Mission Week 2017: Daily Reflection

Each day of Mission Week, a member of the Marquette community will offer a reflection to echo the theme of Mission Week 2017, “Racial Justice: Black, White and the Call of the Church.”

What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

When I traveled with Marquette students across the American South last year, I remember standing in the middle of a room where more than 50 years ago, students stood, sat and slept at their typewriters, all there to help people register to vote. Their work invoked the last stanza of James Weldon Johnson’s hymn, “Lift Every Voice and Sing:”

God of our weary years,
God of our silent tears,
Thou who has brought us thus far on the way;
Thou who has by Thy might led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.

When I think about racial justice, I am taken back to Micah 6:8.

We live in very challenging times. We see challenges that have not been seen in our society for some decades. For some of us, we feel that all we have worked for is diminishing. Are we losing hope? Should we lose hope? 

I draw my strength from the call of those who came before me, responding with a commitment grounded in a simple phrase, What can I do?

And then I know there is much to do on the front of racial justice. 

Janice Welburn
Dean of Libraries

Opening Keynote: Conversation with Bree Newsome And Rev. Jim Wallis

6 to 7 p.m. | Alumni Memorial Union, Monaghan Ballroom

Join Dr. William Welburn, executive director of the Office of Institutional Diversity and Inclusion, as he facilitates a conversation with Rev. Jim Wallis and Bree Newsome as they discuss the history of racism in America, the legacy of racism in the South and the Gospel call to social action.

Please reserve a ticket online; it is required for entry.

See today's schedule of events.

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