Daily Lesson for March 29, 2021

 Today's Daily Lesson comes from Psalm 51 verses 6 though 9:

6 Indeed, I have been wicked from my birth,

a sinner from my mother's womb.

7 For behold, you look for truth deep within me,

and will make me understand wisdom secretly.

8 Purge me from my sin, and I shall be pure;

wash me, and I shall be clean indeed.

9 Make me hear of joy and gladness,

that the body you have broken may rejoice.

It is Holy Week and on Maundy Thursday evening I am going to speak on the ways in which trauma is passed down generation to generation.

In Resmaa Menakem's profound book "My Grandmother's Hands", he speaks specifically of racialized trauma and its effects on the body. Menakem says trauma is passed down one generation to the next through three ways:

1. In families, in which one member abuses another.

2. Through unsafe and/or abusive systems, structures, institutions, and cultural norms.

3. Through our genes.

In today's Lesson David speaks of the "sin" within him at birth. This is the place from which we get the idea of "original sin".

Though we don't know much about David's childhood or family, we get the sense from Scripture that his father did not think much of him. We know the unresolved trauma David inflicted on others was passed onto his children. But we can also imagine that there was trauma passed onto David by his own family.

David calls this his "sin" and "wickedness"; though we might view it as unresolved and generational trauma which lived in his body from the beginning. It is his "family curse".

Faulkner said, "the past is never past". It is within us. It lives in our marrow, and blood, and bodies, and is passed on in our genes. Our sins and the sins of our fathers and mothers are passed onto us in our bodies through our genes.

The way to healing comes through address. It comes through attention. It comes through acknowledgement of what is within us -- what we have done, what others have done to us, and what we have watched others do to others.

The curse does not have to be forever. We can make profound changes in the ways we act and react. But it does take attention. It takes awareness and intentionality. It takes us considering the words we will hear on Thursday, "This is my body, broken . . ."

So it is; all of our bodies broken and in need of healing, in need of mending.

And the mending comes. The healing in our souls comes. For there is a Balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole and to cure the sin-sick soul.

May we receive the balm this Holy Week . . .

Ryon Price is Senior Pastor of Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas.