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An Ordinary Woman’s Response to Global Crisis
Horror. Sadness. Anxiety. Anger. Guilt. With these emotions, I watched religious fanatics take over the ravaged land of Afghanistan leaving women, girls, Christians, and the marginalized desperately scrambling for their lives. This crisis is just the most recent example of pain, injustice, and all that is wrong in our world. The latest that eclipses many others: an earthquake in the already devastated nation of Haiti; Chinese Christians in re-education camps; Indonesian citizens dying outside hospitals for lack of beds, oxygen, and vaccines; flames destroying entire towns in California; Lebanon in economic, social, and political downfall. And all this exacerbated by a continuing global pandemic. What does an ordinary western woman…
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“The Gospel Comes with a House Key”
We all have them. That short stack of books that have profoundly impacted our lives. Changed not only our understanding but the way we live. To my short stack I’m adding Rosaria Butterfield’s The Gospel Comes with a House Key. I’ve read several books on “hospitality.” But none have reached as deeply into the way I think about and practice hospitality as her discussion of it as the overflow of table fellowship and caregiving. Rosaria and her husband’s daily schedule radically incorporates preparing extra food, engaging with neighbors, and filling their guest room as a way to make “strangers into neighbors, and neighbors into the family of God.” In…
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Part Four- Demonstrating love through acts of service
It was the middle of January and unseasonably cold and miserable weather for Texas. Rain was coming down in sheets. We were on our way home from a family dinner night. As we sat at the intersection waiting for the light to change we couldn’t help but notice a woman standing on the corner fighting the wind and rain with her umbrella. As we watched, the woman’s umbrella turned inside out and and rained pelted her. “Oh no!” my daughter said. And we all groaned in sympathy. Glad to see the bus coming to pick the woman up, I said to my daughter, “well at least she is going to…
