Hopewit

  But now—apart from the law—the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished—he did it to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus. (Romans 3: 21-26, NIV) New Year, 2018.  My 76 th .  If New Year with its resolutions to do better actually produced a “step up” from the previous year, I should be a pretty remarkable person by now. At least if the

Shekinah Winter, December 2008 “Some few large men sat in the front parlors, without their collars, Uncles almost certainly, trying their new cigars, holding them out judiciously at arms’ length, returning them to their mouths, coughing, then holding them out again as though waiting for the explosion; and some few small aunts, not wanted in the kitchen, nor anywhere else for that matter, sat on the very edge of their chairs, poised and brittle, afraid to break, like faded cups and saucers.” A Child’s Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas has become classic Christmas-time reading. Rich in imagery and detail, it opens for us a tableau of this ancient Christian celebration as experienced by children in Wales, ca. 1950s. Go back another 110 years to Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol , ca. 1843, a story called by some “ a Victorian morality tale .” Scrooge, Marley, Bob Cratchitt, Tiny Tim and the ghosts of Christmases past, present and future still haunt our yul

So all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen generations; and from David until the carrying away into Babylon are fourteen generations; and from the carrying away into Babylon unto Christ are fourteen generations. (Matthew 1:17, KJV) Before retelling the story of the birth of Christ, Matthew’s gospel establishes the lineage of Jesus’ adoptive father, Joseph, thereby setting up for the nit-pickers the opportunity for a question: why Joseph’s lineage and not Mary’s? And the answer is: because it was a patriarchal (inheritance through the males) culture and (it’s been suggested) that Joseph and Mary shared a common lineage anyway. Working in a developing interpretive centre here in Rosthern, I field many questions by people hoping to discover clues to their lineage going back as far as possible. We generally seek to track down our heritage patrilinealy with the primary research method involving surnames. This has meant that tracing back as far as Matthew d

Martha and Mary, painted through the prism of bias As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him.     She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said.        But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!”     “Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.” (Luke 10:38-42, NIV) Jesus and his disciples apparently stopped in at Martha's and Mary’s house as they traveled. It sounds like it was primarily Martha’s house: “. . . Martha opened her home to him.” Whether or not their brother Lazarus was home on this occasion is uncertain, but Martha and Mary will again encount

Keep Christ in Christmas. At this time of year we hear that a lot. It’s become particularly pronounced since the sensitivity about respecting all faiths in schools and other public places has become a subject of national debate. For human rights advocates and progressives, Christmas as a national celebration that Canadians can enjoy together without reference to only one of the religions is probably OK. For some, “Happy Holidays,” has become a preferred salutation around the December solstice. To others, it’s a negation of faith and tradition, an attack on Canadianess. In places it’s even been characterized as an attack on Christianity, and that in a Christian country! I think we agree as citizens that no particular religion should be favoured in our public institutions, i.e. that students in a public school should not be taught to credit one religion over another. Nor would we impose on patients in a hospital any consideration of their treatment based on their religion

Walking Saskatchewan “Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to God’s elect , exiles scattered throughout the provinces of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia: Since you call on a Father who judges each person’s work impartially, live out your time as foreigners here in reverent fear. For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect.” (I Peter 1:1; 1:17-19) The Apostle Peter’s letters to “exiles scattered throughout the provinces” (roughly present day Turkey, plus) emphasize a few themes: As Christ suffered, so it is not unexpected that his followers will be made to suffer at the hands of the enemies of Christ, Your minds have been reborn through the Holy Spirit to a new, spiritual understanding of the world, and earthly pleasures and pursuits must no longer bind you

. . . a really nice place “The presence of God is infinte, everywhere, always, and forever. You cannot not be in the presence of God. There’s no other place to be. It is we who are not present to Presence. We’ll make any excuse to be somewhere else than right here. Right here, right now never seems enough. It actually is, but it is we who are not aware enough yet.” (Richard Rohr, https://cac.org/category/daily-meditations/ ) I’d be the first to admit that the contemplative life—including the language that contemplatives use—escapes me most of the time. “Contemplative prayer,” “emptying oneself,” “living in the here and now,” “God as presence,” these phrases mostly leave me feeling inadequate. I think of monks and gurus and orders like the Franciscans of Richard Rohr and wonder what I’m missing . . . and then wonder if it’s they that are missing something substantial that my Anabaptist heritage bequeathed to me. Radical Reformation Anabaptism and Evangelicalism

