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In this conversation, Latasha Morrison is joined by Quina Aragon to explore the themes of racial healing, personal struggles, and the centrality of God’s love in their lives and work. Quina shares her multicultural background, her journey to faith, and how her experiences of pain and trauma have shaped her writing especially with her most recent book, Love Has a Story: 100 Meditations on the Enduring Love of God. They discuss the importance of lamenting and the role of storytelling in fostering understanding and justice within communities. They talk through the themes of migration, compassion, and justice through a biblical lens. Quina also shares her spoken word piece, What’s a Woman Worth. This episode is full of biblical wisdom and calls to compassion!
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Executive Producer – Latasha Morrison
Producer – Sarah Connatser
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Not all views expressed in this interview reflect the values and beliefs of Latasha Morrison or the Be the Bridge organization.
*this was transcribed by Spotify and has not been checked for errors
0:02
Welcome to the Be the Bridge podcast.
Be the Bridge exists to empower people and culture toward racial healing, equity, and reconciliation.
Latasha Morrison founded Be the Bridge in 2016 to foster needed dialogue and brave spaces and to give people the tools to pursue racial justice.
0:22
We provide resources and community to do just that, and this podcast is one of those resources.
You’ll hear interviews hosted by Latasha and our team, conversations about current events, and encouragement for your racial literacy journey.
Thank you for listening, subscribing and engaging in this important work.
0:43
Me, the bridge community.
It’s great to be here and I am so excited to introduce new voices to our community and I have the pleasure today of speaking to Kina Aragon.
Kina is an author, editor, and spoken word artist residing in Orlando, FL with her husband and her daughter.
1:05
They are members of New Creation Fellowship.
She is the author of the children’s book trilogy Love Made, Love Gave and Love Can, which poetically retells scriptures story through a Trinitarian lens of love.
She is also the author of Love Has a story, 100 Meditations on Enduring Love of God, which invites you to explore God’s love as it has existed and moved throughout and before time and how it intends to transform your own life story.
1:36
So help me welcome Tina.
I am so grateful to have her.
So I’m excited to learn as you learned today.
Welcome, welcome to the Be the Bridge community.
We are a very, what you say, multicultural, multi ethnic community that is interested in racial healing and learning and growing through our racial literacy.
1:57
And we love to learn and grow from other cultures and other people.
Can you just tell us a little bit about yourself, your background, your heritage, your family, just so they get to know you?
Sure.
Thank you so much for having me.
Big fan of what you guys are doing.
2:14
I’ve kind of seen it from afar.
So it’s a privilege.
Yeah.
My name is Kina.
Nice to see everybody I grew up in.
I was born in the Philippines, raised in Orlando, FL Filipina, Jamaican, Puerto Rican, so, so very mixed, very islandy, very Beachy.
2:32
Yeah.
That’s, that’s kind of my, my vibe.
And like my, where I am, my where God, just like I feel the delight of God in, in the water and on the sand.
And so I was, yeah, like I said, I was raised in Orlando with my family, with my older sister and my parents, A lot of beautiful things about that, a lot of really hard things about that as well.
2:52
And so raised around different cultures, probably gravitated more towards the Filipino side just because that side of my family was massive and loud and crazy and just played a big role in informing me.
And so I, I grew up in almost kind of typical Filipino fashion, grew up in a very Catholic background and setting.
3:12
So Catholic school, Catholic Church, all, all of that, but didn’t really have an interest in Jesus, didn’t really have an interest in the things of God about God’s word or anything like that until about high school, when I was suddenly found myself in a, in a public high school doing well with sports, doing well with academics and feeling wildly empty, feeling wildly like something is, is missing.
3:39
Because if, if I have like in a high school mind, all the things that that you could possibly have, you know, being somewhat well off being, you know, having the boyfriend, having the popularity, having all of this.
And I’m still empty at the end of the day.
3:54
It’s kind of like the book of Ecclesiastes.
It’s like chasing after the wind.
It’s not enough.
And so that’s a part of how God drew me to himself.
The other part is my friend who ended up sharing the the gospel with me on a bus ride on the way to a volleyball game.
Her family had really brought me in through their hospitality because we were on the same team.
4:15
So, you know, before practice, after practice for games, things like that, just got to see the dynamic of their family and it was very refreshing, but also very odd in a lot of ways, in a good way.
Wait, you guys like you just like forgive each other and stuff like that’s a that’s what you, that’s a thing like.
4:31
So it was just a very unique experience And and I think of, you know, scriptures call to be hospitable and to welcome the stranger and they did that for me.
And so I think I was drawn to really ask her in particular.
