More from Rachel Cywinski

January 3, 2023 by Rachel Cywinski (Texas, USA)

We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love one another. The person who does not love remains spiritually dead. — 1 John 3:14 (ISV)

My meditation describes planning and attending a Sunday service of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church following the murder of 9 members attending a Bible study there in 2015. I visited the church on Pentecost Sunday 2017. 

The pastor paused during the sermon that morning to explain that church trustees had completed a Memorial Garden at 3:00 that morning because they were determined to prepare it in time for the entire church to dedicate it to the memory of its martyred members on Pentecost Sunday.  After the worship service, we made our way to a ground-level space through an arched entrance under the exterior stairs to the sanctuary. Water bubbled in a small fountain amidst stone sculptures, potted plants, and benches.

Since then, Mother Emanuel Memorial Foundation developed a design for the Emanuel Nine Memorial and Survivors’ Garden. The design build committee selected an architect through a process in which candidates were asked to submit essays on forgiveness and to explain their design philosophy. 

Anthony Thompson, whose wife and AME minister Myra Quarles-Singleton Thompson was murdered after leading Bible study at “Mother Emanuel” June 17, 2015, worked with writer Denise George create a book. In "Called to forgive: The Charleston church shooting, a victim’s husband, and the path to healing and peace", Thompson, himself a Reformed Episcopal minister, shares his own reckoning with theology and his wife’s death. The book, published in 2019, includes a Bible study for each chapter in the book, 10 units total. Appendix 5, at the end of the book, is a transcription of Myra Thompson’s handwritten notes of the Bible study that she taught that night. I find myself drawn to focus on that study and contemplate that this was the last thing nine believers discussed before being gunned down while praying The Lord’s Prayer.

This book has been a gift that I have shared with parents of trick-or-treaters, neighborhood association members, everyone at the church I attend, and beyond. 

Because I select 2 books each year as the only things that I give as gifts, friends are accustomed to receiving books from me. But this year several recipients silently held "Called to Forgive" in front of them before explaining that they had been struggling with the need to forgive someone and knew this book was God's tool.

Reverend Thompson and so many others who lost family and church family in the June 17, 2015, assault on the Body of Christ in Charleston, South Carolina, have again shown the power of the words of Joseph to his brothers in Genesis 50:20: “You planned something bad for me, but God produced something good from it, in order to save the lives of many people, just as he’s doing today” (CEB).




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The Upper Room magazine's mission is to provide a practical way to listen to scripture, connect with believers around the world, and spend time with God each day.

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