Hope in a bleak midwinter
Canadians are struggling with the heaviness of this winter. The prospect of several more months with physical gathering restrictions is as depressing as the grey skies of southern Ontario in February. As a society, we have started to squabble, point fingers and shift blame. The arrival of COVID-19 vaccines in December buoyed our spirits as…
Stones of remembrance
“And Joshua set up at Gilgal the twelve stones they had taken out of the Jordan. He said to the Israelites, ‘In the future when your descendants ask their parents, “What do these stones mean?” tell them, “Israel crossed the Jordan on dry ground”’” (Joshua 4:20-22). The crossing of the Jordan River was a key…
Readers write: February 1, 2021 issue
Might Jesus have really said ‘Our Mother’? Re: “Gendered images of God,” Nov. 23, 2020, page 23. The committee that worked on the new hymnal, Voices Together, says that “the decisions made about the language used for God may be unsettling for some.” I am one of those. I’m sure we all believe that Jesus…
The crowd
Many of us are taking crowds very seriously these days and avoiding them as much as possible. For the sake of public health, I cannot encourage this enough. But there’s a crowd we have been avoiding since long before the pandemic started. That crowd is a constant reality throughout the gospel stories, following Jesus wherever…
Jacob Kroeker
Scarlet fever, cholera, diphtheria, smallpox, typhoid and whooping cough were some of communicable diseases that plagued communities in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Jacob Kroeker (1836-1914) came to Manitoba in 1876 and settled in the village of Schoenweise. From 1881 to 1885 halskrankeit (diptheria) was a significant communicable illness that affected many. During this…
Connections
I believe it is important that we are called to belong to a faith community that is beyond our own congregation. My main question today is: “How do we belong, how do we connect with the people in our Anabaptist church (regional, nationwide, international) beyond our congregation? In previous decades, we learned about and developed…
Losing freedom?
I’m writing this on Jan. 18 and I’m wondering how tone deaf my article will seem by the time you read it. I have no idea what the world will be like in a few days, let alone a few weeks. Who knows what catastrophic event or pivotal moment in history will have occurred between…
Wise stories can build peace
In the aftermath of last year’s Black Lives Matter protests, and the violence that boiled over in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6 of this year, it feels as though tensions are rising in our society. As fear escalates, we wonder how to find a way for everyone to get along without violence. In his book…
You are invited to join the table
Mennonite Church Canada’s International Witness program invites congregations across its nationwide community of faith to join networks of support for its International Witness ministries. “Being part of the network for the Philippines reminds us that we are part of something much bigger than ourselves,” says Marlene Friesen of Emmanuel Mennonite Church in Abbotsford, B.C.…
