The Record: Mercy

By Floyd Miller/Publisher

Jesus said, “Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy.” What is mercy? It is compassion or forgiveness shown toward someone whom it is within one’s power to punish or harm: “the boy was screaming and begging for mercy.” At some point in time, we will all hope that someone shows mercy toward us.

This word got a lot of play when Washington Bishop Mariann Budde, praying at the National Prayer Breakfast, addressed President Trump with these words:

“Let me make one final plea, Mr. President. Millions have put their trust in you, and, as you told the nation yesterday, you have felt the providential hand of a loving God. In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now. There are gay, lesbian, and transgender children in Democratic, Republican, and Independent families, some who fear for their lives.

“And the people, the people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings, who labor in poultry farms and meat packing plants, who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants and work the night shifts in hospitals. They may not be citizens or have the proper documentation, but the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals. They pay taxes and are good neighbors. They are faithful members of our churches and mosques, synagogues, and temples. I ask you to have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away and that you help those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands, to find compassion and welcome here.”

President Trump responded on X (the social media app formerly known as Twitter) by calling her “nasty.”

Budde’s prayer came less than 24 hours after President Trump pardoned over 1,500 of the January 6th insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol.

In the great context, all Bishop Budde did was call for mercy. She did not say that she agreed with anyone’s lifestyle. She did not say what should happen to the people from other countries. All she asked for was mercy.

In fact, you don’t have to agree with a person to extend mercy. If you are speeding and a patrolman pulls you over, and, instead of giving you a ticket, he gives you a warning. Does it mean that he believes speeding is a good thing? He knows it’s not good to speed; he just extended mercy!

Each of us in our lives will have the opportunity to be merciful or merciless. Which will you choose?

As you travel on life’s highway, would you extend mercy when you have the opportunity?

Carter-Ford for President

President Jimmy Carter’s funeral service was very inspiring to me. One of the things that was impressive was the eulogy that President Ford left behind to be read at President Carter’s funeral. The late Gerald Ford’s son read the eulogy. I invite you to listen; it was amazing.

On another subject, President Carter was awarded a Grammy posthumously for his audio book.

Abilene, everybody knows your name

During a press conference at the White House on Tuesday, Jan. 21, President Donald Trump, Oracle Executive Chairman and Chief Technology Officer Larry Ellison, who was joined by executives from SoftBank and OpenAI, highlighted Abilene as part of Project Stargate, an initiative that plans to bring $500 billion in Artificial Intelligence infrastructure investment to the U.S., starting with $100 billion deployed immediately.

Black History Month

Carter G. Woodson started Negro History Week in 1926. The first individuals to be honored were the abolitionist Frederick Douglass and former President Abraham Lincoln, who both were born in the month of February.

On Feb. 10, 1976, President Gerald R. Ford issued a message recognizing Black History Month.

I believe it is important to continue to celebrate Black History Month, more now than ever before, when programs like DEI are being disassembled. A memo issued by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, headlined “Identity Months Dead at DoD,” wipes Black History Month and similar celebrations off the military calendar — starting immediately. Also obeying Trump’s DEI order, the Air Force will stop teaching recruits about the Tuskegee Airmen. If you read the history of the Tuskegee Airmen, you will read about a phenomenal group of people.

Black people have made great strides in my lifetime, but they have also suffered inhumane treatment because of the color of their skin. Emmit Till was killed because he allegedly looked at a white woman on Aug. 28, 1955. Dr. Martin Luther King was killed leading a non-violent movement for better wages April 4, 1968. Dr. King won a Nobel Peace Prize. Four little black girls were killed at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, on Sept. 15, 1963. And three college students, James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman, were killed and buried in a tank dam on July 21, 1964. Chaney was black; the other students were white. They were all fighting for equal rights for all Americans.

All of these deaths can be traced back to people who believed in some way they were superior to the people they killed. Just like I am still alive, I believe that there are grandchildren and great-grandchildren of those murders who are still alive and they share some of the same sentiments as their old grandpappies.

Bill Moyers, who was on President Lyndon Baines Johnson’s staff, tells the story of being with the president one night: “We were in Tennessee. During the motorcade, he spotted some ugly racial epithets scrawled on signs. Late that night in the hotel, when the local dignitaries had finished the last bottles of bourbon and branch water and departed, he started talking about those signs. ‘I’ll tell you what’s at the bottom of it,’ he said. ‘If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.’”

That’s exactly what is happening now, and it’s no surprise that this is being dismantled by a person who would not rent to blacks. He is also the person who took out a full-page ad in the New York Daily News in 1989 with the headline “BRING BACK THE DEATH PENALTY. BRING BACK OUR POLICE!” That ad was targeting the Central Park Five, a group of black teenagers who were convicted and sent to prison. Their case was later over turned.

Black History Month is a time for us to reflect and be thankful for the blessing and mercy God has shown us. It’s not about being superior to another group of people, and it’s certainly not about being inferior to anyone.

I will be celebrating Black History Month; I have to go…I just cued up Kool and The Gang’s “Celebration.”

 

Floyd Miller is a Financial Advisor with Osaic Wealth, Publisher of the West Texas Tribune, host of the It’s Everything West Texas podcast, and a public speaker.

The West Texas Tribune is a community-based non-profit newspaper. If you’d like to support what we’re doing, donations can be mailed to West Texas Tribune, 3300 South 14th, Suite 100, Abilene, Texas 79605; or online at www.westtexastribune.org.