WARNING: This post may contain misinformation, repetition of lies that were mistakenly believed by the writer, and assertions that reflect the writer’s biases. It may also leave out what should be said because prejudices of the writer have inserted themselves. It’s that kind of a world. "Beauty is truth, truth beauty," – that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. - John Keats (Ode on a Grecian Urn ) Psalm 52:2-4 (NIV) You who practice deceit, your tongue plots destruction; it is like a sharpened razor. You love evil rather than good, falsehood rather than speaking the truth. You love every harmful word, you deceitful tongue! Does it begin when we’re children, defending ourselves with disinformation about someone else? Do we set out early on the road of equating falsehood with truth if doing so benefits us? And if we assert vehemently that “Joey broke the window,” and our mother says, “I believe you, honey” and gives us a hug,

Let's revise our constitution, YAWN It matters little how small or large your institution, organization, church, club or family is, fixing your constitution and bylaws —beginning with your mission statement—seems to represent the first task to which we will ever have to set our collective minds. The mission statement outlines the reasons for which all of the following bits and pieces exist, for the “because we want to be this, and accomplish this and that, we will do our politics this way . . . for now.” The value in composing mission statements, goals and bylaws is not in the text they eventually produce, it’s in the exercise of getting there. The evidence for that lies in the degree to which the resulting text is referred to or ignored as time goes by. In many organizations, the constitution and handbook have been hauled out and altered occasionally—piecemeal and haphazardly, generally—but most members are hard-pressed to know where the true, revised copy exist

Creation's attention to detail #1 Paul lifts a prayer for the church at Ephesus: “. . . that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him; the eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what [are] the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints . . ..” (Ephesians 1:17-18, KJV) Parsing the central thought here, Paul expresses the hope that God—in sending Jesus—has extended to them the “spirit of wisdom and revelation” so that they are in reach of the knowledge of what Christ’s coming means. The “spirit of wisdom and revelation” having “ enlightened the eyes of their understanding ,” Paul prays that they will recognize what a great hope lies in store for them. Maybe because I was born with one good eye and one “lodged with me useless,”  in Milton’s words—and am now living with cataracts and threatening glaucoma—that the

"Swimming in the same chaotic sea" - Taboga I’m halfway through rereading Stuart Murray’s, The Naked Anabaptist. As is often the case—I suspect with most people who have spent years studying and teaching the language medium—my mind wanders into the area of words, sentences, paragraphs, grammar, connotation and denotation. Why did Murray use that word? What connotations does this sentence carry that may be unintended? Murray’s use of the English language is generally above serious criticism; he was, after all, born and raised in England where education has tended to emphasize language-arts as core . . . at least historically. Without even having thought about it much, nearly all of us—I think—have come to know that semantically, words that end in ist are usually nouns and words that end in ic are generally adjectives (words that modify the meaning of nouns). In the sentence, “He’s a sarcastIC AnabaptIST,” the last word categorizes the person, the former adds

There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work. Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. To one there is given through the Spirit a message of wisdom, to another a message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit, to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy, to another distinguishing between spirits, to another speaking in different kinds of tongues, and to still another the interpretation of tongues. All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he distributes them to each one, just as he determines. (I Corinthians 12:4-11, NIV) The summer edition, 2017, of History Manitoba contains an article called “ Evangelization, not Legislation ,” by Nolan Bro

   . . . for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise. (Gal. 3:27-9, NIV)  One new humanity out of two, or three, or 2 million?? For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. (Eph. 2:14-16, NIV) South Korean born American citizen, Euna Lee, was captured by North Korean border guards as she was filming in a remote area along the Chinese/North Korean border. Imprisoned fo