After confirming that she was Randle’s granddaughter, he asked, “So what was taken from her, was taken from you?” She nodded. In another touching moment, the married pastor and father turned to a woman standing beside Randle’s wheelchair. So when he learned the median price for a home in Tulsa was about $200,000, Todd said he knew what he had to do. “I read in the Bible where it says God is the only one that gives beauty from ashes.” “How in the world do you rebuild when you go to sleep on a Thursday, and on the Friday, all your memories, all your life savings, everything that you built your life for is in rubble in front of you? And you got to go to the fairgrounds and stay on cots and try to rebuild your life from ashes,” he said. In revealing his thought process behind giving $200,000 to each survivor, Todd said that one of the most devastating things that happened a century ago was the loss of their homes. (Photo: Pastor Mike Todd/Transformation Church) But today, we can put a seed in the ground.” Pastor Mike Todd. “Today, we can’t restore everything that has been stolen from you.
That couldn’t have happened if you all didn’t survive,” Todd went on to say. “I’m a young Black man who took over a church from a White man who built it in North Tulsa. “Because of you, this is able to happen,” he told them while pointing to the Transformation Church congregation.
Thank you for being here today,” he said. “Thank you for living a life that survived the devastation. Kneeling before the three remaining survivors of the massacre-Viola Fletcher, 107 years old Hughes Van Ellis, 100 years old and Lessie Randle, 106 years old-Todd expressed his gratitude. “We’re gonna start reparations right here,” he added. Referencing the biblical story of Nehemiah, who rebuilt the wall of Jerusalem, he said God told him: “The hand that usually tears it down is rarely the hand that builds it back up.” This was not their job, it’s our job,” Todd said. “We have been looking for someone to restore what they do not have the anointing to restore. The Oasis Fresh Foundation, which opened a grocery store in what The Black Wall Street Times calls a “food desert,” was also gifted $100,000. The Greenwood Cultural Center, which serves the town that was destroyed during the massacre, was given $100,000. The megachurch pastor called up each local organization one at a time and presented their representatives with a check.īuild in Tulsa, an entrepreneurship venture dedicated to rebuilding Black Wall Street, was awarded $50,000. “If God is the God of reparations and restoration…and I’m one of God’s people…then I am responsible for being a part of restoring what has been torn down.” “Reparations means that somebody is going to take up the mantle and actually put into action the process of repairing something that was destroyed,” Todd said. He added that God told him that the Church should be at the forefront of repairing and restoring what has been broken in the world. The Relationship Goals author added that he believes “God, not government,” will restore.Īcknowledging the buzzworthy nature of the word, Todd said that reparations are not political and should not be safeguarded by the “left” or “right.” Rather, he says the definition of reparations is, “the action of repairing something that was devastated.” “God is a God of reparations,” Todd said to the outdoor crowd on Sunday, June 20.
0 kommentar(er)
