Trusting the Easter story
I have a vivid childhood memory of hearing my mother read C.S. Lewis’s book, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Chapters 14 and 15 tell the story of the battle between life and death: the horrific killing of the hero, Aslan, the grieving of his faithful friends, and his triumphant emerging into life once…
Called to deep hope
Mary Magdalene couldn’t have known the end of the story—how things would turn out. How could she? She, and the rest of the disciples, were no different from the rest of us. The future is cloudy at best. We don’t know what the next day will hold. Back then, no one saw the resurrection coming.…
Readers write: April 4, 2022 issue
Marriage is a spiritual union of soulmates Re: “God didn’t create you wrong,” Feb. 21, page 4. Nicolien Klassen Wiebe shows how Mennonite churches have been struggling with questions around the growing number of transgender and gender-diverse members in our congregations. One of the key issues is about marriage in the church. In the past…
‘It is hard to be afraid when you understand’
Our new Voices Together hymnal invites us to expand our circle. This involves getting to know people with different abilities, cultural ways, histories, faiths and stories that shaped them. It involves welcoming everyone as members of our human family. In a recent webinar, author Omar Mouallem shared from his recently published book, Praying to the…
Ontario Women in Mission gathering
Spring! A time to shake off the cold and grey, decorate the church auditorium with quilts and share lunch and spiritual sustenance. This is the annual spring meeting and lunch of the Ontario Women in Mission at Bethany Mennonite Church in Virgil, Ont., in 1986. For more historical photos in the Mennonite Archival Image Database,…
A difficulty for all of us
War seems close to home for many of us when it hits Ukraine. My paternal grandparents (and my husband’s) fled Crimea as refugees nearly 100 years ago, getting married in Kitchener, Ont., and then moving to Manitoba. Conversations are being triggered in my family and in our congregation on the multi-generational impacts of those traumas.…
Good Friday and the important travel companion
Can you believe that I proposed to my wife in a cemetery? It wasn’t premeditated. We went for a walk and ended up there. That’s when it felt right. I got down on one knee like a sentimentalist and said, “This is where it starts and this is where it ends.” The line just came…
Mend our beating heart
My grandfather, Harry Giesbrecht, referred to the country, language and people of Ukraine as his “beating heart.” The many trips back “home” breathed life into his aging lungs. The cool water of the Dnieper, the pothole-riddled roads near Lichtenau, Molochansk and Nikopol, and the patriotic anthems transformed my 80-year-old grandfather into a young man. During…
In search of the holy grey
With the worst of the pandemic behind us—hopefully—how can the church help address the division left in its wake? Those divisions were highlighted rather starkly by the truck convoys. And though the trucks have gone home, the fervour lives on. On both sides. Lines are drawn. Officially, our denominational leaders were 100 percent onboard with…
Out of the pews and into the community
“We are out of the pews but in the community,” writes congregational member Olga Duran in the latest Toronto Mennonite New Life Church report, which summarizes 2021 as a year of immense giving and receiving of community support. For this congregation, gathering virtually has contributed to growth in a myriad of ways, including fostering local…
