Don’t look away.
Not because it’s easy to stare at suffering.
But because we are becoming too good at avoiding it.
We scroll past bodies.
We debate policy while families plan funerals.
We protect systems better than people.
We argue ideology while mothers bury sons.
Don’t look away.
Say their names.
Renée.
Alex.
George.
Philando.
Not as symbols.
Not as hashtags.
As human beings.
Renée Good was shot during an ICE operation in Minneapolis.
A citizen. A mother. A life ended on an ordinary January morning.
Alex Pretti was an ICU nurse who bent down to help someone pushed to the ground and was pepper sprayed, restrained, and shot.
A healer killed while trying to heal.
George Floyd, whose breath was stolen in daylight.
Philando Castile, killed during a traffic stop,
his final moments recorded while his partner tried to keep their child calm.
These are not isolated tragedies.
They are accumulated grief.
They reveal systems that confuse force with safety,
enforcement with justice,
authority with righteousness.
They expose a culture that normalizes aggressive rhetoric,
celebrates disruption without accountability,
and turns human lives into talking points.
We call it enforcement.
We call it order.
We call it security.
But bodies keep falling.
And we are tired.
Not just emotionally. Spiritually.
Tired of another name.
Another video.
Another cycle of outrage followed by forgetting.
We have learned how to perform concern
without practicing repentance.
We speak outrage fluently
but struggle with grief.
We hold strong opinions
and weak compassion.
And somewhere along the way,
we started to look away.
Don’t.
Look at how easily power becomes violence.
Look at how quickly order becomes death.
Look at how enforcement expands while empathy contracts.
Look at how fear is leveraged and division is rewarded.
This is not left versus right.
This is life versus death.
Justice begins with seeing.
Faces. Families. Futures that will never unfold.
And staying long enough
to be changed.
Hope does not bypass this moment.
Resurrection hope does not rush past crucifixion.
Christian hope is not denial.
It is defiance.
It stands in the graveyard and says death will not have the final word.
It refuses to spiritualize injustice.
It insists God is still at work among the broken and the grieving.
This is prophetic hope.
This is eschatological hope.
The stubborn belief that history is going somewhere.
That justice is coming.
That every tear matters.
Real hope does not tell us to calm down.
It tells us to wake up.
To resist numbness.
To organize compassion.
To demand accountability.
To repair what has been broken.
So we refuse to look away.
We remember Renée.
We honor Alex.
We carry George.
We mourn Philando.
Not to remain in despair.
But to be transformed.
Because lament is not weakness.
Lament is resistance.
And hope, real hope,
is the courage to stay human
in a world that keeps trying to harden us.
Do not let this end with reading.
Say their names.
Hold space for grief.
Refuse numbness.
Pray, yes. But also act.
Show up for grieving families.
Demand accountability.
Support justice work in your community.
Have the hard conversations.
Stay engaged when it’s uncomfortable.
Resurrection hope is not passive.
It calls us to live differently, love boldly, and stand in the gap between what is and what God promises will be.
Do not look away.
