When God speaks, nothing is transformed into something. And that’s what the Word of God can do for our lives.
Anthony Thompson
On Saturday, October 30, 2010, Robert and Wanda Smith’s son, Tony, thirty-four years old, drove to his regular job at a restaurant in Cincinnati, Ohio. At 11:30 p.m. an armed, Halloween-masked, seventeen-year-old high school student came into the restaurant waving his gun. The teen struggled to open the cash register, and in the process jammed it shut. He then demanded that Tony open the register. Tony tried but couldn’t release the jammed cash drawer. In frustration and rage, the robber fired his gun, shooting and killing Tony.
Recently I met the Rev. Dr. Robert Smith in Birmingham, Alabama, when a group of friends invited me to a dinner party. We had an opportunity to talk, each of us having lost a loved one to a shooter.
The longtime African-American pastor and seminary professor recently wrote a book, The Oasis of God: From Mourning to Morning, about the night he and his wife received the telephone call every parent fears and dreads. The call came at 11 p.m. after Dr. Smith had preached his closing sermon at a three-day conference in Louisiana. He and his wife ate dinner and returned to their hotel room to sleep and pack for a flight home the next morning. Wanda answered the phone when it rang, uttering not a word. After a minute or two, she quietly hung up.
“Baby, what’s wrong?” Robert asked her.
“It’s Tony.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s been shot,” she whispered, not knowing if Tony was alive or dead.
Robert headed for the restroom, shut the door, and turned off the light. He prayed to God that his youngest son would survive the gunshot.
An hour later, at 11:56, the Smiths received another phone call telling them Tony was dead. The Smiths grieved their son’s loss and the wreckage his murder would cause their families.
In his book, Robert wrote, “There are some moments that are frozen in time: December 7, 1941—the attack upon Pearl Harbor by the Japanese; April 4, 1968—the assassination of Dr. Martin L. King, Jr.; September 15, 1963—the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, Birmingham, AL, where four young black girls lost their lives. . . . For me, time was frozen on October 30, 2010, 11:56 p.m., the time when our son was pronounced dead. . . . Although we continue to live, that moment is frozen in time.”1
I also, like the Smiths, have a moment that is frozen in time: June 17, 2015—the day I lost my precious wife to Dylann Roof’s violence and hatred. The Smiths and I both experienced the same numbness and pain, prolonged and intensified by trials, long hours when we had to sit in a courtroom and hear the horrifying details of the tragedy again and again, reliving the nightmare while we stared at our loved one’s killer.
Why? Why? Why? It is such a senseless and cruel death.
During the trial, the Smiths met the teenage robber for the first time. They watched his mother and some of his family members weep in juvenile court as the judge read the verdict: aggravated murder in the death of Antonio Smith, and aggravated robbery. He sentenced the teenager to many years in prison.
Robert chose to forgive his son’s murderer just as I made the decision to forgive Dylann.
“I forgive him,” Robert stated, “and ‘I love him in Christ—even though the wound to my heart is still open.’”
“I love him in Christ.” Surely it is the only way a Christ-follower can love the murderers of our society, those killers who cause wounds so deep they never truly heal.
In September of 2012, Robert wrote a letter to the young man, addressing it to the penitentiary where he was serving his time. He prayed the young man would be receptive to it. Smith told him that he had caused much pain to him and his family, and that “Jesus loves and forgives you and so do I.” He asked friends and colleagues to pray that he would respond, accepting his forgiveness, and understanding God’s love for him.
Nine months later, in May 2013, the man replied to the letter, expressing how sorry he was for the family’s loss. Smith wrote him again in June, and received a second reply, one that sincerely asked why Dr. Smith wanted to stay in contact with him after he had killed his son and hurt his family so much.
“Because God loves you,” Smith answered. “And He is loving you through me. I want you to see that God is able to recycle, reclaim, and restore your broken life. God redeems pain. I cannot let you go because God will not let me go.”
Biblical forgiveness and Christ’s love go hand in hand. Believers not only forgive in Christ, they also love in Christ. They understand the depth of hatred, sin, and evil, as well as the pain they cause. And they know that God in Christ can redeem the lost soul that harbors all. We have all sinned, every one of us, and without Christ, we are all doomed. But God has made a way for us, for with God nothing is impossible.
