Love, again.

Over the last year there has been much said in the media regarding race. A subject that over hundreds of years, has been the source of much injustice, inequality and suffering. A topic that raises mixed emotions in many of us.

I remember once visiting the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg with some colleagues. Back in the early 2000s, we travelled from Lesotho and on our way back, we drove to Johannesburg for a return flight back to the UK. We had some time before the flight, so we visited the museum.

Together, we bought our tickets, and I discovered written on my ticket was the words ‘blacks only’ and my two white English colleagues were given tickets written ‘whites only’. We went through two different entrances and walked in silence the journey that black South Africans had walked.

At the end of the walk, we came out together, got into the hired car and drove in silence to the airport where we sat until we boarded.  The emotions I experienced included anger, pain, outrage, shame and finally hope.

Speaking to a crowd at London’s Trafalgar Square in 2005 for the Make Poverty History campaign, Nelson Mandela said: 'Massive poverty and obscene inequality are such terrible scourges of our times-times in which the world boasts breathtaking advances in science, technology, industry and wealth accumulation – that they have to rank alongside slavery and apartheid as social evils.'

As my colleagues and I talked about our experiences at the apartheid museum, we worked through our emotions and found a shared love – one that keeps us fighting against poverty and injustice.

The act of love takes us into being co-workers with Christ in the work of restoration. In restoring to himself, a world that has gone astray, we experience an unconditional love that gives us a hope that we can be better as we ‘love our neighbours’.

Thank you for the unmerited favour and love that you have shown us.

Cause us now oh God, to abide in your everlasting love.

Let that love be manifest in us and in our actions and in how we relate to each other as human beings and to all your creation. 

May our purpose in this world be to be the instruments of your love.

Amen.

Today's contributor is Amanda Khozi Mukwashi, former Chief Executive of Christian Aid:

'I am a child of God, created in his image, with innate worth and deserving of dignity according to His divine Mercies and Grace.'