Prophesying to Walls

When a few of us from Durham went on a Christian Peacemaker Team delegation to the border of Arizona and Mexico last summer we went to a stretch of the" border where the U.S. has built a twelve foot wall out of old metal landing strips from the Vietnam War. We planned a liturgy to perform there at that unclean wall. We wanted to tear it down (as is prescribed in Leviticus 14), but weren’t prepared for the consequences. So we prophesied to that wall instead. We told it that God would return it to the earth one day.

And now, this week, the State of North Carolina—my state—has scheduled to murder Patrick Moody in the middle of the night tonight (at 2am on Friday). I think of the walls that make up the small viewing room where murder victim family member and death row inmate family member will sit side-by-side, arms and legs touching, nothing but a wall of hostility to separate them. And there they’ll sit, one watching their beloved being killed, the other, their enemy. And I think of the death chamber where Patrick Moody will spend his last hour on Friday morning, his back against the wall. And I want to tear these walls down—these unclean walls. But I cannot tear them down. Only God can destroy these walls. So, for now, every time I catch a glimpse of the on my shirt, and again tonight, we prophesy to these walls: “The Lord God will tear you down one day, and we will see it together.”

-Leah