Hey, can you tell me more about this God stuff as God was drawing me to himself because I saw already how her family was, was living.
4:53
And so that’s kind of like the clean and simple version of my story, but the the little bit more detailed version is simply that when I came to know Jesus, like I really came to know, like I, it was a big change.
I genuinely was very passionate.
5:11
I, I began to eat and drink the word day and night.
I didn’t know what I was reading half the time, but I was excited.
I was one of the, you know, that the endorphinated state of that honeymoon stage and, and at the same time, I was experiencing, you know, sexual abuse from from a believer and, and experiencing, you know, addiction of a loved one is experiencing death of a father figure in my life, death of a friend.
5:37
And it was just like back-to-back, you know, my parents divorced and, and it was just like one thing after another.
And I know there’s like a kind of, there’s nuance there, right?
Like there’s a, a sense of man.
I look back at that time and I’m 35 now and I, I’m learning to lament the things that are lamentable about that season.
5:59
I’m learning to lament and even to allow myself to feel the anger at God as to like, why would you let that happen?
And allowing that lament to lead me into a greater, deeper trust in him.
And at the same time, I’m able to look back at that season and go, Oh my goodness, if you had not saved me when you saved me, I don’t know where I would be at.
6:22
Legit, when they say that in church, like, you know, we woke up this morning, we don’t know where, like genuinely, I do not believe I will be here on this earth.
Had I gone through those trials just in the first couple years of, of knowing Christ, let alone, you know, the however many years, 20 or whatever years it’s been now, I just don’t think I would be here.
6:42
Like I’m not built like that.
So I’m, I’m thankful.
I’m thankful.
And yeah, so basically, I’m sorry that was long winded, but basically I’m, I’m a writer now.
I work with words.
I love helping other people with their words.
I’m almost I also edit at different times.
I’ve written three children’s books and and now a grown up book, a book for grown-ups, trade book called Love Has a Story.
7:04
And and yeah, I’ve contributed to a few other books like Love, Creative Writing.
So I’ve helped with a couple of short films performed in a short film.
So like anything in that world with words just makes me happy.
Well, it’s so good, and that’s what we’re going to talk about.
7:21
Just one of your devotionals.
You know, we’re in a season where the world feels loveless in a lot of ways.
And, you know, really we’re having to tap into God’s love with all the, the pressure and just the anxiety, the fear that we’re, we’re experienced.
7:40
And, you know, now you wrote this devotional and your devotional centers on God’s love.
And then you also have a trilogy of children’s books.
So when you start thinking about like the the children’s books that you wrote, when you think about the devotional that that you wrote, why do you think like God’s love is so key to your experience?
8:03
Now you talk about it a little bit when you were just talking about feeling so empty, but why do you think God is giving you those words to write for such a time as this?
Oh, I love that question.
I think, you know, I can give you the, the Sunday school answer and be like, well, because it’s there.
Look, let’s look at the passages and I can do that.
8:19
Well, actually, you read my book and that’ll be the answer.
But but the, the personal answer for that is it wasn’t intentional for me to write this many books about God’s love.
I don’t think I write about everything thing in my journal, you know, every, everything that you can think of what’s been published in terms of books has been really centered on God’s love that.
8:41
So that wasn’t super intentional on my part.
When I’ve reflected on it, though, especially in the process of compiling and writing this latest book, that love has a story.
I realized, man, I think that God has me writing on this, that God has kind of led my heart into writing about the love of God.
9:01
Not because there aren’t a bajillion other books already on the love of God, and rightly so because we could never say enough, but particularly for me because it’s been the thing that I can understand most like intellectually, but have not it has not translated to my heart and into my own.
9:18
As I say in so one of the introductory chapters, I’ve I’ve struggled to feel the love of God in my bones.
You know, I’ve struggled to really practically believe that I’m loved after I, you know, sin wildly or after I have been shamed and been sinned against after I, you know, as I’m like I’ve, I’ve just struggled to really know, like I said in my bones, the love of God for for me.
9:45
And so isn’t it very like God to take the place of our deepest woundedness and to use our wrestling with God in that area to bring about healing for people who are struggling with the same thing or have the same sort of wound?
10:01
I think of the gospel itself is that, you know, Isaiah 53, it is by Jesus’s uniquely shaped wounds and unique wounds, the nations are healed, we are healed.
And so likewise, us little Christ’s Christians are uniquely wounded in our stories by virtue of living in a fallen world and by virtue of ourselves being broken and, and, and fallen and having a sin nature.
10:26
And so whether it’s our own foolishness or other people’s or the society we live in or whatever, we all have uniquely shaped wounds.
And it is so like God to take those uniquely shaped wounds and say, that’s where I actually want to show my biggest, you know, my glory in the biggest way in your story.
