I won’t forget the day I opened Instagram and the first photos in my feed were completely black. I thought, what is wrong with my internet connection? After a bit of waiting and more scrolling I came to understand what was happening. It was June 2, 2020 – Blackout Tuesday. Blackout Tuesday was an online community protest where people around the world posted a plain black image or “Black Lives Matter” to stand in solidarity with discrimination and police brutality. I feel like it was an effective protest that shared an important message of alarm and concern for a segment of humanity that has been mistreated for hundreds and hundreds of years.
I thought racism against black people and police brutality is mainly a problem in the US and not in Canada. But even in our little mountain valley town a peaceful protest took place the very next day with a small group of people holding signs supporting the BLM movement and protesting racism in general. (https://www.merrittherald.com/black-lives-matter-protest-in-merritt/)
That following day in the evening, Steven went to the skatepark with Mateo. I was at home with Leo enjoying a moment of peace when I got a phone call. Steven quickly explained that he ran into Devon aka. JA DMills – the Jamaican reggae singer we met last summer at a local community arts weekly concert. He said he just got out of prison and needed a place to stay for the night. I was surprised and trying to process everything. The black lives matter message was still present in my mind. In a split second I decided to trust Steven and God so I agreed and we hung up. It immediately dawned on me that we weren’t going to have a normal evening. Our routine would be interrupted. My human nature was disappointed at this. I prayed to God asking for him to fill my heart with love for Devon and give me his spirit of hospitality. As soon as I finished praying I realized I needed to focus on cleaning the house – fast! It was a mess.
God answered me because since that prayer, I never once wanted Devon to be anywhere but with us. I had no idea that Steven meeting Devon at the skatepark was 100% a God moment – an immediate answer to a helpless man’s prayer. I had no idea that he was coming out of a deep, dark hold of domestic emotional and psychological abuse. I had no idea that he was completely innocent.
The irony did occur to me that Devon, one of the very few black people in Merritt, spent Blackout Tuesday locked up in a jail cell in Merritt, British Columbia, Canada. And while a group of about 80 people chanted “Black Lives Matter” and “No Justice, no peace,” down the same street, one innocent black man sat rejected by society, but not rejected by God.
