The waves and wind still know his name

The Storm on the Sea of Galilee, Rembrandt

This past Sunday at church, my pal Alli sang this song from Bethel's You Make Me Brave album. It is a re-imagination of the classic hymn "It is Well." There is a line in the song that says "The waves and wind still know His name."

Yesterday, at Bible study, we happened to be on digging into passage from Mark 4:

On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, “Let us go across to the other side.” And leaving the crowd, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. And other boats were with him. And a great storm of wind arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already filling. But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care if we perish?” And he awoke and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. He said to them, “Why are you afraid? Have you no faith?” And they were filled with awe, and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even wind and sea obey him?”

There are so many aspects of this short part of the Bible that I could talk about: the fact that Jesus can control the weather with only his voice; the contrast of the chaos of the sea and the peace of Jesus. But what really grabbed me about this passage is the question the disciples asked Jesus. It is a question we all ask, in our hearts: "Teacher, do you not care if we perish?" 

The disciples had seen Jesus heal people who nobody else could heal, forgive people's sins, teach brilliantly, and cast out demons. They had left their families and careers to follow this compelling young teacher around the countryside and learn from him. But now they were in a difficult situation. It was the dead of night and they were in the middle of the sea. They were, both figuratively and literally, out of their depth. And here was Jesus, asleep while the chaos surrounded them. It was Jesus' idea to go to the other side. But he seemed utterly unconcerned with their current situation. And so they asked "Do you not care if we perish?"

It is a question that was planted in the Garden of Eden when the serpent asked, "Did God really say you must not eat the fruit from any of the trees in the garden?" This question could also be phrased "Do you not care if we perish?" In the end, it is all the same question: "Does God really care about me?" or "Does God really love me?" Here, Jesus shows that faith is not believing in his power: surely the disciples believed, at least some amount, when they asked the question. He shows that faith is believing in his goodness. With only three words, Jesus puts an end to the terrifying, seemingly uncontrollable storm. With that, he shows that the disciple's fear was pointless. He loved them. He did care if they perished, and moreover, he could actually do something about it.

And this is the truth: Jesus is both powerful and loving. Let me tell you, this is perhaps the hardest thing to know. But that is faith. You've gone all Carrie Underwood and cried "Jesus, take the wheel," and now you wonder if he's actually asleep at the wheel. Jesus has said "Let us go across to the other side," and you go but in the middle you wonder if he still cares. Faith is being in the middle of the storm and knowing Jesus has the power to help you, and asking. Faith is being able to sleep in the storm, because you know God will help you reach the other side. 

In my life right now this is my struggle. A lot of things are up in the air in my future, meaning I live each day with no idea what tomorrow is going to look like. Despite God having done so many amazing things in my life to date, the question still creeps in: "Does he really love me?" And I read this story, and think YES YES YES. He does. Friends, he does love you. Trust him. Trust his goodness. He does care if you perish. He wants to help you. He has power over all the chaos in your life.

Also check this out. My friend Mark wrote this song that relates to this passage as well.  

Sticks and stones

It has been about an hour since I completed [most] of the final edits on my major research paper, and already I feel an itching to write. I have spent the last few months of my life doing almost exclusively that, and yet it is something I must do more.

Everyone seems to be a writer these days, and I am part of that "everyone." I have no special training in writing. The power of social media and blogging, though, helps amateurs like me have their words disseminated all over the world. And I think that is hopeful, because it gives voice to people who maybe have never had a voice before. But that is also terrifying, because I see people every day on social media who share hateful opinions and false information to an audience of thousands.

This problem really came into light here in Nova Scotia over the weekend, when the Chronicle Herald, which is currently staffed by temporary, freelance reporters due to a labour dispute, published an article suggesting that former refugee children were assaulting other children at a Halifax elementary school. The article was published anonymously, with anonymous sources quoting anonymous elementary school students. Even I, as an amateur, saw that it completely lacked any journalistic integrity. And yet the story was picked up by a number of far-right-wing sites, like The Rebel. Due to backlash, the Chronicle Herald has since removed the story online, but that does not change the fact that it was already printed, and shared by hundreds of people. The worst part of this whole thing is that the article demonized children. These are not just ordinary children, either. These are children who have experienced a great deal of trauma and are now trying to integrate into a completely new environment, learn a new language, and be part of a new culture. The last thing they need is people accusing them of violence with no evidence of such.

I think there is so much cowardice in that article: There was cowardice of the paper for not identifying the name of the author of the piece. There was cowardice of the complainant who did not use her real name. Finally, perhaps most importantly, there was cowardice of everyone who read the article, believed it, and shared it. Why did people believe this article? Why was it printed in the first place? I am guessing that it was because it lined up with the assumptions that people already hold. But it sure revealed a lot of ugliness about the people in this province I love. It revealed that people in this province feel so threatened by these most vulnerable of people that they invent slander about these people.