10:44
So that’s that’s kind of my personal answer as to why my writing has centered around God’s love so much.
Yeah, and it’s so timely because so many are really crying out to God in this season and wondering where God is in the midst of all this chaos.
11:00
And, you know, people are truly lamenting.
You know, I was just telling you before we started that, you know, I went to walk my dog and I saw a neighbor who I’ve been, you know, talking with them.
We have both have little really mean dogs and and I just saw her and she was just looking really sad and you know, she’s trying to make some decisions about, you know, a job.
11:26
And so it’s just like all of these things are impacted.
And so there’s like this the, the mists of this collective trauma.
And it’s, it’s so it’s similar to what I felt a little bit in 2020 when we were going through the pandemic.
There was just like connection to the world more so of trauma and pain and loss and grief.
11:48
And I sense that now that same type of collective grief and trauma and pain, especially amongst my community, the, the community of racial justice and racial healing.
And so I think it’s a, it’s good to remind us of God’s love, you know, and sometimes we don’t understand, you know, all of God’s plans, you know, and we’re trying to make sense of it.
12:16
And sometimes it can draw us near to God, but other times our pain can draw us away from God.
And So what would you say you know about that in this season and your experience and writing about God’s love and, and what we’re experiencing now, just the atmosphere, fear, the environments that we we have of Christ calling us in.
12:41
Take my yoke.
It’s easy, you know, like what, what would you say to that?
To to people that are missing?
Man, so many so many things that can be said.
I think if you were to take like if someone had been like taking a biography of my life from from knowing Christ person at 16 up to now I’m 35.
13:01
Like you said, there are times and seasons where pain has where I have let pain drive me away from God in that.
And what I mean by that is giving him the silent treatment.
Or I can do this myself or I’m just gonna whatever, you know, indulge in whatever’s gonna give me pleasure right now so that I can make it.
13:20
And then there’s seasons where I have learned from the from the jump, like from the beginning, just to be on my face, like to be on my knees.
This is how I’ve endured.
So before I even knew how to put language to Oh man, this, this was abuse or this was trauma or this is the here’s how trauma works and, and all that which I think is super important to be able to name those things so that we can bring them to God.
13:42
But before I could even name it, how did I endure was on my knees.
How I endured was, was to cry out to God as to really now I, you know, can learn from the black church tradition, for example, as well as persecuted churches and people around the world and consider their example.
14:00
Consider how, you know, you could say the black tradition or the black church was, was really the first, the first persecuted church in this country.
And so, well, how did they, how did they make it through in the middle of what I would say is way worse circumstances than what I’m going through, right.
14:16
So not to, to compare, but really to say, OK, well, how did they, how did they get through?
And there is such AI feel like God is just doing such a let’s just simplify things, not that there is that not these conversations don’t deserve nuance.
14:33
They do not that we need to not have these conversations.
I’m just saying how do we persevere when Jesus says many when he told his disciples that in those days the love of me will grow cold.
How do we persevere?
14:49
We learn how to cling to him as John 15 and he says, you know the day before he is he’s crucified.
You can do nothing apart from me abide in me.
And so I think the sometimes we it can feel because the world is so out of control and literally on fire and complex.
15:10
It’s overwhelming and that’s understandable.
Think there’s an invitation like you said where Jesus says and it was it Matthew 11 like come, those who are weary, I’ll give you rest keep coming is always the answer, which is to abide keep coming, keep coming, keep coming.
15:27
You don’t need to have the language yet for it.
You don’t need to have a perfect understanding that your tears can be a prayer in and of themselves.
I think of Hannah, first Samuel, who’s who dealt with infertility like I did and her crying out to the Lord was a silent prayer in that her grief was so big that the words wouldn’t even come out of her mouth audibly, but God read it her heart as Romans 8 talks about the Spirit understands he he can interpret groans and so those consider that prayer is all of that.
16:04
Maybe it’s a you drawing something and and with a heart towards the Lord that expresses your grief and lament.
And then the, the other thing I would just say is, and I, I kind of, I have like a section in my book, so I go through the storyline of scripture.
So when I get to the Psalms, I want to make sure people understand what a lot of scholars believe is that the Psalms were probably compiled in a post exile, you know, a time.
16:31
So even though a lot of them are written by King David and, and you know, one by Moses and you have different, different authors ASAP and all of them, the compilation of the Psalms would have been by editors who are trying to help people who are living in a, a time of reconstruction and in a time of rebuilding in Jerusalem.
16:52
That was very difficult because they had been deported for so long that they had lost their sense of identity.
