This year I am going to tell you a story. It is a very long story but deserving. I am going to add some color to history. Many of these stories you know, you might have put them all together. Allow me to.

People of African descent have always been here. Racism tries to make us believe that Africans were not smart enough to leave the continent until a European or Asian showed them how. Not true.

The first story I share goes back to 33AD where a Jew name Jesus is carrying the weapon of his destruction down a road. Beaten and exhausted, Jesus needs help, so they get a man who is fresh in from the country, a man from Cyrene. This man is from a Greek city on the continent of Africa. He used his two feet to get from one place to another.

Something about this man made him stand out from the crowd of people following Jesus. Something obviously physical because they thought he would be able to bear the burden. Here is the beautiful thing, God knew he would be able to carry it. Simon’s two feet and strong back carried the cross.

I don’t know if Simon was on a trade route or maybe he was visiting Jerusalem as a practicing Jew, but he was far from home. He was bigger and stronger than any in the crowd. His sandaled feet followed the path God had him on. It changed everything for his family.

God wrote us into this story. People from Africa were there. We weren’t standing on the sidelines. We had a role to play.

Where we came from didn’t limit where we were going. It never has.

In 2022, I am going to add some color to history.

The Journey

These people took a journey to find something they had only heard in folklore. But something compelled them to move forward. The thing was a star and they began to follow it.

It led them far from home.

The Bible tells us they came from the East and were called wise men. Imagine the smartest people in the world at the time were following an astronomical phenomenon. Whatever was at the end of it had to be life changing.

Christian folklore sometimes refers to these wise men as kings using Isaiah 60 and Psalm 72. They also give them a racial identity making one from China, or India or Persia or even Africa.

Regardless of where they were from. They went somewhere. The star led them on a journey that changed everything.

The Journey

These people took a journey to find something they had only heard in folklore. But something compelled them to move forward. The thing was a star and they began to follow it.

It led them far from home.

The Bible tells us they came from the East and were called wise men. Imagine the smartest people in the world at the time were following an astronomical phenomenon. Whatever was at the end of it had to be life changing.

Christian folklore sometimes refers to these wise men as kings using Isaiah 60 and Psalm 72. They also give them a racial identity making one from China, or India or Persia or even Africa.

Regardless of where they were from. They went somewhere. The star led them on a journey that changed everything.