This is the reason why a Christ-believer forgives a murderer, a wicked and selfish person who robs him of a loved one. Because he, too, has been forgiven by God through Jesus Christ. He hopes that each lost soul, like himself, will turn to Christ in repentance, be forgiven and accepted into God’s family, forever experiencing Christ’s redemption. This was why Robert Smith could tell his son’s murderer: “I only want you to know Tony’s God and to serve Tony’s Christ. My greatest hope is that one day you and Tony will bow side by side at the feet of our Lord in glory and worship the One who has redeemed you both by His blood!”
I pray that young man receives Robert Smith’s forgiveness, and that he repents, seeking God’s forgiveness, just as I pray that Dylann Roof receives my forgiveness.
Indifferent to Christ’s Forgiveness
As mentioned earlier, when Jesus was crucified, hanging on a cross, struggling for every breath, He freely forgave the soldiers, onlookers, and rulers who gazed up at Him with blood on their hands. No doubt, they heard Jesus’ words to the Father on their behalf when He shouted them from the cross: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34).
Scripture indicates that Jesus’ forgiveness seemed to have no life-changing effects upon the people who crucified Him. In fact, Luke wrote that they responded to Jesus’ words of forgiveness with sneers and mocking: “He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Christ of God, the Chosen One” (Luke 23:35). “If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself” (Luke 23:37).
Matthew wrote that those “who passed by hurled insults at him, shaking their heads and saying, ‘You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself! Come down from the cross, if you are the Son of God” (Matthew 27:39–40). Even as He approached the Father, addressing their sins and need of forgiveness, He received unrelenting ridicule from the chief priests, the teachers of the law, and the elders (Matthew 27:41).
They even took His clothes (Luke 23:34).
Did anyone standing at the base of the cross acknowledge, accept, or even respond to Jesus’ forgiveness? No, it seemed that nobody did. Jesus forgave them, the very ones who watched, sneered, mocked, and hurled insults, yet they were not affected for ill or good. They were simply unresponsive to Jesus’ forgiveness, stopping up their ears, rejecting His offer. If Jesus had withheld His forgiveness and cursed them instead, would it have made any difference to them? Probably not. They just didn’t seem to care.
The same thing can happen when believers offer forgiveness to those who have deeply hurt them. The offender shows indifference, rejecting the gift of forgiveness, continuing to sneer, mock, and hurl insults at the one who tries to show him God’s love and plan of redemption.
To this day, more than three years after I forgave Dylann, he remains indifferent, seemingly callous and uncaring about the state of his eternal soul.
A magazine reporter summed up a number of people’s negative opinions about my choice to forgive Dylann when he wrote, “I do not know if I could have had the compassion of Anthony Thompson, who exhorted Roof to ‘repent, confess, give your life to the One who matters the most, Christ . . . so you’ll be okay.’”
So “Roof will be okay?” the writer queries, then responds: “Why should his future be hopeful when he snuffed out nine precious lives?”2
The Lack of a Response
Some people still argue that the forgiveness I expressed to Dylann on June 19, 2015, is not complete because I have received no response from him and he has not acknowledged and accepted my forgiveness. They believe that a “one-sided forgiveness” is invalid, and that in order for forgiveness to be valid and complete, the offender must accept it.
But that’s not true of biblical forgiveness.
“If forgiving depended on the culprit owning up, then the victim would always be at the mercy of the perpetrator. The victim would be bound in the shackles of victimhood,” Archbishop Desmond Tutu said.3
My forgiveness was and is genuine, valid, and complete even though Dylann has not responded in any way.
“As the victim you offer the gift of your forgiving to the perpetrator who may or may not appropriate the gift but it has been offered and thereby it liberates the victim,” Tutu said.4
As far as I know, Dylann simply ignored the gift I laid at his feet, refusing to pick it up, unwrap, open, and accept it. He just didn’t seem to care, and that is his privilege.
I can do nothing now but continue to pray for him.
Others criticize me for forgiving Dylann because they believe I should have allowed him to suffer for his crime.
“You should have refused to forgive him, Anthony,” they told me. “He needs to suffer, to feel pain for what he did.”
But no amount of my unforgiveness will make Dylann Roof suffer or feel pain. My actions, my feelings, and my words have no control over him—none whatsoever. Whether he does or does not suffer the guilt of his crime is not in my hands.
