Lent 15 - Keeps no Record of Wrongs

 

Sugarcane by Tim Fowler
University of Leicester

Hatred stirs up conflict,

    but love covers over all wrongs. Proverbs 10:12

Tim Fowler is from Leicester.  This exhibition explores his roots in Barbados.  Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could think of the Caribbean without thinking of slavery.  However we cannot. The wrong done to millions of mainly African people through slavery is unfathomable.  I imagine being rounded up, captured, separated from my loved ones, put with people who all speak different languages, beaten, raped and given hours of menial work with zero prospects.  This happened for hundreds of years on an industrial scale.  From time to time people rose up and there were independent republics.  The Maroon people took refuge in the Amazonian jungle.  But on the whole this record of wrong is vast, and nothing will truly be able to offer recompense.  Fowler is doing the best thing.  This is a record that is beautiful.  It remembers, but is also not bitter.  It expresses the truth.  Freed slaves deserve a prosperous inheritance.  And I recall that I have also been freed from slavery to selfishness and evil desires.

PRAYER:  I choose to forgive, but to hold on to the truth at the same time.