Praying with Our Feet by Lindsey Krinks

Author:Lindsey Krinks
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Christian Living/Social Issues;Christianity and justice;Church work with minorities;Marginality;Social—Religious aspects—Christianity;Civil rights—Religious aspects—Christianity;Minorities—Civil rights—United States—History—20th century;Prayer—Christianity;REL012110;REL012040;REL012070
ISBN: 9781493429615
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2020-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

7

Emergence

I BURROWED INTO THE COUCH beside Andrew and leaned into him, eyes locked into news footage from Cairo. We were speechless. A month after a Tunisian fruit vendor burned himself alive in an act of desperation against government corruption, mass protests forced Tunisia’s president out of the country. Uprisings were sparked across the Middle East and North Africa. The Arab Spring was just beginning in 2011, sending flares of resistance throughout the world. In Egypt, millions mobilized to demand the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak, a dictator whose thirty-year rule allowed for widespread corruption and poverty to fester.

The Egyptian revolution was unfolding on a global stage, and we couldn’t pull ourselves away. The images smoldered in my mind. Makeshift barricades separating tanks from children. Clouds of tear gas drifting through the streets. Police batons. Government water canons and live rounds fired into crowds. Aerial shots of Tahrir Square with a circle of plastic tents in the center surrounded by tens of thousands of people. Hundreds of Muslims facing east, bent in Friday prayer, protected by a circle of Egyptian Christians holding hands. Chants ringing out, some in English—“Muslim, Christian, doesn’t matter, we’re all in this boat together!” Thousands injured and arrested. Hundreds dead.

“If we were there,” I said to Andrew, “I hope we’d be out on the streets with them.” As we watched the latest news reports, I tried to imagine the risks the protesters were taking, the violence they faced, the loss they endured, the collective hope that pulsed through their veins. Later that summer, protests would ignite in cities like Rome, London, Tokyo, Berlin, and Barcelona to denounce corruption, greed, and political and economic systems the prioritized profit over the well-being of people.

If sparks were to ignite here, where would our convictions and commitments take us?

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