The Cost of Discipleship

For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?”(Esther 4:14, ESV)

I don't believe that it is at all arrogance to believe that we were born for a purpose, born to serve something larger than ourselves. And I've long wondered when it would be premature to discuss openly the direction in which I firmly feel my footsteps are being led, where conviction and circumstance have conspired to give me traction. And I believe, after reading through Eric Metaxas' biography of Deitrich Bonoeffer, that the time is now.

Through the last few years, I have watched as the workers of the world are villainized, are called parasites, accused of not paying their fair share, and, in the case of my undocumented brothers and sisters in labor, of stealing from the American worker. The lies of the leaders of this fair land should not continue to go unchallenged, and those of us who know better MUST speak out. If not me, who? If not now, when?

It has long been said that "well behaved women rarely make history". Well, I'll take it a step further and say that "well behaved ANYONE rarely makes history". If you march in the rank and file, you only allow unjustice to continue unchecked. And unjustice is the birthright for far too many.

My years in labor have led me from the kitchens of many fine restaurants, through the factories, the dusty underground mines, and the hot summer sun of the Mojave Desert, and to my current position of relative comfort. In all of those places, I have certainly found people who could be described as "slackers"; in NONE of those places was "slacker" a standard employed by even the plurality of those workers.

Understanding, as you must, that I have a committed pledge to nonviolence, I commit everything I have to speaking for the workers, to aiding their cause in obtaining fair pay, fair housing, food and healthcare, and to actively opposing those who would deny them these dues, which are owed to them by those who steal their wealth for their own private comfort.

I may be a lone voice, and I may die a lone voice, but I speak from conviction, and that is a position I will not surrender. The cost of discipleship is one I am willing to pay from this day forward, even if it costs me comfort in this world.