Mother to Son: Letters to a Black Boy on Identity and Hope by Jasmine Holmes was a huge blessing to me. I have a lot of respect for the home that Holmes grew up in as the daughter of Voddie Baucham as well as the experiences that she has had with her husband and their family and in her role as an educator. I learned a TON from this one!
- We also want to raise someone who will change this world so that by and by the narrative that he has to tell his son—or maybe that his son will have to tell his son, or his son’s son—will be different. We want to hold that tension of the already with the not yet. The already being that Walter Wynn Holmes is an image bearer, invested with identity, dignity, and significance, and that in God’s economy his brown skin is nothing more than a glorious display of the creative purpose of the Father. And the not yet being the fact that sometimes the world does not see this identity, dignity, and significance, and that the results are often grievous. Location: 63
- That, above all, our goal would be to see brothers and sisters of every tribe, tongue, and nation dwelling in unity, not by flattening God-given ethnic and cultural identities, but by living in the gloriously diverse reality of those identities for his glory. Location: 87
- As we cultivate environments that celebrate that diversity, I want us to do so with patience, gentleness, and love. I want us to be quicker to hear than we are to speak. To believe the best of our brothers and sisters in Christ, even when we don’t quite understand where they are coming from. To take the emotionally charged rhetoric of the world and supplant it with the unifying language of biblical truth. I want us to be slower to accuse and draw lines in the sand where the Word of God has done neither. Location: 89
- Mothers and sons have been part of God’s redemptive story since the beginning of time. My love for you is the echo of a heart that has been beating for millennia. And it’s purposeful. Location: 151
- Many people fail to consider that children aren’t meant to remain in the shadows of their parents for the rest of their lives. They’re made to be launched from their homes where they were trained to bring the good news of Christ Jesus to a hurting world. Location: 210
- You are defined by the God of the universe who purposefully gave you that beautiful brown skin for his glory. No matter how the world might perceive you, hold your head high knowing that you are matchlessly loved by your Father in heaven. Location: 261
- It’s no accident that you are black. You were made black on purpose. Location: 301
- But I pray that you will come to an understanding of who you are that moves beyond your earthly heritage alone. I pray that your heavenly identity will not only supersede your earthly shell, but also give it deeper and fuller meaning as purposeful evidence of God’s grace toward you and everyone around you. Location: 330
- My dear, sweet little boy, you were created in God’s image. Your purpose is bound up in that one precious phrase: imago Dei. I pray that you will grow to acknowledge your Creator in all aspects of who you are, bowing your knee in gratitude for every single manifestation of his providence toward you. Location: 332
- As people clamor for more details, respect the fallen. Take a moment to mourn the fact that lungs the Lord filled with air have breathed their last breath. Remember that this human being was someone’s son, brother, father, lover. Take a beat to pray for those whose lives will never be the same. Location: 418
- You are precious because God breathed life into you in his divine timing and for his divine purposes. He created you in his image. And you’re beautiful. Location: 452
- But I shrugged and smiled at her. “America is a really short story,” I told her. “History is long. And people who look like me have had a huge hand in shaping it back when people who look like you were still considered the barbarians.” Location: 636
- Seeing the full scope of history and inhabiting just a tiny sliver of it while dealing with the fallout of that sliver is complicated. It’s okay that it’s complex. Because we have a Savior who sits with us in that complexity. And your identity in him supersedes that red, white, and blue flag every single time. Location: 652
- My son, here is an important detail that you must never forget: our primary goal in this life is not to bring about racial reconciliation in the church. In fact, our primary goal isn’t even to bring about justice here on earth. The ultimate justice has been dealt to Christ on the cross, accomplishing our reconciling in him. Location: 742
- People are people, and we will always find a way to embrace the parts of biblical truth that we like while maintaining our cherished idols. Location: 834
- For me, exhortation is inexorably linked to empathy. To incite or encourage people, we must meet them at the point of their deepest need. We know their deepest need is Jesus. And that’s our deepest need as well. So we always have something in common with the people we seek to exhort. Location: 1,038
- For you, son, I hope that you will be able to separate people from their ideas and their ideas from their pain. I want you to be unapologetic about truth in all of its absolutes and compassionate about the pain that often taints that truth. I want you to see hurting people before you see ideological adversaries. Before you move to looking for the chink in your opponent’s ideological armor, I want you to see your opponent as a brother in need of embracing—vulnerable spots and all. Location: 1,252
- In a time where people are much more comfortable drawing hard and fast lines in the sand, we want to examine these lines and make sure they line up with biblical boundaries. And when they don’t, we’re more than happy to Riverdance all over them. Location: 1,298
- But when it comes to actually parsing racial disparity and pinpointing racial and cultural superiority, I believe we have to tread carefully. I want you to be tenderhearted toward your white brother and sister in Christ, even when it seems they just aren’t getting a concept like implicit bias. I want you to be tenderhearted toward your black brother and sister in Christ, even when it seems they are just looking for reasons to be offended. I want you to see that 1 Corinthians 13 kind of love enables you to tread carefully in those muddy areas even while proclaiming the crystal-clear truth outside of them. Location: 1,347
- We live in an age where we’re pressured to share our thoughts as we’re thinking them. Reading broadly and deeply forces me to allow my thoughts to simmer and distill a little longer. That’s good. Location: 1,451
- We serve a burden-carrying Savior. He has called us to be burden-carrying siblings. Location: 1,507