If I had decided not to forgive Dylann, I would be the one suffering, lingering in sorrow, living in despair each moment for the rest of my life. I would have no inner peace or productive future ministry. I would one day become a bitter old man, still living in hatred, yearning for revenge, and locking myself into a self-made prison. And I would live there in misery forever. My forgiveness, as I expressed it to the young racist, brings me God’s peace, not necessarily Dylann. He must fall to his knees, repent, and deal with His heavenly Father himself.
Nonbelievers are confused by this type of biblical forgiveness—a victim’s free offer of mercy and grace to someone who has hurt them deeply. Some people tell me that my forgiving Dylann, striving to move beyond the tragedy, and trying to resume an active ministry, negates my love for Myra. They say that if I really loved her, I could not have forgiven her killer and moved onward with my life.
That, of course, is absurd. Forgiveness does not diminish my love for Myra. I move forward into life and ministry because I do love Myra. If I could speak with her right now, she would tell me to forgive her killer, wash my face, comb my hair, and jump with both feet back into the business of God’s work. I am sure of that. She would want me to continue to carry out God’s call upon my life, work we both loved, work we shared. The last thing Myra would want is for me to live an entire lifetime caught in the relentless grip of unforgiveness, forfeiting years of good health and relinquishing a lifetime of God-given potential ministry. Had I been the one murdered instead of Myra, I would want her to forgive my killer and move forward.
I’ll always love Myra, forever thanking God for giving us such wonderful years together as husband and wife. I know that one day I will greet Myra in person, giving her the long-overdue kiss I meant to give her on June 17, 2015, before she left our home to teach the Bible study at Emanuel AME Church.
Because Believers Sin
I also chose to forgive Dylann because I, a believer devoted to Christ, still need God’s continual forgiveness.
Even those of us redeemed by Christ and adopted into God’s family have within our hearts the capacity to hate, sin, betray, and even murder. But the good news is that without exception, “righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe” and that believers “are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus” (Romans 3:22–24).
And all of us, even the most faithful believers, fall into sin—our spirits eager to obey God’s Word, but our human flesh weak—striving to live in a corrupt and wicked world, temptations always surrounding us. For believers who stumble, God forgives again and again.
Jesus told the story of a prodigal son who requested his inheritance while his father was still alive, a dastardly demand in ancient Jewish culture. The loving father gave his son his wish and provisions, allowing him to leave the family home and wander to the “far country.” The boy squandered his wealth in wild living. When he ran out of money, he found employment feeding pigs, the foulest, most unclean bottom-of-the-barrel job for a Jewish man. He was so hungry, he longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one would give him anything to eat.
The story ends with the starving man “coming to his senses” and traveling back home to his father in embarrassment and repentance. He prepared to tell his father that he was no longer worthy to be called his son.
But he was his father’s son, a permanent member of his father’s family. His sins in the far country didn’t cast him out of the father’s family, only out of close and constant communion with his father. No doubt, the father waited day after day, watching at the window and hoping his son would come home.
While the son “was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him” (Luke 15:20). The running father, his long robes flapping in the wind behind him, surely proved a disgraceful sight to his proper and reserved Jewish neighbors, who knew and loathed the actions of the wayward son.
The father welcomed his son home with a robe, ring, sandals, and feast, exclaiming, “For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found” (Luke 15:24)!
While we refer to this story as the parable of the lost or prodigal son, it is really all about the loving, forgiving Father who waits, watches, and runs to meet him, to celebrate His humbled and repentant son’s return to the close communion of the family fold.
Surely we believers are called to forgive others—even the most vile person—because we ourselves are in constant need of God’s forgiveness, the undeserved gift of mercy and grace that reaches out to us, God’s children, again and again, and welcomes us home.
The late J. Oswald Sanders understood this concept when he wrote, “A study of Bible characters reveals that most of those who made history were men who failed at some point, and some of them drastically, but who refused to continue lying in the dust. Their very failure and repentance secured to them a more ample conception of the grace of God. They learned to know Him as the God of the second chance to His children who had failed Him—and the third chance, too.”5
The Apostle Paul also understood how Christians battled wrongdoing every hour of every day. He admitted, “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. . . . I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out” (Romans 7:15, 18).