They’ve lost even this, this the signs of like the temple, the, the tablets of Moses, the Davidic king and things of that nature, which were really important signs and symbols of, of God’s promise to them to bring about the Messiah, to bring about the reign of Yahweh to that all the nations would know him.
17:20
And so they’ve lost their sense of story.
They’ve lost their sense of identity.
So when you look at the Psalms, consider that that’s kind of like the social cultural location and even the psychological location of the initial readers.
17:37
And even as the people, the editors would have been compiling that, they would have known that too.
OK, what does it look like to trust God?
And if you think most of those Psalms are laments, like if we had like a graph or something, the fact that most of them are in the language of lament, which is to basically tell God where where you’re saying Ouch is to tell God where it where it hurts, then that that instructs us, doesn’t it?
18:03
Because it’s saying don’t simply stifle it or think that it’s the Christian way or or the the godly way to be avoidant of your emotions or to spiritually bypass them to, as we say, to put a Jesus Bible Band-Aid on it when it’s a gunshot wound, like that’s not going to, you know, you don’t have to do that.
18:24
There’s a, there’s a, there’s a way bigger space that Jesus is offering you then we tend to offer ourselves and that we tend to offer each other.
And the Psalms instruct us to take your sadness, to take your rage, to take your anger, to take your questions and sing it back to God, direct it to heaven’s address.
18:44
And so I love that because I’m like, this is vibrant, real relate.
This is what it looks like.
It’s not pretty.
It’s it’s not always like I have a perfect bow tie of I understand why this happened to me because, or I understand why this is happening socially because God is like, we don’t know sometimes.
19:01
Sometimes we really don’t know.
But we can go back to the basics of I’m going to cry out to you, you who understands my heart and knows exactly what to do with that cry.
So.
It’s so good, so good.
It’s like is so many things stuck out when you were talking.
One thing that I had never thought about that you mentioned at the beginning of this, you said that the African American church, that was the persecuted church, like the first persecuted church, you know, that we, I mean, you know, here on this land, I had never thought about that.
19:34
And I mean, when we look at the slave Bible and all those things like is, yes, definitely.
I mean, it was illegal for them to gather and worship and to sing songs of praise and, and worship.
And so, so much was birthed out of that.
So I never had thought about it using the word persecution as it related to the African American church.
19:55
In your book, you also reference to the African proverb.
It says share the facts and I’ll learn, tell the truth and I’ll believe.
Tell a story and I’ll be forever changed.
How do you think these stories can help move us on work in this work of justice, especially right now?
20:14
Yeah, I think I said the first thing that popped to mind as you ask that is the the teacher of the law, the the lawyer, the expert of the, the law of the scriptures.
You could put it in today’s terms, the the seminary PhD, blah, blah, blah.
Guy walks up to Jesus and is like, you know, what does it take to, to have eternal life?
20:36
Well, OK, what do you think?
What, what does the law say?
Well, love, love your neighbor as he’s loved the Lord your God with all your heart.
Love your neighbor as yourself.
And then he asks the very revealing question and, and Luke tells to in order to just defy himself, to make him seem, make him feel better than other people.
20:53
Well, who’s my neighbor?
And how does Jesus answer?
He does not answer with it.
Well, open your, your, your, your scroll here to Leviticus.
And we’re going to look at that because he could have.
He could have because it’s right there.
It’s not that it wasn’t there.
Jesus answers with the most radical humbling, a kind of hilarious story and and hilarious in terms of like how it would have landed on that teacher of the law and that that story is what we all know as the Good Samaritan story.
21:23
So for him to, for Jesus to tell a story as an answer and to in that story, locate the, the hero, if you will, or the one who was a good neighbor as the Samaritan, the one, you know, who comes from a cultural background that would have been very looked down upon because they had, you know, really mixed in all these other Pagan religions with, with Judaism and, and they had their theology all kinds of wrong.
21:49
And they were, you know, they didn’t worship on the right mountain.
And so, you know, for Jesus, I wonder this is just, you know, I’m not trying to say something like heretical here, but I just wonder if you were to retell that parable or that story today, maybe he would say something like, so there was a Muslim, right, And locate the Muslim as as this, this person who shows hospitality and true neighborliness, being a good neighbor.
22:18
But all that to say, he he does, he does answer in a story and and then he changes the question to reorient the heart to say, well, who do you think was being the neighbor and in that story and the teacher of the law can’t even fix his lips to say Samaritan.
22:36
So he says, well, the one who shows, the one who shows, you know, and, and he’s like, yeah, go and do likewise.
So I love how Jesus wasn’t in a rush to necessarily debate in that moment or to give all these tenants or to give, well, here’s law, line by line, law by law.
