Last weekend, around 300 people attended a Black Lives Matter event at Elms Field.
Members of our Baptist church congregation were there and tell me what a positive, moving and well organised event it was.
I want to encourage those who attended or were inspired by it.
Last weekend was also the anniversary of the day when the Revd Martin Luther King, the baptist pastor who is an inspiration to me and so many others, delivered his ‘I have a dream’ speech in Washington DC.
He set out a vision of a future in which black children would be judged, not by the colour of their skin, but by the content of their character.
Martin Luther King’s dream of the future was in turn inspired and shaped by a biblical one: a vision of the future the Bible says that all God’s plans and purposes are moving towards, which we glimpse in that last, mysterious book of the Bible, Revelation: there it says:
“I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne of God”
It’s a vision of a multi-coloured, multi-cultured community where all live together in harmony and peace and unity. This, says the Bible, is the future that God is working towards. Not a future in which one culture or skin colour dominates the rest, segregated from others. But rather a flourishing, kaleidoscopic community of peace.
As the community of Wokingham grows and changes, I’m inspired by this vision too.
I want it for our town and all who live and work here. Some may resist such a picture, which is why events like the one in Elms Field last Saturday are so important.
But those who work positively for it should be encouraged: you are working with the grain of the universe, and those who oppose you are working against it.
The Revd Nick Hudson, is the minister of Wokingham Baptist Church, on behalf of Churches Together in Wokingham