Simon Peter certainly knew that the loving Father was the God of the second and third chance. In Scripture, Jesus predicted that His faithful follower, Simon Peter, would betray Him, and said directly to His devoted disciple, “Today—yes, tonight—before the rooster crows twice you yourself will disown me three times” (Mark 14:30).
Peter responded, insisting, “Even if I have to die with you, I will never disown you” (Mark 14:31).
After Jesus’ arrest and before His crucifixion, Peter, fearing for his own life, sat by a fire in the courtyard of the high priest.
A girl asked Peter, “You are not one of His disciples, are you?”
Peter answered, “I am not” (John 18:17).
Two others asked Peter the same question, and twice, with salty fisherman’s oaths, the disciple denied even knowing Jesus.
When the rooster crowed, just as Jesus predicted, Peter remembered the Lord’s words. He broke down and wept (Mark 14:72).
After His death and resurrection, Jesus appeared to Peter and several disciples early in the morning on the shores of Lake Galilee. The disciples, who had been fishing all night, recognized Him. Jesus cooked some of the fish they caught and invited them to breakfast with Him.
After they finished eating, Jesus focused His eyes on Simon Peter, asking him, “Simon son of John, do you truly love me more than these?”
“Yes, Lord,” Peter responded. “You know that I love you.”
Jesus told him, “Feed my lambs.”
Again Jesus asked Peter, “Simon son of John, do you truly love me?”
And once again Peter answered, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.”
“Take care of my sheep,” Jesus said.
The third time Jesus asked Peter the same question, Peter felt frustrated, hurt. He responded, “Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you!”
“Feed my sheep, Peter,” He said a third time. (See John 21:15–17.)
Jesus’ forgiveness, thrice given to Peter for each time he betrayed Him, was redemptive, healing. Peter accepted Jesus’ gift of forgiveness, allowing it to mend his broken and guilty heart.
Forgiveness had a profound effect upon Peter’s life. It transformed him. Peter spent the rest of his days in active ministry, feeding Christ’s sheep, going out enthusiastically into an evil world with the Good News of Jesus Christ, His love, His resurrection, and His redemption.
Does Forgiving Mean Forgetting?
Society believes another common myth about forgiveness. They read and misinterpret those Scriptures that seem to indicate that God is forgetful, that He develops a kind of Alzheimer’s disease after He forgives. They believe the words forgive and forget are written in the Bible. They aren’t. Without deep thought or spiritual guidance, they quote the Lord’s words in Isaiah: “I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions . . . and remembers your sins no more” (Isaiah 43:25, my emphasis).
The word forget means “to fail to remember,” to “lose facts from the mind.” From my years of biblical study, I know that He is incapable of failure, of failing to remember, of losing facts from His mind. We cannot place our anthropomorphic characteristics on God, believing that His mind is in any way like our human mind. God forgives, and He chooses to remember our sins no more. He decides that when He forgives us, He will no longer hold our wrongdoings against us—will no longer punish us for what He has pardoned. He has purposely, deliberately chosen to remove our transgressions from us “as far as the east is from the west” (Psalm 103:12), and to hurl “all our iniquities into the depths of the sea” (Micah 7:19).
I don’t think it is humanly possible for me to forget that Dylann Roof murdered my wife. And neither do I want to forget it. I chose to forgive him. I chose to refuse to hold his actions against him. I chose to put behind me my desire to violently, eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth, avenge her murder. I chose not to dwell on that, replaying every grim detail over and over in my mind. I chose not to hate Dylann for hating the color of my skin, the only reason he destroyed nine beautiful lives and caused deep pain in the lives of hundreds, if not thousands.
But I certainly cannot forget what he has done, living the rest of my life pretending that the tragedy never happened by his hand.
God gives us the gift of memory for a good reason, a practical purpose. Memory makes us who we are, allowing us to live and function from day to day without having to relearn everything we do. Memory allows us to hold important information in our minds, to understand and avoid fearful encounters or situations, to build lasting relationships with others, and to learn important lessons that keep us alive and grow us in Christian maturity. Memory records our experiences, the things we have learned throughout long lives. It helps us to recognize with joy the face of a friend, and it helps us to recognize with warning the face of a foe. Memory of a past failure keeps us from repeating that failure again and again, and from falling prey to an offender’s repeated pain and torture. Memory keeps us from trusting those we need to distrust, thus safeguarding our own lives and the lives of our loved ones.
