Do you know?
Last year, more than 41 percent of home health aides in the U.S. were born outside the U.S. The data also shows that 30 percent of nursing home housekeeping and maintenance employees, 22 percent of nursing assistants, and 28 percent of personal care aides are foreign-born. With the administration ending temporary protected status for hundreds of thousands of people from more than a dozen countries, many legal residents working in health care are being forced to leave the U.S.
“..when the student is ready, the teacher will appear.”
I do wonder how often I approached the ways of Jesus before I was truly ready for the teacher himself. Because when you do that – when you want the lesson without the embodied teacher – you end up with half-understood principles and cobbled together best-practices and take-aways for personal enrichment that can be easily corrupted rather than true transformation, let alone friendship with God.
Sarah Bessey
Salvation
Salvation, like all things in God’s creation, is dynamic and not static. Those who reduce salvation to a single moment, “I was saved,” run the risk of distorting the proper understanding of the Christian life.
From Stephen Freeman
Augustine
“Whoever thinks he has understood the divine Scriptures or any part of them in such a way that his understanding does not build up the twin love of God and neighbour has not yet understood them at all.”
Scripture
Some aspects of scripture are meant to be lived into, rather than forced to fit before their time. The doors of understanding stay locked until love or grief or sometimes both have handed us the key for safe passage beyond.
Sarah Bessey
Jesus Man
Jesus — the one Christian men are called to follow — was not a domineering presence. He didn’t flex power. He didn’t silence dissent. He didn’t grab for control. When crowds tried to force him into kingship, he walked away. When his disciples argued about who was the greatest among them — a classic alpha move — he rebuked them gently and said, “Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant.” (Matthew 20:26)
Hearing confession
Shouldn’t every Christ follower, like priests hearing confession listen intently for the state of the heart (if possible) rather than simply categorizing and subjecting to legal analysis what they hear? Always mindful, it is considered a sin to judge someone whose confession you are hearing. How that would impact Christ followers’ relationships ?
Are my prayers focused on other’s behavior or on the healing of their hearts?
Words of the Prophets
The words of the prophets are not so much prediction as imagination, but it is the kind of faith-inspired imagination that stimulates humans to live into that imagined, alternative world—or at least enter it. The prophet’s language is like the wardrobe into Narnia
Scot McKnight
Seeking the Kingdom of God
“Those who seek first the Kingdom and its righteousness respond to an evil act not by ensuring an equal amount of harm is repaid to the perpetrator, but in a way that reflects the character of the Kingdom. This means neither passively ignoring the evil, nor repaying it with evil in hand, but exposing evil for what it is, and the harm it does. It also means imitating the generosity of God, who has a loving father gives what is needed to his children who ask for it. In order to follow Jesus’s command to give with boundless generosity one must trust that God will meet one’s needs.”
Jesse P Nickel
Progress in China
…when I lived in Fuling, [1996] it took eight hours to go to Chongqing, which was kind of the nearest place that you’re connected with the outside world. When I went back, [2019] it was 38 minutes. That eight hours had become 38 minutes on a high-speed train. They had rail lines. They had multiple highways. So all of those changes are just—it’s unbelievable. In one generation. This kind of change would have been 50 years or 100 years in many parts of the world.
Peter Hessler
View from the front porch
Peacemaker
Interestingly, when you Google “peacemaker” and search images the first three above show up. The DC Marvel comic character Peacemaker dominates. I added the most recent touted peacemaker Bunker Buster Bomb. They all represent a prevailing assumption that peace is achieved through power; the means justify the end, peace is the absence of conflict.
I, like most people, would be described as a peace (no conflict) lover. I have a deep longing for peace. Everyone wants peace. We are willing to pay almost any price for peace. Peace is so desirable that it justifies whatever means are necessary, including, ironically, violence. Regretfully pride, dignity, money, and principle, to name a few, have been the currency of peace in my life.
Longing for the absence of conflict is fool’s gold. There is something better … Jesus is our Shalom:
“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.” 1 John 14:27
The Hebrew word shalom is often translated “peace,” but it signifies something much deeper, broader, and more profound than that. Shalom refers to wholeness, completeness, integrity of relationships, flourishing, a sense of safety and security, and the feeling that all is right and rightly ordered in our lives. 2 Parker J Palmer
Peacemakers in the world:
… ask God to bless everyone who mistreats them.
… when others are happy, they are happy with them.
… when others are sad, they are sad.
… they are friendly with everyone.
… they aren’t proud or feel they are better than others.
… they make friends with ordinary people.
… they don’t mistreat someone who has mistreated them.
… they try to earn the respect of others.
… they do their best to live at peace with everyone.
… they understand that not everyone wants peace.
… they don’t try to get even, they trust in a just God.
According to Nobel’s will, the Peace Prize shall be awarded to the person who in the preceding year “shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses”.
STILL ON THE JOURNEY
- 1John 14:27
- 2Parker J Palmer