in Christ is marked by honesty rather than denial, humility rather than control, and perseverance rather than spectacle. It unfolds unevenly, shaped by real life, real struggle, and real grace. Growth also involves resistance. There will be spiritual opposition or destructive influences. Yet focus remains on Christ’s sufficiency, not on fear of failure. Growth is sustained not by vigilance alone, but by confidence that Christ is stronger than what resists Him.

A new thing: The New Testament speaks of growth as freedom from powers that once dominated human life — fear, guilt, shame, addiction, and destructive patterns of thought and behavior. This freedom does not come through willpower alone. It comes through dependence. As trust in Christ deepens, His life begins to reshape desire, habit, and response from the inside out.

Staying in position: This is not passive. Growth involves intentional practices that create space for transformation — reflection, prayer, learning, rest, community, and service. These are not techniques for earning spiritual progress, but ways of remaining open to Christ’s shaping presence. Growth is less about striving harder and more about staying receptive.

Staying in community: Importantly, growth is relational. Isolation distorts faith. Community grounds it. As people grow together, they learn patience, forgiveness, accountability, and compassion. Growth in Christ always moves outward toward love expressed in concrete action. It produces gentleness without weakness, courage without domination, and conviction without cruelty.

Measured differently: People come to see themselves not primarily through past failure or present struggle, but through God’s ongoing work in them. Maturity is not measured by flawlessness, but by resilience, wisdom, and love that endures under pressure.

The church is imperfect, but it is not purposeless. When centered on Jesus, it becomes a living testimony that reconciliation is possible, difference can coexist, and love can be practiced in real time.

Mission central: At the same time, Scripture is honest about the church’s fragility. Communities can drift. Power can corrupt. Fear can replace love. The New Testament repeatedly calls the church back to its center — Jesus Himself. When the church loses sight of Christ’s character, it loses its purpose. When it reflects His humility, compassion, and courage, it becomes a sign of hope.

The New Testament presents Jesus as the faithful witness, one who embodies truth without compromise and love without coercion. Those who follow Him are not called to withdraw from the world or dominate it, but to remain faithful within it. This faithfulness is not about superiority; it is about persistence.

Christian Scripture speaks of a people who keep returning to Jesus when others move on; who refuse to redefine truth to fit power, convenience, or fear. This community is not preserved because it is stronger or purer than others, but because it clings to Christ when trust is tested. Faithfulness, in this sense, is not static belief but lived allegiance.

Importantly, this faithful community does not stand apart from humanity’s brokenness. It is not spared from suffering, doubt, or failure. It lives under the same pressures as everyone else. What distinguishes it is not immunity, but orientation. It keeps turning back to Jesus as its measure and hope.

In Adventist understanding, this witness carries a particular urgency. History is moving toward accountability and renewal. Choices matter. Truth matters. The way power is used matters. Faithfulness to Christ becomes not only personal devotion, but moral clarity in an age of confusion.

This does not grant license for arrogance or exclusion. Scripture consistently warns that faithfulness without humility becomes distortion. The faithful community is always being corrected, refined, and called back to love.

The New Testament describes unity as a consequence of relationship with Christ, not as a prerequisite for belonging. People are not first required to agree on every issue, adopt the same customs, or erase their differences. They are invited to orient their lives around the same center. Unity emerges not from control, but from communion.

Jesus models this kind of unity in His own relationships. He gathers people who would not have chosen one another — fishermen and tax collectors, the socially respectable and the morally suspect — and binds them together through shared life rather than enforced conformity. He does not flatten their differences; He reframes them. What unites them is not similarity, but trust. Importantly, unity does not mean avoidance of disagreement. The early Christian community wrestled openly with conflict, misunderstanding, and cultural tension. What preserved unity was not the absence of difference, but the commitment to remain accountable to Christ’s way of love. Unity is preserved not by winning arguments, but by refusing to abandon one another. This vision also confronts systems that divide people for advantage. Jesus refuses to rank human worth. In Him, distinctions of status lose their power to exclude. Unity becomes an act of resistance against narratives that thrive on fear and hierarchy. To belong to Christ is to belong to one another across boundaries that once seemed immovable.

Unity shaped by Christ is fragile, but it is powerful. It refuses the logic of division and models a way of life that does not depend on domination or exclusion. In a world accustomed to fragmentation, such unity stands as quiet testimony that reconciliation is possible, and that love can hold what fear cannot.

The New Testament inspired writers consistently link baptism to relationship rather than ritual. People are baptized not into an institution, culture, or identity marker, but into Christ Himself. The act symbolizes a willingness to leave behind a life oriented around self-rule and to enter a life shaped by trust in Jesus. It marks the transition from observation to participation.

Baptism draws its meaning directly from the life of Christ. Jesus enters the waters not because He needs cleansing, but to fully identify with humanity and to affirm the path of obedience and trust. Later, His death and resurrection give baptism its deeper significance. Going beneath the water reflects the end of an old way of life; rising from it reflects the beginning of something new. It is a public declaration that a person’s story is now bound to Christ’s story.

Importantly, baptism does not claim that a person has arrived at maturity or resolved every question. It acknowledges the opposite: that transformation is needed and that growth will continue. Baptism does not eliminate struggle, temptation, or doubt. It names direction rather than completion. It is the beginning of a journey, not the conclusion of one.

Baptism is also communal. It does not privatize faith, but locates it within relationship. To be baptized is to be welcomed into a community learning to live by the same grace. This community does not replace individual responsibility, but it supports it. Faith is strengthened when it is practiced in the presence of others who are also learning, failing, and growing.

At its heart, baptism is an act of trust. It does not save by its performance, but by what it expresses: confidence that life rooted in Jesus is worth embracing. The water does not change a person; the relationship it symbolizes does.

For those exploring faith, baptism is not a demand for instant certainty, but an invitation to commitment grounded in trust. For those who follow Christ, it serves as a reminder that faith is lived, embodied, and visible.