22:55
But let me tell you a story as the as that proverb says, you know, tell a story and I’ll be forever changed.
Well, think about it.
We’re talking about it now, 2000 years later, we’re still considering and letting the way that that story and, and scripture itself is 1 big story.
23:12
And so the way that it, it impacts us and the fact that God is the best storyteller.
He is the storyteller.
Jesus, of course, masterful, the most masterful storyteller there can be.
Think about that.
Now we’re 2000 years later, we’re processing.
Where in my heart am I am I justifying myself over and above a neighbor, thinking of myself as higher than I should?
23:36
And where, where could I be a neighbor?
And, and so that was from the effect of story.
It’s not that we don’t get something from proposition and law and things of that nature, cause the Bible is filled with all kinds of genres.
God speaks to us in all kinds of ways throughout the scriptures.
23:52
It’s just that narrative storytelling and poetry are, are like a big chunk of that.
And there has to be a reason why God is is that storyteller.
He knows that how he’s made us.
Yeah, he was trying to take that law that was ingrained in them and connect it to real life, to connect it to relationship, to take it beyond their head into their heart, into their actions, you know, and how they treat one another.
24:19
And I think that’s we’re still asking that question today, you know, where who is our neighbor, you know, for for a lot of us.
So, so much of Scripture shares story of migration.
I, I just had to, I am one of those people that’s in seminary.
24:39
Well, I’m telling you, seminary is kicking my butt right about now.
It’s so much work, but just being, you know, I, I had to execute Genesis 12 one through 9, just the column of Abraham.
24:56
And, you know, we hear about migration, stories of migration.
What can Christians learn from God’s compassion to the enslaved Israelites and from the voices and stories of today’s refugees, asylum seekers, migrants and immigrants?
25:13
You know, because when I’m, I’m reading, I’m like, first, I’m like, I’m reading Scripture and I’m like, Lord, we need to allow scripture to read us like as we’re reading, because Jesus shows us a way, like the Scripture shows us the way.
But people are blinded like they cannot see, you know, or either there’s some that see, I think there’s like different, like camps in the sense where you see and you don’t care or you are just blinded and you can see like there’s some people that, you know, read the Bible and they don’t see the threat of justice and righteousness in it.
25:48
Like they can read the book of Jonah and they don’t see like, they don’t see like justice at all.
Like they don’t see nationalism, you know, at all and how God dealt with that.
And So what would you say?
26:04
You know, we’re in this season where we’re like, you know, there’s a lot of things that that is not addressed in the Bible.
But there is one thing that we know that is addressed is how we treat the foreigner.
You know, you know, how do we treat widows, orphans, the poor, like all that?
26:25
You know, those that are in prison, like those things are addressed like multiple times, but we seem to kind of ignore that.
What would you say about that?
Well, how would you speak into that right now?
I have too much to say, Latasha, how much time you have?
I know I got too much.
26:43
I got too much.
I wrote a spoken word piece called The Slaughter that that takes the the reality of family separations from biblical times all the way to today.
And you could say literally today in 2025.
27:02
But I wrote it back in 2018 when the administration at that time created the zero tolerance policy at our southern border that was separating mother from child, father from child.
And a lot of those thousands of migrants who were legally trying to seek asylum, as it is legal to seek refuge at international borders, as they were legally trying to do that were literally separated from their kids and not able to ever see them again.
27:33
In a lot of those cases.
And at me at the time, I was a mom of a 2 year old.
I, it wrecked me.
I, I, and it started with lament as that’s, that’s kind of like my, like, almost like my, like this is like my life thing is like, we need to lament more like we need, we are not lamenting enough.
27:51
But anyways, it started.
With our community, because we understand, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
So, I mean, it started with that lament.
And basically, I trace from the eyes of a mother, a Hebrew mother in the time of the beginning of Exodus, when you read the Hebrew moms who were being ripped apart from their baby boys in Pharaoh’s attempt to, you know, commit that genocide.
28:13
And in his, because of his xenophobia, because his fear of the strange, they’re gonna rise up and take over.
So we need to get rid of the male babies.
OK.
So from her perspective, then we Fast forward all the way to the New Testament to the time of of a woman, a mother from Bethlehem.
28:30
We a lot of us don’t sit with Matthew too, enough to realize Herod literally killed a whole generation of babies be out of his his own fear, his his power, hungriness and fear of of this baby Jesus, this king of the Jews, making Jesus himself, of course, a refugee along with Joseph and Mary and that they’ve had to flee to Egypt for a time before they return to Nazareth before they went to go live in Nazareth.
28:57
But I go into that story of pretending I’m a mother who did unfortunately lose her son by state sanctioned violence where it was legal to do evil.
