Hopewit

"If I had a Million Dollars," I wouldn't be sittin' under this tree, waitin' for a bus. Ajijic, Jalisco, Mexico, March 2019 The wealth of the rich is their fortified city, but poverty is the ruin of the poor. (Proverbs 10:15) How poor do you have to be to be poor ? How rich do you have to be to be called wealthy ? Type the words poor and poverty into the search engine on a Bible website like Bible Gateway and you’ll leave with the impression that the wealth/poverty tension is not only present from Genesis to Revelation, but that it’s one of its central themes. Granted, we have all kinds of conventional wisdom about the obvious, which is that there have always been rich people who are able to luxuriate in the freedom excessive means provide, and there have always been a vast majority preoccupied with scraping together the bare necessities of survival. “ Money can’t buy happiness.” Who said that, and if it’s true, why do the bulk...

1903 - 1912 Rosthern's first Mennonite sanctuary; 1913 - 2014 Rosthern New Church Society, 2016- present. Chapel preserved by Mennonite Interpretive Centre on the Rosthern Junior College campus. © Thanks! Really! Thanksgiving Sunday, October 13 th , 2019 Aberdeen Mennonite Church If you’re like me, you probably have a set of associations relating to Thanksgiving Day. Turkey, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie come to mind easily. Autumn leaves, the picture of bins brimming with wheat, crisp cold of October mornings, and displays of grain sheaves, garden produce and fruit in an amazing still-life at the front of church. And the hymns, “We plow the fields and scatter, the good seed on the land, but it is fed and watered by God’s almighty hand.” And maybe some of us think first of “Come, ye thankful people come, raise the song of harvest home. All is safely gathered in, ere the winter storms begin.” The association of harvest and Thanksgiving is probably as old as t...

Chilton Beach, PEI after Dorian What do you think of when you hear either if these two phrases: Free Speech, Political Correctness? I just finished listening to a YouTube interview: Rex Murphy interviewing Jordan B. Peterson on YouTube .  You may be aware of the notoriety surrounding Peterson, some—at least—relating to a dispute over what constitutes free speech on university campuses.  Mainly, it’s been Antifa and progressive-leaning students blockading speakers holding views considered to be anti-immigration, anti “political correctness”, or generally—and too simply put, I admit—those advocating extreme right-wing positions politically.  I’ve tuned in to other appearances by Peterson on YouTube, and am currently reading his 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos , a book with wide circulation, enough at least to make the Canadian Clinical Psychologist a millionaire--and something of a celebrity. Anyone who watched CBC a number of years back w...

"The Church," Jocotepec, Jalisco, Mexico, 2019 “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this [that Jesus is the Messiah, the son of the living God] was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven. And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades [place of the dead] will not overcome it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” (Matthew 16:17-19, NIV) The book launch for Isaac Janssen, MDiv (October 1 st at Common Word in Winnipeg) precipitated a lot of discussion late into the evening on the future of “the church.” A friend talked about experiences of visiting churches in Winnipeg and compared them as regards music quality, sermon delivery, attendance, liveliness and so on, and since we’re faced with traditional, “old-line churches” declining in numbers and non-denominationa...