TODAY THE WORDS ARE ALL GOD’S CHILDREN

TODAY THE WORDS are ALL GOD’S CHILDREN. With the passing of a great author and poet,

celebrity, singer, dancer, and actress, we honor Maya Angelou who has died at the age of 86. If any of you do not know her life’s story, please take time to read it. She received honors from so many sources, spoke to thousands and to millions through the media. She is the vessel for one of the most important lessons of God’s use of unlikely messengers. I read the incredible recount of her life and it enlightened me. A mouthy young black child, she was shipped away from home from sassing a white clerk. She was raped at age 7 by her mother’s boyfriend and didn’t speak for years. Think about if if she had never spoken. Poetry, especially the ones sang in the black church, became her love and she wrote poetry from the age of 9. By 17, she was a single mother and by her early 20’s she worked in a strip joint and then ran a brothel. By all counts, she should have been tagged a failure by her life at this point. However, and I am not trying to write an eulogy as she has written her own, great eulogy of success. Here is the deeper thought and why I am referring to the rough times in her life……….If for any times in her life, Maya Angelou (born Marguerite Johnson) had poured herself a pity drink and had not plunged ahead with her forthright ability to not only survive but to give this world her gift on words, salty and pungent at times, but filled with a source of grace that came with a gift of life; this world would have been worse for the loss. I could go on and on about her life, but it is one you owe it to yourself to read but what I found was most interesting was the age of 80 when she found herself engaging into more of God’s presence by studying the healing through prayer. All of the hurt, the pain, the ups and downs, the civil rights movement, her activism, her awards, her presence, her poetry, her speeches, and her work all were the pieces of her life puzzle and once she placed God’s piece into the puzzle, she found completion. When her back was against the wall and her son having his 10th operation on his spine; Maya felt the pressure of life of people using her, expectations running so high, it took a young black preacher’s words to her for her recognition of God’s power when he asked her, “Why have you decided to limit God?” and she thought, “That is exactly what I have been doing.” From then until her death she would answer when asked to speak, “Thank you, thank you, thank you”. What a life, what an example of God seeing our worth when we question his opportunities, you have left us now with a lesson for each of us. No matter what, no matter when, no matter who, God is watching you! RIP Maya Angelou you have sung your song of life with a melody far reaching and so powerful we will never forget.