Then I go to the time I happen to be reading Frederick Douglass’s autobiography at that time.
29:15
So I did OK, what if I was an African mom in the early times of, of the United States at which one of the, you know, things that the slave owners would do it or plantation owners would do is to separate child from mother because they knew that the family unit is the foundation of of everything of any strong community.
29:36
And so if we can break down the family unit by separating mother from child, then there’s less like there’s a less likelihood of of them a revolting of a slave revolt.
And so then I guess so I go into that and then I pretend I’m that mom.
29:52
Then I go into today, I pretend I’m a Honduran mom who’s at our southern border.
And I literally took this from a story I saw in the news.
Breastfeeding mom, baby is taken away as she’s trying to seek asylum.
Her English isn’t very good.
30:07
She doesn’t know what’s going on, and she never sees her son again.
And I then I kind of address the audience and say, like, will you rescue us from the slaughters?
That I want people to understand that family separations are not a new thing.
But God, if we look first in scripture and just the history of it, whenever kids, I mean, I think of Palestine even as well the the thousands of children’s children that have been killed in the last two years.
30:36
But whenever kids are caught in the crossfire of, of empire empiring, of, of power hungry empires wanting to expand and that creates that xenophobia and all that, whenever that happens, God tends to be doing something really big in redemptive history.
30:57
So I’m not trying to minimize it.
I’m actually trying to say, Hey, church, like I hope prophetically, like what are what are we going to do?
Are we going to be like the Hebrew midwives who hid the babies who, who did civil or who broke the law, if you could put it like that, who, who broke the law because God’s law was bigger?
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And so when I think about that same question, well, who is my neighbor is the undocumented migrant person.
My neighbor is the someone from a Muslim country who is a different religion Is that is that my neighbor?
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Does that count?
And I love that you pointed out Genesis 12.
This is my last thing because I could go.
Yeah, this is.
So good, I love you, pointed out Genesis.
I came from a family of immigrants.
My husband is Colombian.
We witnessed, we were like pseudo paralegals at one point trying to help some of his family members who had legally been here 20 years on a work visa that they had to keep trying to renew.
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There was like 1 document that they couldn’t find because the dad had passed.
It was the the lead, the immigration system you didn’t know is wildly broken and, and very and at times very predatory and corrupt.
Particular sometimes with the lawyers as well, taking so much thousands of dollars from these migrants to then not do their job and to not turn in the right documents.
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So all that to say, my husband and I even at one point were trying to step in after they had already been battling for like 19 years, had had a they had a church, they were pastors, they were teachers, they were coaches.
All of this and they still got deported.
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And we witnessed it with our own eyes.
So that has to this day, I don’t know that we fully even process that, let alone the immediate family of for us, that’s extended family, but for them, like their immediate family, the fallout is is still hurting to this day.
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So all that to say, I love that you brought up Genesis 12 because in in my book, when I go through the storyline of scripture, when I was doing that, what’s usually called the patriarchal age, right, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and all them.
I was like, I don’t want to call it the patriarchal age because what I noticed in from Genesis 12 in this call to leave her to, to leave his homeland in certain because God has promised him a different home.
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Why does I, I kept asking that, well, why did God have him walk the promised land but not stay?
Why did he let him walk?
Why did there have to be famine, oppressive governments that they had to go through?
This is Abraham, Isaac, Jacob.
Yeah.
Why why do all these things happen in God’s Providence that the, you know, that you could say our spiritual fathers and Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and their families became migrants themselves.
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And you can go read Hebrews as well where it talks about that.
Why is that?
And what can we learn about God’s heart for the migrant even before the Exodus, even before we get the laws that are very blunt, that says I love the migrant, I love the sojourner.
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Therefore, execute justice for the widow, the sojourner, the poor.
Do not glean your fields all the way.
Make sure you leave some for them when they offer sacrifices.
This is in Deuteronomy as well where he says you should say when you’re offering some of your sacrifices.
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My father was a wandering Aramean.
Even in their worship practices, they needed to remember, I came from migrant, you know, nomadic migrant people.
That’s who we are.
That’s a part of our identities.
Even when they were fully in the promised land and living in a lot of, you know, the promises of God in the time of David and Solomon, they were to remember God was ahead of the game.
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And that I need you to remember not just what happened in Exodus because he repeats that a lot of times.
You guys were slaves in Exodus.
You guys were foreigners.
And excuse me, in Egypt, you guys were, you experienced that.
Therefore, remember that as you’re you know what it’s like to have society’s boot.
On your neck.
Don’t let that be That cannot be among God’s people.
