DEAFENING BLOW
by
Dr. Gale A. Ragan-Reid (December 5, 2015)
“Fret not thyself because of evildoers, neither be thou envious against the workers of iniquity...The steps of a good man are ordered by the LORD: and he delighteth in his way...I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread” (Psalms 37:1-40, King James Version [A Psalm of David.]).
Greetings In The Holy Name Of Jesus,
My sisters and brothers, 'We have come this far by faith, leaning on the Lord, trusting in his Holy Word. He's never failed me yet. Leaning. Leaning on the Lord” as the fathers of old who had not seen the promise witnessed the glory of God---His Word, our Lord and Savior, Christ Jesus. Recently, the compilation of all the bad news delivered a deafening blow and rendered me speechless but nevertheless I had to bear witness of the signs of the times---the troubling waters. I spoke to a friend I've known for the last 25 years who lived in San Bernadino, California and who still lives near about terrorists and job-related issues of racism---targeting minorities to vent frustrations----how one in leadership at her job was so awful with the Asian engineers and denied the true worth of African-Americans work performance crediting white workers with high performance evaluations that they did not earn until the company responded to the complaints left on the company's Ethics Hotline and transferred the leader who was hating out to the plant in Utah which is 60 miles away from the nearest town there---giving little opportunity to interact with humans outside of the ones at the plant---a plant that had more people who shared his thoughts for he also had problems in his marriage with multiple-relationships and abusive behavior.
I thanked God for my friend of 25 years to finally have this terrorist out of her work life demeaning her work performance and now the one he hailed up high---the truth of her job performance was revealed since he left---letting everyone see she did not have the skills or performance at work that he so stated on her evaluations. The bad leader could no longer get my friend to do the work and give the credit to her. She had to 'cut the mustard' [a deep south colloquial saying] on her own and she could not for she never could because he did not make her work at a high level of performance because he gave her privileged high performance evaluations---entitlement not in company policy just a malpractice by bad leadership that cheated in the evaluation process to identify the truth of the company's human capital. The night before, a friend of 47-years who lives in Ft. Lauderdale, FL but who grew up in Miami, Florida told me about the six students who were gunned down going to school or coming from school and she said, “They keep playing it on the television.” Yet, I had not heard of it.
I was sort of hysterical when I told my friend in California of 25-years about it. In addition, a man unknown to me came by my farm house asking for a work contract and asking for money in which I became suspicious of, requiring money up front before the work was done----to me, he was just talking me out of money, stealing but I told him, I did not know him and I did not have any money. My friend in California agreed and said, “You're not going to pay him any money up front and he is not getting paid until the job is done to your satisfaction.” He identified himself through a cousin but the news was old news more than six months old so why now was he at my door and why did he come back when I did not respond to his trespass the day before when he came without calling to arrange a mutual time if a mutual time, was agreed. I just could not understand why he kept coming inside----pass the gate just because it was convenient for him six months later and why was he asking for money up front before he even received the contract for work. It was quite a two days of activity.
Understandably, I tried to calm myself down and buried the emotional overload beneath the surface and I had a relative success until the terrorist attacked the next week--- when the husband and wife
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terrorist team killed 14 people and wounded 21 more at the developmental disability center at the time the wife's husband was at a training session for county inspectors. I tried to reach out to my friend there who still lived near San Bernadino but the telephone line said the network was not working to try later so I kept calling but the network did not come back that night to let them receive calls. So, I called
yesterday and I noticed she called me back but I did not hear the phone ring. It was at that moment, in reflection when I stood in my kitchen, since I posted on facebook about the students who were targeted by an obvious sniper who gunned them down as they walked to school and walked from school, that I felt the deafening blow that rendered me speechless and forced me to go to my bedroom to bed for the rest of the night---that was last night.
Most importantly, I made it through the night, slept until I awoke at slightly ahead of my usual 4 AM to check on the farm and do chores for this deer hunting season and I remember hearing about 20 shots ring out before I fell asleep, bang, bang-bang, bang-bang, bang, bang-bang-bang, bang, bang-bang-bang, bang, bang-bang, bang, bang-bang, bang. This season the gun shots had not rang out like that before, I hardly knew the hunters were out there but obviously a large 'group of deer' ["Is there a lesson, a message here? Are the herd of deer, the new group of people hunted not in season but year round?'] passed by and the hunter was trying to kill as many as he could shoot--- what else could explain that many gun shots ringing out. I became a little annoyed but quickly fell asleep still feeling weakened from the bad news about the slaughtered lambs the little 14 and 15 years-old students of my high school in Miami, Florida. The school that taught me so well. The school I graduated number eight from in the top 10 of my 12 th Grade graduating class with a stanine 7 in Reading and a stanine 8 in Math on my 11th Grade Stanford Achievement High School Battery Form X Test completed May 1973---I am sure I could have done better than stanine '7'out of 9 and stanine '8' out of 9 but that was my best on that test day trying to score to the highest stanine 9. How could the killer target those trying to get an education from African-American teachers, white teachers and minorities of the world peoples teachers---like that slaughtering them on their way to school and slaughtering them on their way from school. This morning, I prayed,
“We've come this far by faith. Leaning on the Lord. Trusting in his holy Word.
