Hopewit

Sunset on Las Lajas Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.   (Matthew 5:9 NIV) Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.   (Matthew 10:34 NIV) We hoped for peace but no good has come, for a time of healing but there is only terror.  (Jeremiah 8:15 NIV) We were reclining on lounges on the beach called Las Lajas in Panama. Gentle breakers followed each other in to meet the sand; the sky was the bluest blue with only a few cotton clouds drifting west to east. One of us was far out where we could barely see him, letting the surf break over him; one of us was knitting a blanket for an unknown Ngobi baby; one of us was reading and another of us daydreaming about oceans and pirates, surfs and foam and the possibility that these breakers had been rolling in just here long before anything resembling human beings had been seen on this earth. “Did y...

Before the Beginning Starting a quarrel is like breaching a dam; so drop the matter before a dispute breaks out. (Proverbs 17:14) Proverbs counts among the books we call Wisdom Literature in the Bible. It often reads like a grandma babysitting us as children and reciting for us her homespun maxims in response to our naughtiness: “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all!” It’s easy to argue, “but that was then and this is now,” but much of grandma’s wisdom was won over millenniums of human experience and, most likely, her personal experience of offensive words cutting like a hot knife. Despite the perceived advantages offered by our post-modern sophistication, neglecting traditional wisdom persists as folly. But maxims and proverbs generally contain only a grain of the truth. They also contain or omit a flip-side truth that the unobservant might easily miss. “Woe to him who so fears controversy that evil doers remain unchallenged, their pe...

 “ 18 Jesus asked, “What is God’s kingdom like? To what can I compare it? 19 It’s like a mustard seed that someone took and planted in a garden. It grew and developed into a tree and the birds in the sky nested in its branches.” 20 Again he said,“To what can I compare God’s kingdom? 21 It’s like yeast, which a woman took and hid in a bushel of wheat flour until the yeast had worked its way through the whole.” (Luke 13:18-21, CEB) I’m reading a collection of essays edited by Delbert F. Plett, Q.C., called Old Colony Mennonites in Canada, 1875 to 2000. Today’s thoughts arose there. In the 1870’s, Mennonites from Fuerstenlandt , Bergthal and Chortitz colonies in Russia emigrated to Canada, onto a large block of land reserved by the Canadian Government for what would be a mass migration of agriculturalist settlers. Before making the big move, a privilegium was signed with Canada that guaranteed them freedom of religion, freedom from military service and the right t...