Gifts received, gifts given
As Christmas approaches, many of us are thinking about gifts. The beautifully wrapped packages under the Christmas tree, of course. Also other types of gifts—the kind that we can receive and give at any time of the year. The gifts that require more than a click on a website or a trip to the mall.…
Resting in the shadow of hope
Recently, I read a book that unsettled my sense of hope. In her memoir I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness, Austin Channing Brown, a racial-justice leader, writes about growing up Black, Christian and female, and her journey to self-worth while navigating America’s racial divide. In the final chapter, “Standing in…
Readers write: December 7, 2020 issue
Liberals let off easy in Tommy Prince feature Re: “Expanding the reconciliation tent,” Oct. 12, page 4. This unnecessarily politicized article comes across as a subtle demonization of Conservatives. To illustrate, I point out the highlighted quotation on page 5: “The Conservatives acknowledge the racism Prince faced upon his return from war, when he and…
Growing with our global faith family
In the early 2000s, I sat in the church office of Pastor Wang in southern China. He was lamenting the fact that 300 people from his congregation had signed up to take baptismal classes during services over the Christmas weekend. I tried to encourage him by saying that that number was beyond a Canadian congregation’s…
Rosedale Church of God
The Rosedale Church of God in Christ, Mennonite (also known as Holdeman) is in the community of Crooked Creek, Alta. This photo is from the 1970s, but the community began in 1928 and is located 72 kilometres east of Grand Prairie, Alta. In 2019, this congregation’s membership was 178. Worldwide, the Holdeman community had 26,648…
‘Touch the hem of her cloak’
I have a friend. Her name is Samantha (a pseudonym). I called Samantha last night and invited her to a church service next Sunday. It will be an Eternity service, during which candles are lit for those in our lives who have died. Samantha assured me she would be there. Samantha is a widow. Her husband…
A gift to faith
Advent is the season of waiting for the gift to come. Advent moves into the season of Christmas, which ends at Epiphany, when the Magi—possibly Zoroastrians—famously gave gifts to the infant Jesus. In these monthly columns I have tried to emphasize the mind as a gift essential to faith. Another emphasis is that our objective…
Sovereign of good and bad
What do you do when you maybe don’t believe the Bible—or at least a particular part of it? Amos 3 has a list of rhetorical questions from God: “Does a lion roar in the thicket when he has no prey?” “Does a trap spring up from the earth when there is nothing to catch?” And…
A church once sacred and safe is now suspect
My grandfather smoked, but I didn’t know it. Grandma didn’t want us to see him smoking and pick up the habit, but they agreed he could continue as long as it was out of sight. I had no idea until years after his passing, when a coworker returned from a smoke break smelling just like…