We dare not forget what we suffer, for it is in our pain that we learn the great lessons we will never learn in frivolity and prosperity. Personal adversity gives us understanding and compassion for others who suffer pain and loss. We can empathize with them in their heartbreak because our hearts have also been broken in similar ways. When Robert Smith told me of his son’s death by gunfire eight years ago, he became to me one who knew firsthand the trauma I experienced three years ago. He ministered to me as a wounded healer who could empathize with the depth of my own pain. We shared an insight into the sudden loss of a loved one, an understanding of the grief associated with a murder, and the hardships imposed upon a victim’s family during long court trials when we had to hear repeated details of the death. I felt an immediate affinity with Dr. Robert Smith because we were joined together by suffering, we remembered the lessons we had learned, and we had experienced the grace of God when we both faced the unforgettable but spiritually illuminating teachings of sorrow.
We not only must remember our past pain individually, but collectively. In our own century, the world must never forget the rise to power of one man, Adolf Hitler, and the fifty million people who died because of him. Nor must we forget the Holocaust when specific persons—Jews, gypsies, the physically and mentally infirm, and many others—were put to death as part of a nation’s racist agenda.
Holocaust survivor Simon Wiesenthal wrote, “There is no denying that Hitler and Stalin are alive today. . . . They are waiting for us to forget, because this is what makes possible the resurrection of these two monsters. Even before I had had time to really think things through, I realized we must not forget. If all of us forgot, the same thing might happen again, in 20 or 50 or 100 years.”6
We must never forget how black South Africans suffered cruel injustices during the government-sponsored apartheid, when more than 3.5 million people were removed from their homes and plunged into poverty and hopelessness after the unjust separation of blacks and whites enforced by harsh laws.7
A survivor who personally suffered during South Africa’s apartheid, and a Christian who later led the nation to forgive and heal, Desmond Tutu wrote, “Forgiving is not forgetting. It’s actually remembering—remembering and not using your right to hit back. It’s a second chance for a new beginning. And the remembering part is particularly important. Especially if you don’t want to repeat what happened.”8
Tutu also believed that “without memory, there is no healing.”9
Observing Remembrances
It is important that we, as human beings, observe together the anniversaries of tragedies and painful happenings that bring sorrow to the world’s people. In great distress and sadness, Jesus and His disciples took their last supper together, eating bread and drinking wine in preparation for Jesus’ upcoming death and resurrection.
“Do this in remembrance of me,” He told them. (See Luke 22:7–30.)
Two thousand years later, believers in Christ, like the disciples who ate the last supper with Jesus, take the bread and drink the wine that represents His body and His blood, in remembrance of Him and the price our redemption cost Him.
The city of Charleston also holds special annual remembrances, commemorating the tragedy on the night of June 17, 2015, when a white supremacist gunned down African-American Christians praying together in the fellowship hall of the Emanuel AME Church. Each year we come together as a city to honor the beautiful lives snuffed out: Myra Thompson, Cynthia Hurd, Susie Jackson, Ethel Lance, DePayne Middleton Doctor, Tywanza Sanders, Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, Daniel Simmons, and Clementa Pinckney.
In June 2016, one year after the shooting, people traveled across the country to join Charleston as the city held a twelve-day observance, hosting a series of services, memorials, and remembrances of the victims, the survivors, members of the church, and people in the community. Hundreds attended the remembrance functions. As part of the observance, people were encouraged to perform acts of kindness—Acts of Amazing Grace Day—in an effort to counter the evil act committed by Dylann Roof.
“With thousands of acts of grace being performed around the world, we will surely make the world a better place,” the church website proclaimed.
They remembered with sorrow the tragedy on that dark night, and at the same time they remembered it as an opportunity to respond to hate and violence with unexpected love and affection. The church was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. The city chiseled the names of the dead on schools and libraries. Artists honored the victims in portraits and murals. All the city churches tolled their bells nine times, once for each victim, and encouraged their members to “let all that you do be done in love.”
