Jo
Anne Meekins wrote this poem to share during the funeral of her
15-year-old great-niece, Ke Yanna Shanay Jones, who was stabbed in
the heart when she walked her friend to the bus stop and got in the
middle of a melee of people who got off the bus at the stop where she
was heading.
They
had taken offense at a man who was unpleasant to a pregnant woman on
the bus.
Embrace Love
Embrace
love, it is designed to cover a multitude of sins;
Release the
anger to be productive, effective, and win.
God
is love and He created us all to love ourselves,
each
other, and Him.
It's
time to make different choices
if we want to change our
environment
and the hatred of the world that we are living in.
Ke
Yanna, who was just beginning to live,
is a victim of
circumstance.
An
innocent bystander caught between
the poor choices of an angry
group,
converging at the same location, by chance.
If
we loved ourselves and our neighbors more,
this story could have
ended a better way;
instead of paying respects to the memory
of
a 15-year-old angel, who ended up slain.
How
do we handle tragedies
and move forward, beyond these types of
crimes?
By
practicing love and compassion within our hearts,
and affirm
godly thoughts within our minds.
Stop
reacting
to negative behavior,
Respond in LOVE for life's problems to be
solved.
Don't
turn a blind eye to the chaos around you,
step up and be
unafraid to get involved.
My
heart was broken and heavy laden with pain
by the loss of this
precious loved one from my life.
Yet,
I was able to heal, forgive, and be whole again
through the
love and saving grace of Jesus Christ.
By
Jo Anne Meekins © 2008
For more powerful poems from The
Blogging Carnival for Nonviolence, see:
When
Will the Killing End? by Gloria Clark
Faces
of the Bereft by Hilary Thomas
Lamentation,
Verse 718 by Carla Cherry
For
the Lovers by Carla Cherry.
Go
here for The Blogging Carnival for Nonviolence 2023.