Have you ever had a season that felt like an endless cycle of two steps forward and three steps back?
I once preached about the Israelites making their way out of Egypt and into the wilderness. They prayed. They complained. They wondered why they left slavery in the first place. And then, somehow, there was manna: daily bread for a hungry people.
Here was a surprising part. Some scholars believe the manna we read about wasn’t a magical miracle from the sky, but a natural substance associated with desert insects and plants. Others disagree. Whatever it actually was, it certainly wasn’t a heavenly feast. Yet somehow, it was enough for the journey.
In the Christian tradition, Jesus may have considered this story when he included “Give us this day our daily bread” as part of the prayer he teaches his followers. But the hunger for daily bread is hardly unique to Christians. Every faith tradition knows something about hunger: hunger for justice, dignity, belonging, peace, and a world in which our children can flourish.
A Persisting Hunger in Northeast Florida
Today, our community is hungry for an end to racism.
That hunger is not abstract. In recent weeks, Northeast Florida has been reminded that racism is not simply a chapter in our history books. Reports of racially charged incidents among high school students have brought a persistent wound painfully close to home.
Jacksonville has a long history with racism. So does our country. One of the most important lessons of that history is that change rarely happens simply because people of goodwill wish for it.
The theologian James Cone deeply understood this. Growing up in the Jim Crow South, he spent his life wrestling with what he named a seeming “absurdity” at the heart of faith: that we pray to a God who appears to let atrocity stand. In The Cross and the Lynching Tree, he asked how American Christians could revere one tree while ignoring the other. Black liberation theology emerged from his conviction that faith could not remain indifferent to the suffering of Black people. Cone insisted that theology must connect directly with the real-world struggle for freedom, justice, and human dignity.
That conviction was lived out in streets, churches, lunch counters, and voting booths. The struggle—including the historic marches from Selma to Montgomery—helped pave the way to the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
The Ongoing Journey
And yet, here we are. Progress, it turns out, does not sustain itself. As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote, “a slice of liberty does not finish hunger.”
That is why our work today is not simply to condemn racism when it appears. It is to become the kind of community in which racism has less room to take root in the first place.
At OneJax, we believe people of different faiths, backgrounds, and perspectives can come together, listen deeply, disagree honestly, and still recognize one another’s humanity. Civil discourse is not about pretending our differences don’t matter. It is about learning how to live with those differences without turning our neighbors into enemies.
That is why, this October, OneJax will gather people around tables through our Breaking Bread & Barriers series, under the theme E Pluribus Unum: out of many, one. It is why we continue to co-sponsor the Atlantic Institute’s Scriptural Reasoning events. It is also why OneJax is participating in the Interfaith Alliance initiative, “The Vote Is Sacred”. Voting is one way we turn our values into civic participation. Remember: in Florida, the deadline to register for the November 3 General Election is October 5.
Writing the Future Story of Jacksonville
But voting is not the whole of democracy. Neither is conversation. Neither is prayer. We need all three.
There’s more. We need the courage to name injustice. The humility to listen to experiences different from our own. The discipline to stay in relationship when conversation becomes difficult. And the willingness to translate what we believe into the way we live with one another.
Perhaps that is our daily bread. Not a miracle that removes the wilderness, but enough courage, curiosity, and compassion to keep walking through it together.
We cannot change Jacksonville’s history. But we can help write what comes next. Participate. Engage with us. Invite someone to join you. Perhaps that is how neighbors become friends.
With love,
Beverly
The Rev. Beverly Dempsey, CEO