Be the Bridge Quotes

“In the love of the family of God, we must become color brave, color caring, color honoring, and not color blind. We have to recognize the image of God in one another. We have to love despite, and even because of, our differences.”
― LaTasha Morrison, Be the Bridge: Pursuing God's Heart for Racial Reconciliation

“Jesus can make beauty from ashes, but the family of God must first see and acknowledge the ashes.”
― LaTasha Morrison, Be the Bridge: Pursuing God's Heart for Racial Reconciliation

“When we lack historical understanding, we lose part of our identity. We don’t know where we came from and don’t know what there is to celebrate or lament. Likewise, without knowing our history, it can be difficult to know what needs repairing, what needs reconciling.”
― LaTasha Morrison, Be the Bridge: Pursuing God's Heart for Racial Reconciliation

“To lament means to express sorrow or regret. Lamenting something horrific that has taken place allows a deep connection to form between the person lamenting and the harm that was done, and that emotional connection is the first step in creating a pathway for healing and hope. We have to sit in the sorrow, avoid trying to fix it right away, avoid our attempts to make it all okay.”
― LaTasha Morrison, Be the Bridge: Pursuing God's Heart for Racial Reconciliation

“If repentance requires turning and walking away from the sins of our past, doesn’t it require walking toward something more reparative? So reparations and repentance are inextricably intertwined, and those who’ve inherited the power and benefits of past wrongs should work to make it right for those who’ve inherited the burdens and oppression of the past.”
― LaTasha Morrison, Be the Bridge: Pursuing God's Heart for Racial Reconciliation

“Jesus’s final prayer was oriented around a vision for unity, and he commissioned his church to be the healing agent that brings the ministry of reconciliation into broken and fractured places in society. And yet an honest assessment raises more questions than answers. Is the church at large, and are we as individuals, currently making any contribution to healing the divisions? Or are we making things worse? Have we come to grips with our role in creating this divide, or are we stuck in a state of denial?”
― LaTasha Morrison, Be the Bridge: Pursuing God's Heart for Racial Reconciliation

“Repairing what’s broken is a distinctly biblical concept, which is why as people of faith we should be leading the way into redemption, restoration, and reconciliation.”
― LaTasha Morrison, Be the Bridge: Pursuing God's Heart for Racial Reconciliation

“We can’t bypass the weight of our guilt and shame if we intend to arrive at true reconciliation and justice.”
― LaTasha Morrison, Be the Bridge: Pursuing God's Heart for Racial Reconciliation

“Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice;”
― LaTasha Morrison, Be the Bridge: Pursuing God's Heart for Racial Reconciliation

“Lord, we confess as a church that we have modified the meaning of the gospel to justify our lack of effort to pursue justice for the oppressed. We have altered the nature of the gospel message in order to remain focused on our personal piety at the expense of caring for the needs of others. We confess we have created a gospel that is manageable so as to avoid entering into the pain, struggle, and discomfort of bearing one another’s burdens—and therefore we have failed to fulfill the law of Christ.”
― LaTasha Morrison, Be the Bridge: Pursuing God's Heart for Racial Reconciliation

“To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.”
― LaTasha Morrison, Be the Bridge: Pursuing God's Heart for Racial Reconciliation

“Bridge builders don’t deny hurt. They experience it. Sit in it. Feel it. But they don’t stay in that pain. They don’t allow those who’ve wounded them to control them or constantly drive them back to anger and resentment. Instead, they allow that pain to continually push them into forgiveness.”
― LaTasha Morrison, Be the Bridge: Pursuing God's Heart for Racial Reconciliation

“In my work as a bridge builder, I’ve seen how, time and time again conversations about reconciliation stall when the topic of righting the wrongs comes up. Terms such as reparations, affirmative action, white privilege, and Black Lives Matter are non-starters for so many folks, in part because they disrupt the listener. They remind him or her that making things right costs something, often power, position, or money.”
― LaTasha Morrison, Be the Bridge: Pursuing God's Heart for Racial Reconciliation

“What is the purpose of lament? It allows us to connect with and grieve the reality of our sin and suffering. It draws us to repentant connection with God in that suffering. Lament also serves as an effort to change God’s mind, to ask him to turn things around in our favor. Lament seeks God as comforter, healer, restorer, and redeemer. Somehow the act of lament reconnects us with God and leads us to hope and redemption.”
― LaTasha Morrison, Be the Bridge: Pursuing God's Heart for Racial Reconciliation

“Love,” I said, “brings freedom, and slaves didn’t have freedom or choice. Family doesn’t leave family in bondage.”
― LaTasha Morrison, Be the Bridge: Pursuing God's Heart for Racial Reconciliation