I was asked to lead the Wednesday evening Bible study at Emanuel in June 2016. I taught from Mark 4, the parable of the sower, using Myra’s own blood-splattered notes she labored so diligently to write when she taught it the year before. More than two hundred people attended, meeting in the church sanctuary instead of the basement fellowship hall where the shooting happened. No cameras were allowed inside the sanctuary. In prayer, the congregation lifted up Dylann Roof’s name, calling upon God’s mercy for him as he awaited two death penalty trials in the coming months. We also prayed for his family members.
In June 2017, on the second anniversary of the shooting, Charleston and other cities around the world held commemorative programs and events. The remembrance, given the name The Light of Hope, gave people of all ages the opportunity to engage in meaningful dialogue about unity among the races; participate in the Hate Won’t Win Unity Walk; hold ecumenical worship services; provide free books for children, a gift from the Cynthia Graham Hurd Foundation; distribute school supplies for students in grades K–12, sponsored by the Myra Thompson School Supply Distribution; hold events for middle school students with opportunities to participate in workshops and forums on topics such as diversity, tolerance, respect, and inclusion; arrange a Senior Citizens Luncheon; give concerts; and host exhibits, all in honor of the slain Emanuel Nine and the five survivors. I was again asked to lead Emanuel’s Wednesday evening Bible study, this time co-teaching with Emanuel’s new pastor, the Reverend Eric S. C. Manning.
“We just wish and hope that we can continue to have forums concerning racism and hate, continue to reach over different denominations and different races to know each other before we come to a conclusion of who we are and who we are not,” I told my listeners. “We just hope and pray this will continue—not just now, but forever.”
How essential remembrances are to human beings, to cities, to countries, and to the world! Remembering honors the victims and survivors; it brings people together in prayer and dialogue, and leads to positive change. Charleston Mayor John Tecklenburg closed the second anniversary remembrance with these words: “It is the remembrance. It is the prayers. It is the celebration, in a way, of love, but it’s also a commitment to positive change in our community in their honor and in the reflection of that key [tenet] that love will conquer hate.”10
The third anniversary remembrance, in the summer of 2018, coincided with the two-hundredth anniversary of the Emanuel AME Church. Especially remembered were the church’s “tumultuous beginning—and the many intervening years with their triumphs and traumas.”11
“We could not help but celebrate this bicentennial of the founding of this church with glory and praise,” Rev. Manning stated. “We have persisted in the face of racial hostility, survived the [dismantling] of the church . . . in 1822; its destruction in an earthquake in 1886; and the horrific murders of nine members of the congregation on June 17, 2015.”12
The program for this third year’s remembrance included partnering with other city churches to provide opportunities for citizens to engage in meaningful dialogue about unity among all races.
“We want to be the place where others may engage in dialogue about achieving racial reconciliation once and for all,” Manning stated. He called the Emanuel Nine “faithful martyrs who fell victim to racism and hatred, who are now living in eternal victory.”13
At a special morning service, plans for the building of the Emanuel Nine Memorial were unveiled. The memorial will be dedicated to reversing the spread of hate with a message of unyielding love and forgiveness. The architects who designed New York’s 9/11 Memorial, Michael Arad and Peter Walker, have been chosen to create the Emanuel Nine Memorial, a white stone structure with two long, smooth, high-backed benches that “arc up and around, like sheltering wings . . .” providing a “sense of enclosure, and like a pair of arms, [cradling] visitors inside this space.”14
The memorial will also feature a gentle fountain inscribed with the names of the victims, and a garden space open to everyone and “dedicated to life and resiliency.”15
“The design reminds me of so many different things,” William Dudley Gregorie, a member of the Charleston City Council and Mother Emanuel, stated. “It reminds me sometimes of a ship for enslaved people who were going to freedom. Sometimes it reminds me of the wings of angels. Sometimes it reminds me just of the arms of God.”16
Surely, with each passing year, as the Emanuel Nine Memorial welcomes visitors from around the world and we pause together for our annual remembrance, our church and our city will take one more step forward on the path to healing and peace. I am hopeful, not thinking so much about the tragedy anymore, but about where we are going from here.
I pray with many others that we will continue to remember together what happened at Emanuel AME Church on June 17, 2015, allowing each anniversary of the tragedy to shine a bright light in Charleston and throughout the nation, never forgetting what the Word of God can do in our lives and in our city, forever changing our attitudes and changing our hearts, helping us to become who God wants us to be, and helping us to do what God wants us to do.