Trinity participates in MLK Prayer Walk

A Group of Trinity parents, teachers, and students gathered at the head of the Tobacco Trail around 10 am on January 21 to pray for our city.  Mrs. Easterlin had prepared one of the tri-fold boards on Durham schools, and we paused to pray together.

A Tobacco Trail Watch Volunteer and Durham Public School teacher serendipitously joined us to pray for our schools.

Upper School Director, Warren Gould, and his son Benjamin, with Mrs. Gould

Trinity School joined the larger Durham and Chapel Hill communities in celebrating Martin Luther King Day on Monday, January 21, for the first annual prayer walk on the American Tobacco Trail.

            Trinity seeks to honor the memory and continue the legacy of Dr. King, who worked and spoke out for racial justice.  The holiday was not just a day off from school—but a day to mark Dr. King’s dream that every young person in this country would get a good education and have the chance to grow and flourish.  We see ways that his dream is being realized—when the sons of former slave owners and the sons of slaves learn together in schools across our country.  But we also see that his dream has not yet been fully realized and that many children across our country, even in our own community, are not getting even an adequate education, much less an excellent one.  The achievement gap is far too wide.  The dropout rates are far too high.

            This is not the way it’s supposed to be.  It’s not the way Dr. King dreamed.  It’s not the way that any of us who follow Christ can accept.  And what do we do, we who follow Jesus, when we come face to face with situations that are simply not right, not fair, not pleasing to God? 

            We pray.  As an old theology professor liked to say, prayer is rebellion against the status quo.  It is the persistent widow whose petition is like a steel trap; she won’t let go.  It is like Jacob, wrestling with the angel of God, until he blesses him, and through him all the nations.  It is like the psalmist who cries, “How long, Lord?”

            There’s no doubt that we at Trinity School have been blessed.  We have heard the good news about God’s restoration of his good creation in Jesus Christ, and many of us have believed.  But we know that we have been called and blessed so that we can be a blessing.  If God has focused his blessings on us, it is so that we can refract those blessings to a lost and hurting world.  Trinity School is a place where students of many ethnicities are learning and thriving, but this is not so that we sit back and say, “My how we are thriving!”  It is too small a thing that Trinity would be a good school.  We want good schools for everyone. 

            BlessDurham and PrayDurham cohosted this walk, and Trinity agreed to set up and man the prayer station that guides participants to prayer for all our schools, our teachers, and our students.