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My prayer
Let me share some wishes for Canadian Mennonite, which are largely my prayer for the overall endeavour of faith. These are topics I’m drawn to and challenges I note. Tuesday afternoon. I’m drawn to church that happens when people are not sitting inside on Sunday morning. Sunday services can be a blessing but what happens…
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Women who prepared the way for Jesus
Rahab acts by faith Joshua 2:1-21; 6:22-25; Matthew 1:5; Hebrews 11:29-31; James 2:23-26. Beyond the narrative in Joshua and Jesus’ genealogy, Rahab is mentioned two other times in Scripture. Both times her name appears in a list of heroes of the faith, and it seems like a miracle that this woman, a prostitute with only…
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Pain, longing, hope and joy
On a Monday in the fall of 2014, Christopher Clymer Kurtz was supposed to be teaching middle-school English, but was distracted with an idea for a song. On Tuesday of that week, he worked out a melody. On Friday, his spouse Maria dove into older Christmas songs, like “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear,” “O…
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Indonesian peacemaking
I am frequently asked, “What was it like to be in Indonesia for the Mennonite World Conference [MWC] assembly?” There are many possible answers, but today I want to focus on learning from our Indonesian Anabaptist sisters and brothers on how and why they build strong invitational relationships with their Muslim neighbours. Indonesia has the…
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Kazakhstan
There is a lot to take in on this photomontage of the Mennonite Brethren Church Choir from Badamsha, Kazakhstan—in Soviet parlance, a “closed city”—in 1971. Individual portraits of choir members, identified by first initial and last name, are grouped around an image of a modest building, presumably the “prayer house,” they had just received permission…
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Fun, smart and committed
One of my farmers annually invites me for a combine ride to educate this city slicker on “Ag 101.” It’s a thrill to watch the header of the harvesting machine munch through swaths, hawks diving behind us for mice. He’s a captive audience for my complaints and occasionally hits a badger hole on purpose. Good…
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‘MDS was such a big part of her life’
All was quiet on Sept. 6, at 9 a.m., as Mennonite Disaster Service (MDS) volunteers in Monte Lake put down their tools and paused for a moment of silence. They were doing it in memory of Evelyn Greenwood, a long-time volunteer with MDS, who was killed in a tragic accident exactly one year earlier. They…
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People at Play
The commonality of playing games throughout history, and how and why civilizations have played those games, are the foci of the current featured exhibit, “Let’s Play!” at Columbia Bible College’s Metzger Collection museum. “The exhibit seeks not only to highlight a consistency in humanity across history in the commonality of playing board games, but to…
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Drawing the circle bigger
“Our theme for the dialogue today is ‘Drawing the circle Bigger,’ ” said Scott Sharman, emcee for the annual Christian-Muslim Interfaith Dialogue, held on Oct. 29 in Edmonton. “We are asking our speakers to help us understand how our call into dialogue as Muslims and Christians also calls us to broaden the dialogue further. In particular,…
