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Morning Meditation
August 4, 2026
Reading: Romans 15:4-7
For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide we might have hope.
May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you the same attitude of mind toward each other that Christ Jesus had, so that with one mind and one voice you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God.
Excerpt from Let America Be America Again, Langston Hughes, 1936.
O, let America be America again—
The land that never has been yet—
And yet must be—the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine—the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME—
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.
Meditation by Glenn Beamer
Yesterday, August 3rd, marked the 90th anniversary of Jesse Owens’ triumphant gold medal track performances at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Sparingly few Americans can claim a contemporaneous memory of Owens’ triumph and our nation’s pride. Yet Owens’ championship feats, occurring as war clouds gathered across Europe, endure as iconic triumphs of the United States’ democratic, perhaps meritocratic, ideals over Adolph Hitler and Nazi Germany’s nascent fascism and cruel barbarism.
As we look back we can see that our democratic ideals and meritocratic values were, to say the least, attenuated and selective. Jesse Owens returned to a country that sustained Jim Crow segregation. Visiting Washington, DC, Owens was restricted to colored-only rest rooms and accommodations. Many otherwise progressive New Deal programs and agencies, including the Home Ownership Loan Corporation and Social Security, contained provisions that severely restricted participation by and benefits for African Americans, Jews, first-generation immigrants and others. These measures were not inadvertent shortcomings. They reflect a collective or social sin.
Recognizing the good we had left undone brings us to Paul’s letter to the Romans. Paul focused on the endurance motivated by and the encouragement provided in the scriptures. This endurance and encouragement remained applicable in 1936 and prevails among us today. God’s word and wisdom transcend time. As broken people we are called to look daily to God’s word if we genuinely aspire to work to build a just and peaceful world.
The easy road is to look at the transgressions and flaws among other cultures and nations and to use those shortcomings as a baseline to feel better about ourselves. Today we readily recognize the tensions and contradictions in our national pride when Jesse Owens won gold in 1936. It’s more challenging to read Langston Hughes’s Let America Be America Again and reflect on how much further we have to go.
Paul pushes us and articulates, “May the God who gives you endurance and encouragement give you the same attitude of mind toward each other that Christ Jesus had…” Fostering glory for God is never a once and done deal. Creating the justice, charity, and peace that God desires from us is many daily tasks dispersed among us.
History is complicated and subject to interpretation. When we leave out large chunks of history, such as the United States’ segregationist policies during the Great Depression, we deprive ourselves of a baseline against which to judge our progress in the last ninety years. When we sanitize either celebratory or tragic events we deprive ourselves of the ability to chart a careful path toward justice and peace.
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