He's never failed me yet. Leaning. Leaning. Leaning on the Lord. Lord, order my
steps. Prepare the way for my coming out and my going in. As an
African-American, we have come from the slave ships to the shores of distant
lands, Central America, the Caribbean Islands and the United States of America,
in the North Americas in the Western Hemisphere to work for 200 or more years,
as slaves deemed the property of slave owners, sold on auction blocks and
negotiated as collateral property in bank loans, only to receive freedom from
forced slavery in towns that adopted unjust laws, in towns that decided to create
a system of color privilege that targeted slave descendants for imprisonment,
loss of property if they cut through the red tape to own their property deciding
they knew best what to do with the property of slave descendants than they did---
taking away their decisionmaking power over their own property even voting rights
or else taking their property through local malpractices of law and corruption of
townships which oppression still used overseers to help them oppress their
fellow African-American neighbors and minorities from distant lands with lies
to take their property and block progress requiring illegal access of their lands,
abusing their wives and the women in forced relationships stating they should
be obliged since they could speak against them----lie and take what they want
anyway----we've come this far by faith, to a time of hardship still fighting to
hold on to our property while the corrupt workers that represent the banks
reject the owners out of their property not letting them even pay up the arrears
forcing them to sign the property back to the bank threatening them with poor
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credit ratings because they will take the property anyway through a false
foreclosure process forcing the people in the large metropolitan townships to
leave their homes that they paid mortgage notes into for many years to rent---
we've come this far by faith, to a present time where the people are leaving the
rental property at a rate of five-to-ten families a week because the rent keeps
going up and they do not bring in a salary or hourly rate enough to keep up
with the escalation rate, the utilities, food, cost of raising children and their
lifestyles----we've come this far by faith. What will the people do? Will they
leave the towns in the big cities and go back to rural America or will the
whole families live together in one large dwelling as they did in the early
days on the farms but in the cities?---we've come this far by faith, leaning
on the Lord, trusting in his Holy Word, our Lord and Savior, Christ Jesus.
We fervently trust and pray to God as Christ Jesus told us to, for deliverance
from the deafening blow that rendered us speechless, for the sinners who are
minorities peoples of the world, for the sinners in our families, for the sinners
in our own homes, for there are sinners who do not believe African-Americans,
women, and the minorities of the world peoples deserve good high standing,
at our jobs, in our credit ratings, in leadership, individually in our households,
commonly as citizens in our neighborhoods, in our communities, in our
municipalities and cast us down with false situations that bind us, imprison us
even with some private corporations in agreement to outlaw asking for
criminal history on job applications there are still those who continue to hold
false criminal history against you and true criminal history against you not
giving you the freedom that the changed laws gives you, still condemning you,
for there are those of an unforgiving spirit that practice terrorism in their
hearts and minds hating their fellow man and neighbor, deliver us Lord from
the condemning spirit, the spirit of rage and violence, the spirit of lies and
bring us back to the light of Christ Jesus and let not the light of the corruption
of laws that bind us. In the Name Of Jesus. Amen.”
In closing, we pray for our confidence in God to deliver us from all harm and disturbing situations of dismay and dishonor. For, I heard someone said on a front page news, 'God is not fixing this' and I ask whomever said that, “Why not? Why would God not fix that? Is there any act of disobedience from the Word of God that is too big for Him to save us from?
Is the act of madness that killed greater than the love of God? I think not. So, let us pray for the restoration of our confidence in God to deliver us as he did deliver those who were not touched by the killer's bullets, who the killer did not take, let us thank God for saving them and let us pray for the souls of those who left us---the husbands who left, the wives who left, the brothers who left, the sisters who left, the friends who left, the mothers who left, the fathers who left---who died in this yet another senseless act of vengeful-hearted rage and violence justified by practices of terrorism in hate:
“Mark the perfect man, and behold the upright: for the end
of that man is peace. But the transgressors shall be
destroyed together: the end of the wicked shall be cut off.
But the salvation of the righteous is of the LORD: he is their
strength in the time of trouble. And the LORD shall help
them and deliver them: he shall deliver them from the wicked,
and save them, because they trust in him” (Psalms 37: 37-40,
KJV [Prayer for confidence in God]).
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May the Almighty God be with you always at home and in your communities-at-large, wherein ever you may go. Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy. In the ever-loving Name Of Jesus. Amen.
