Gentle Reader,
Truly glad to rejoin the crowd of flash-writers. Two months away from this blog did me good, but I sure did miss them.
Kate says: better.
Unless God has raised you up for this very thing, you will be worn out by the opposition of men and devils. But if God be for you, who can be against you? Are all of them together stronger than God? O be not weary of well doing! Go on, in the name of God and in the power of His might, till even American slavery (the vilest that ever saw the sun) shall vanish away before it.
Reading this morning a tract wrote by a poor African, I was particularly struck by that circumstance that a man who has a black skin, being wronged or outraged by a white man, can have no redress; it being a “law” in our colonies that the oath of a black against a white goes for nothing. What villainy is this?
– John Wesley, letter to William Wilberforce (emphasis mine)
Are all of them together stronger than God? What an excellent question, and one that Wilberforce must have contemplated on multiple occasions during his decades-long battle to bring an end to the British slave trade (and, by extension, slavery itself). One that I myself have wrestled with often. And yes, sometimes, all of them together have seemed to be stronger than God.
What villainy is this? Another great question, the answer to which may be summed up in one word: sin. The evil that humanity can do knows no bounds. That’s not just the big things. The “real sins.” How about gossip and slander, the death by a thousand piercing cuts?
But is that evil stronger that good? Are the wicked stronger than God?
No.
Weary one, lift up your head. I say this to myself even as I say it to you.
There is a better country up ahead. The road may be long, winding and filled with unexpected dangers. But you do not walk it alone. We are together, shoulder to shoulder, forging ahead to the Celestial City, though we be battered and bruised. Better yet, Jesus is with us. Every moment. Every breath.
His presence, through Spirit and through word, empowers us to go on.
