Thread by @BethMooreLPM

Good Friday morning, Saints. This thread requires reading at a whisper. I’m writing it nervously & tentatively because I could be so wrong. To Philemon Paul wrote, “I, Paul, an old man.” Well, to you I write, “I, Beth, an old woman. My eyesight is poor and may be deceiving me.”->

But I see something. I can’t say it’s even a small fist-size cloud. Maybe mist. Maybe misplaced hope. Maybe cataracts. I may be off on all of it except this one part. This one part you can take to the bank.

If the heart is not like granite,

Reading a book can change a mind.

Numbers don’t tell us much but they tell us something. @LatashaMorrison’s “Be the Bridge” & @austinchanning’s “I’m Still Here” just hit the NYT bestseller list. (That is HARD to make.) @JemarTisby’s “The Color of Compromise” is selling so furiously they keep having to restock it.

I know, I know, I know. That doesn’t mean those who’ve been so resistant to hearing what our Black brothers & sisters have been saying are among the buyers or that they will ever crack open the book or have guts enough to finish it. My whisper of hope is simply that they might.

In Eph 4:18 Paul warns fellow Christians to not think like the unredeemed since they are darkened in their understanding “because of the ignorance that is in them due to their hardness of heart.” He makes this profound & undeniable connection:

Hard hearts cause ignorant minds.

Here’s the thing. If our hearts are hard, we can be certain we are dead right about something and that how we are thinking is the gospel truth and still be completely ignorant.

Because a hard heart causes an ignorant mind.

If we would just allow God to soften our hearts, ...

...if we would just be willing to listen. If we just be willing to learn. If we would just be willing to squirm where we should and be soft hearted but anti-fragile and read what brilliant Jesus-following Black brothers and sisters are writing,

Reading a book can change a mind.