As if it needed any help, there is a concerted effort, it seems, to divide America, once more over race -- a tragic and particularly nefarious means of division, especially considering how very well so many blacks have now seamlessly integrated: well-educated, well-spoken, hard-working, paid equally. It is always impressive to see the many young blacks who are in management or service roles, performing as well as anyone and with great aplomb. We run into many of them not only in the normal course of the day but across America, in places like airports and hotels.

Moreover, our young people -- those of high school and college age -- are just about color-blind: whites, Hispanics, blacks, and Asians all hang around with each other. They're buddies. They have much in common. In many ways, affirmative action has been a great success (and is no longer needed).

How does anything speak more of the advancement of blacks -- and the decreasing significance of race -- than the fact that we have a black president (one many whites, as well as Hispanics, voted for)?

Yet still they seek to make race an issue, as witnessed now with the George Zimmerman case. It started with the media and how it initially jumped all over the case when they heard the name "Zimmerman" (immediately associating that name with a white and thus: "white victimizing a black," which is a hot-button story). When it was learned that Zimmerman actually identified himself as Hispanic (his mother is Peruvian and black, and he is bilingual, while his father is Caucasian), the media, having already set the stage, glanced over that; the show had to go on; the story-line: whites again mistreating blacks. And with that story-line the two races would remain at odds and if possible at each others' throats.

Isn't it the devil who is the master of division?

This is a story, it seems, not of prejudice, but of two young people who both over-reacted.

There certainly is still racial prejudice towards blacks, including among many Christian conservatives.

There is also racial prejudice against whites.

It all goes against what brings us right eternity.

Christ favored no race. He certainly didn't design things so that one racial or ethnic group hated another. What a shame. And also, how unfair: The Zimmerman case is not even really a racial one. If we read right, Zimmerman had once tutored black children and brought a black girl to his prom. He wasn't initially sure that the person he was misguidedly trailing was black. Yet it is all stoked up. Where was the same hype and charge of racism when a black athlete named O. J. Simpson was acquitted of slaying two white people (the acquittal came through a chiefly black jury)? Was that verdict followed by tweets promising death to Simpson (of course, there was no Twitter back then, but we get the point)? Meantime, government on two levels has played right into the division. The state of Florida set prosecutors upon the case -- kindling the embers of old racial division yet further, much further -- while the President of the United States, who should take special care to stay away from criminal cases, said that if he'd had a son, he might have looked like the victim, Trayvon Martin.

The President is right to have been concerned about violence to a 17-year-old (what an unimaginable heartbreak for his family; prayer need here), but it's ironic that the President has no similar public comment nor affinity for the babies who are born in late-term abortion clinics and killed when the doctor snips the back of their necks with scissors; no similar concern for the ones that are brutally terminated in the womb at a stage when they can feel pain; no similar concern for every aborted baby at any stage, starting with conception -- a disproportionate number, by the way, who are Afro-American.

Where is the rage over that?

How many Trayvon Martins have been disposed of in "clinics"?

How many potential presidents? Or judges?

How many have left clinics not in the warmth of a womb but the sterility of a bio-hazard bag (if they were "properly" disposed of)?

These are questions for all of us. Abortion is an issue that divides us more than does race.

The answer to both is love.

Our son goes to Florida State University, where both the lead defense attorney for Zimmerman, as well as the State Attorney who prosecuted him, attended.

In a main dining hall at that school is an elderly black woman named Eva Killings who serves as cashier but more importantly as a mother to all the kids -- white, black, Asian, Arab, Hispanic.

Every time a student enters, she tells him how much she loves him. "If you’re unsure of anything in life, be certain of this: Mrs. Killings loves you," said an article last year in the school paper. "To the petite, endearing lady, welcoming everyone with love as they enter The Suwannee Room dining hall is her mission of the day. If you haven’t been graced with the genteel cashier’s presence, pay her a visit; she’s sure to turn your day around. Her affection comes in many forms, but her famous 'Baby, I love you!' indicates a true blessing. Always by Killings' side is her beloved Bible, from which she reads verses when she isn't welcoming diners."

She's been there for forty years.

And you can tell she means it. She hugs them. She is a mother to them when they are away from home. She is probably one of the best known and certainly most influential people on this huge campus.

This one woman makes thousands of young people feel like they're home -- single-handedly taking away a lot of their fears, giving them a foundation and orientation. When our son was ready to start his freshman year -- all nervous -- she was the image he held, the calming, reassuring image. What a mission!

She is the example for us -- this woman whose love is so great the kids discuss her every word on Facebook and whose love knows no ethnic group and no skin color.

She is an example of how we find our way into Heaven.

-- Michael H. Brown (7/15/13)

[see also: article on Eva Killings]

[resources: Heaven Praise and Worship]

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