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The way that you see a positive side in terms of how that plays out in, in a positive way, all of God’s laws and care for the, for the migrant and for the poor and for the widow and for the orphan, for the fatherless is the book of Ruth, which is a story.
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And so it’s the book of Ruth really where you see what I was when I teach it is like a triangle of hesed, a triangle of, of covenant, steadfast, faithful, love and justice.
And it’s not just Boaz is the hero.
He is literally doing what the law tells him to do and he understands the spirit of the law where he’s like, well, I’m gonna I’m gonna get it down to, you know, like just right, just enough gleaning to no, he understands the spirit is that no, you.
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We want to make sure that those who are marginalized in our society can get as close to whole and and well and Shalom as possible as as much as it’s up to us.
And so I’m gonna stop here because I I could keep doing.
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It I love it.
I love it.
No thank you.
I mean, and and that’s the thing.
We have to be reminded of God’s word that gives us hope.
And so, you know, for those of you who are listening, you know, in the midst of this chaos and the mists of the anger and the hurt and the disappointment and the fear, cling to God’s word because it shows us the way it gives us hope.
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It it shows us a blueprint.
And one of the things you said, you said a lot of times, which you know, you were just saying, like when there’s migration and when all of these atrocities were happening, like when you look at Egypt or when you look at what was happening, when Jesus had to flee, like, like God’s providential plan at at that moment when these things are happening, something big is happening, you know, in the background that that, you know, of course they didn’t see, we can see it now when we’re reading Scripture, like what came from that migration or what came from that pain or what came when they had to flee, Like we can see that now.
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And I think the same thing, you know, right now in this, this, I guess you would say season that we’re in as a country, but not just here in America, but globally, you know, as well as, you know, as we look to, you know, Israel and Gaza, just so many other places.
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What’s things that are happening in the Congo, Sudan, Rwanda, like, you know, Haiti, you know, the things in the Haiti and these things are not lost on God.
And I try to remind, you know, myself and our and you know, and others of like America is not the apple of God’s eye.
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Like they’re they’re God’s people everywhere.
And we have to remember that.
And so, you know, they’re God’s people are in Haiti, you know, and I and I think that perspective shift, you know, God’s people are in Jamaica, in the Philippines, in Thailand, you know, and that’s remembering that we serve, you know, Christianity is global.
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And I think we missed that a lot in there.
But you said you, you know, I’m not going to let you talk about you are a spoken word artist.
You are a spoken word artist that uses scripture and story for your personal poetry that reveals the greatness of God’s love.
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And I would be remissed if we didn’t allow you to just say a little something like whatever, you know, with our, with our audience.
Yeah, absolutely.
I’d be honored.
Yeah, the slaughter is not in in my book.
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It didn’t make the cut because it is.
It is also very long so, but you can check that out on YouTube if you want.
I’d love to share What’s a Woman Worth.
This is found in my book but also online if you want to go see it.
And yeah, thank you so much for asking.
Happy is he whose children are males, and woe to him whose children are females.
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A quote from rabbis of old.
But if you look close, you know this sentiment isn’t frozen in the past.
In fact, I see it.
An expecting father bows his head in defeat at the sight of pink confetti.
A rape victim is shamed for ruining the reputation of an otherwise stand up guy.
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A woman works for half the price a man would achieve.
The words feminist and liberal are wielded as weapons against those who dare speak of misogyny in the church.
It makes me wonder.
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What’s a woman worth?
Looked for it in lyrics and sermons and thought she’s a vice, a vixen, a problem to solve.
So I dug deeper, sought the song first, sung the very first word straight out of Adam’s tongue.
This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.
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She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man.
The first song in Scripture proclaims a woman’s worth.
She’s same of same, fully human, made in God’s image.
But it’s likely you already knew this.
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No need to tell you that while the first sin was eating forbidden fruit, the second was a woman’s abuse.
From the balladeer’s tongue would come an excuse accusing the woman he once sung of.
The woman whom you gave to be with me.
She gave me fruit from the tree.
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And I ate generations later still rings the same refrain.
Well, she hadn’t worn that if she hadn’t talked back.
If she dares speak or lead.
But we don’t want to talk about that.
See, we see redemptive history as a series of men and the ways God used them.
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But the first gospel proclamation requires us to watch the woman through whom would come the serpent crushing seeds.
So it just seems Satan’s special hatred is reserved for women with whom he’s at enmity.
But is a woman’s worth unorthodox to God?
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Ask Eve, who believed Genesis 315.
Trace her faith through a long line of ladies leading straight to Mary’s Magnificat, the first hymn of the New Covenant people of God.
Ask the women who followed the Christ, the marginalized and stigmatized, the barren and bereaved, the mistreated and abused.
