I remember the day after President Trump was elected. I remember the Lord saying to me, “Go to work and Preach the Gospel.” I prayed in the Spirit and worshipped as I drove to work.

My first class was primarily minorities. Fear, sadness, disappointment permeated the room. Teenage eyes peered at me looking for answers. As I walked around checking homework, a young lady asked, “What are we going to do?”

I gave her a reassuring smile and said, “We are not going to fear. We are going to trust God.”

As I had begun to establish normalcy, this young man who had a history of behavior issues, walked in late wearing a Trump cape. An African-American student jumped up and began to yell at him.

“I thought you were my boy! I thought we were friends. Why are you wearing that?!”

The other kid yelled back. And the two were about to come to blows in my first period class.

I stepped between them to diffuse the argument. I told the African American kid, “If he were your boy yesterday, he needs to be your boy today.” Then I made them sit down together and have a conversation.

The purpose of the conversation was not to convert but to understand. These two highly emotional, hormonal teenagers were able to sit and reconcile their differences because their teacher made them have a conversation.

Today, it seems like we are a nation of highly emotional and hormonal teenagers yelling at each other over social media.

The problem is Facebook lied to us and told us we were friends. We are not. We are arguing with people with whom we have no relational equity. We have no right to correct or share an opposing view because we don’t know each other. We are not each other’s , “boys”.

America right now feels like my first period class that morning. Fear, sadness, disappointment permeates our nation. The division is deafening.

As Christians, we are looking for a divine act of God to come and fix our issues. But I believe God gave us a divine act 2000 years ago to fix this. He has given us the ministry of reconciliation. He has given us the capacity to love. He has equipped us with every spiritual blessing needed to reconcile.

So what should we do?

Pray and worship, then humble ourselves and have difficult conversations. Not to convince but to understand. Not to prove we are right but to build relational equity.

I encourage you to invite someone over for tea, whom you may have unfollowed or considered unfollowing on Facebook. Have a conversation. Get their perspective. See their point of view. Remember, the point is not to convert but simply to understand.

Talk about it.