“If you’re White, if you come from the majority culture, you’ll need to bend low in a posture of humility. You may need to talk less and listen more, opening your heart to the voices of your non-White brothers and sisters. You’ll need to open your mind and study the hard truths of history without trying to explain them away. You’ll need to examine your own life and the lives of your ancestors so you can see whether you’ve participated in, perpetuated, or benefited from systems of racism.”
― LaTasha Morrison, Be the Bridge: Pursuing God's Heart for Racial Reconciliation

“No one tribe or group of people can adequately display the fullness of God. The truth is that it takes every tribe, tongue, and nation to reflect the image of God in his fullness. The truth is that race is a social construct, one that has divided and set one group over the other from the earliest days of humanity. The Christian construct, though, dismantles this way of thinking and seeks to reunite us under a common banner of love and fellowship.”
― LaTasha Morrison, Be the Bridge: Pursuing God's Heart for Racial Reconciliation

“A Prayer for Humility Lord, we ask that the words of this book fall on the soil of our hearts. Come into our brokenness and our lives with your love that heals all. Consume our pride and replace it with humility and vulnerability. Allow us to make space for your correction and redemption. Allow us to bow down with humble hearts, hearts of repentance. Bind us together in true unity and restoration. May we hear your voice within the words of these pages. Give us collective eyes to see our role in repairing what has been broken. Allow these words to be a conduit for personal transformation that would lead to collective reproduction. —LATASHA MORRISON”
― LaTasha Morrison, Be the Bridge: Pursuing God's Heart for Racial Reconciliation

“See? Only when we’ve made space for our emotions, when we’ve honestly evaluated them, can we move into true Christlike forgiveness.”
― LaTasha Morrison, Be the Bridge: Pursuing God's Heart for Racial Reconciliation

“hope. We have to sit in the sorrow, avoid trying to fix it right away, avoid our attempts to make it all okay. Only then is the pain useful. Only then can it lead us into healing and wisdom.”
― LaTasha Morrison, Be the Bridge: Pursuing God's Heart for Racial Reconciliation

“Without understanding the truth of racial injustice, both majority-culture and non-White-culture Christians will find themselves mired in dissonant relationships. If we avoid hard truths to preserve personal comfort or to fashion a facade of peace, our division will only widen.”
― LaTasha Morrison, Be the Bridge: Pursuing God's Heart for Racial Reconciliation

“As I listened, a feeling of discomfort set in. Why hadn’t I heard about the African empires—the kings, queens, and ingenuity of the people—prior to college? Why didn’t I learn this in high school? Why didn’t my family teach me? Why had no one introduced me to any of the scores of books on the slave trade?”
― LaTasha Morrison, Be the Bridge: Pursuing God's Heart for Racial Reconciliation

“Race, as we know it, is a political and social construct created by man for the purpose of asserting power and maintaining a hierarchy.”
― LaTasha Morrison, Be the Bridge: Pursuing God's Heart for Racial Reconciliation

“It felt as if people had saved all their “ask a Black person” questions for me, and they unloaded until it almost drove me insane.”
― LaTasha Morrison, Be the Bridge: Pursuing God's Heart for Racial Reconciliation

“County Magistrate James Gosnell Jr. opened the proceeding by indicating that though there were nine victims in the church, there were “victims on this young man’s side of the family. No one would have ever thrown them into the whirlwind of events that they have been thrown into.”15 He added, “We must find it in our heart, at some point in time, not only to help those that are victims but to also help his family as well.”16”
― LaTasha Morrison, Be the Bridge: Pursuing God's Heart for Racial Reconciliation

“Building steps: acknowledging the past, lamenting it, confronting shame and guilt, confessing our collective sin, extending forgiveness, committing to repentance, making reparations, and ultimately moving into complete restoration.”
― LaTasha Morrison, Be the Bridge: Pursuing God's Heart for Racial Reconciliation

“Reconciliation requires truth telling and empathy and tears. It requires changed perspectives and changing directions (also known as repentance).”
― LaTasha Morrison, Be the Bridge: Pursuing God's Heart for Racial Reconciliation

“Confession of our entanglement in racism and systemic privilege is essential for complete healing and restoration.”
― LaTasha Morrison, Be the Bridge: Pursuing God's Heart for Racial Reconciliation

“American culture teaches us not to sit in sadness and despair. Pretending that everything is okay, though, requires that we mask our true feelings. God doesn’t want our masks; he wants all of us, all our emotions, even our sorrow, our despair, and our grief. He wants to hold us close, wants to wipe every tear from our eyes. He cares about the parts of us that are burdened and weary. He wants to use our sorrow and anguish to draw us closer to him, and in that closeness, he wants to change us, change our hearts, and send us out to do his work.”
― LaTasha Morrison, Be the Bridge: Pursuing God's Heart for Racial Reconciliation

“Forgiveness and healing cannot begin until we become aware of the historical roots of the problem and acknowledge the harm caused.”
― LaTasha Morrison, Be the Bridge: Pursuing God's Heart for Racial Reconciliation