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They drew near to the Son of Man who would choose to wash.
Feets with all that authority.
It seems they finally found one who was despised and rejected by men acquainted with grief.
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Like them when he rose from the dead, he spoke first to the women, commissioned them to tell the men the good news.
But they were shooed away, like today, unworthy of proclaiming God’s Word to the ears of men, which apparently couldn’t possibly learn from them.
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Except that’s not how Jesus saw it.
That’s not how Paul taught it.
The Great Commission made every type of woman, acclaimed or not, a herald of the gospel.
Mom or not, a mother of many disciples, wife or not, the bride of Christ, All in all, a worthy child of God.
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What’s a woman worth, then?
No less than his life, his death, his resurrection.
Oh, wow, thank you so much.
Thank you so much for sharing that.
I mean, there’s so much in there, we would have to have another podcast to break that back down.
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What?
What is giving you hope at this time, and how do you see God moving?
Yeah, You know, so I’m, I’m kind of back.
So I was in Tampa for 15 years, was very invested in there.
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And then we’ve been back to Orlando where I’m from or greater Orlando really the last two years.
So I’m, I’m still getting to know the lay of the land and what’s going on over here.
What is giving me hope, though, is kind of what I mentioned before, looking back at the history that is found in the scriptures and the history of persecute the persecuted church, like the the voices of the persecuted church today and, and historically and how they endured because empires empiring is no new thing.
44:06
I mean the Book of Revelation, I mean, not to like go into the specifics, but the Book of Revelation makes that very clear.
Empires will empire, empires will continue to oppress and to and to do evil, you know, and our our participation with the Lamb who was slain, the Lamb who was slaughtered.
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Where it talks about, I think it’s Revelation 14, correct me if I’m wrong, but where it says those who followed the Lamb, I love that, that that phrasing like those who followed him wherever he went.
We are we are those who follow him.
We endure by the blood of the Lamb and the word of our testimony, our story.
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And so I’m not just looking back, I’m also looking forward to the promises of God to keep us, the promise of God to always have a remnant, to always have people that who will not bow the knee to Christian nationalism, who will not bow the knee to to the bales of today, right to the.
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American.
Bales of today, he always has a remnant and and my my heart posture that I want to have, whether or not I’ve because I you know, the more you learn, the more you realize you don’t know anything but like the heart posture I want to have as I approach Scripture is not to weaponize it.
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It is a sword, as Ephesians says, but it’s not to weaponize it to hurt my neighbor, even my neighbor that I disagree with.
The heart posture I want to have is something that one of my pastors always prays before we hear a sermon where he says, Lord, before we hear your word, we just want to already say, you’re right.
45:47
That’s the heart posture I want to have is Lord you like I want to be open to being wrong because I’ve been wrong a bajillion times.
And I.
I want to be open to be wrong no matter how long I’ve walked with the Lord, no matter how much experience I have in ministry, no matter how many things I’ve seen and done.
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I want that if, if God has something to say when and he always does that I, I, I can be wrong and, and that we can change.
And that’s that’s a part of being a disciple is being an ongoing learner.
And so wanting to come to scripture with a humble heart that says, yeah, correct me because as much as I can pontificate on how we need to love the vulnerable.
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What am I like, you know, I need to still be convicted by those very same things in terms of like what, what God has entrusted to me.
So anyway, I think, yeah, that’s what’s what’s keeping me.
I, I also just look back at, as it says in Revelation, those who endured it was by the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony.
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So I can also look back at my story and think of times where I was absolutely confounded by the world around me, what was going on personally, my own folly, all of that.
And how did I endure?
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I just kept coming back.
I just keep coming.
That’s it.
Like there’s not.
There’s not like some secret formula.
Like it’s literally keep coming back.
Yeah.
So, yeah, well, that is so good.
I’m telling you, Tina, it’s been great speaking with you.
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And we’re going to put the name of your book, Love has a story.
We’ll, we’ll put this in the show notes, but it’s 100 meditations on the enduring Love of God.
And it came out October the 1st.
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And so it’s out, they can order it.
And we will post all these things.
So thank you so much for sharing your heart, for sharing your gift with our community.
Thank you so much for having me, appreciate it.
Thanks for listening to the Be the Bridge Podcast.
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To find out more about Be the Bridge and what we offer, visit bethebridge.com.
Partner with us in this work at bethebridge.com/give, Connect with us on social media, and remember, you are not alone in your pursuit of righteousness and justice.
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Latasha Morrison is the executive producer, Sarah Connatser is the producer, and transcripts are done by a wonderful team of volunteers.
Thanks for listening.
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