Words have power. The Chronicle Herald used their power this weekend to malign newcomer children, one of the most vulnerable groups in our society. Everyone is a writer in 2016, and sometimes those words hurt others.

And of course I cannot write a blog post without mentioning Jesus. Words have power, and Jesus used his words to heal, not hurt. As one who writes, I pray that my words can have the same kind of power Jesus' words had: prophetic, healing power.

Top ten moments in the past year

I made a commitment this Lenten season to write more. Here's the beginning of that.

I like life at 24. I am learning to quit taking myself so seriously. Life does not look like I thought it would but it is no less full and beautiful.

Here are some snapshots of my 10 favourite moments of the past year, in no particular order. There are a lot of honorable mentions that I did not put here but are nonetheless favourites. It's been a good year. This is not everything that happened in my life, or even the most memorable. They are just some moments I think are pretty special.

1. Pelting my brother and sister-in-law with rice at their wedding reception
I got to see this moment from behind the lens. This entire weekend was a euphoric joy-fest, and Martin and Candice's frantic run through this rice-tunnel made me belly laugh with the gleeful absurdity of the whole thing.

 

 

2. Running toward the prodigal son 

I wrote an entire blog post on this a while back. I will treasure this moment for a long time, as a picture of how God feels about us. When we don't think we deserve His love, He's running toward us like a child. 

3. Exploring Bell Island, Newfoundland
I had the best weekend in Newfoundland with some pretty awesome people. To be honest, I was going to put "Tasting the best pizza in the world" as one of my top moments of the year, but then I figured nobody would believe that the best pizza in the world is in St. John's. But it is. You can take my word for it. 

4. Crossing the finish line at Mud Hero
Is there anything more empowering than conquering obstacles and your own limitations to emerge victorious? And I wouldn't have done it with anyone other than these two mighty women. Yay for positive female role models! 

5. Listening to Hey Rosetta! and Yukon Blonde sing "Land You Love"
 I had been wanting to hear Hey Rosetta! live for almost ten years, but it just hadn't worked out until this past November. They were touring with Yukon Blonde, and earlier in the tour, while it had been election season here in Canada, the two groups had recorded a song together called "Land You Love." It's a protest song, and calls for a change in government. When we saw Hey Rosetta! in Halifax, the election was over and a new government was in place. There was a really hopeful tone to the night. When they sang the lyrics "When I was a child, I sang the anthem with pride/it stood for justice, peace, and human rights," the crowd cheered. It was one of the more magical moments I've experienced at a show.

6. Finally arriving home
As many of you know, my mom was receiving treatments for multiple myeloma (a type of blood/bone cancer) over much of 2014 and 2015. I was away at school in Ontario for much of this time, and I loved it there, but I treasured the time I spent with my Mom as she recovered in spring 2015. I am having difficulty finding the words to describe how I felt when I finally arrived home after my three-day journey across half the country. Home is comfort. Home is relief. Home is belonging. Being a caregiver for my mom for a short time was such a gift. There is a kind of justice to it: my mother has always nurtured me, even as I was in the womb, so it is right that I nurture her, now. Mom's in remission, now, her hair's grown back and she has more energy.

7. Completing an ill-fated Cape Split Hike (no photo available)
At the end of this summer, my dear friend Davita and I decided to hang out for a weekend. We decided to hike Cape Split. It was raining. We did not think it was that bad. It was. Our phones both got fried. We were terrified of being hit by lightening as well. It was like being in the rainforest in the wet season. But there was a lot of joy in our chats about boys and feminism, even if they were punctuated by getting our feet stuck in the mud or by mad dashes when we heard thunder nearby. There was also joy in settling down later with a warm cup of hot chocolate and an obscene amount of carbs. I am really thankful for Davita's friendship and hospitality over the years!

8. Camping with old friends
It is a truth universally acknowledged that stew tastes 1000 times better when it's been cooked over a hot fire in the woods. These ladies have been spread all over the continent/globe, so it's a blessing when we all get to be here on the East Coast. And it's even more of a blessing to spend some time together with each other and with nature.

9. Canoeing on Lake George
I got to visit Kingswood Camp a couple of times this summer, and one of the times, my beautiful sister-in-law Candice took me out on the lake for a canoe. It was one of the only times I got to canoe this summer, which is too bad, but I really enjoyed being out on the lake that evening. It reminded me of all of the ways God has blessed me. In the summer of 2014, we were on that same lake when my mom had an accident and broke her collar bone, leading to the diagnosis of multiple myeloma. But still, every time I am canoeing or swimming or just sitting by the lake, I feel an overwhelming sense of peace. That can only come from God. When I look back on that tranquil night this past summer when Candice and I went canoeing, I thank God for His beautiful creation. I thank God that my mom is recovering. And I thank God that my brother married someone as sweet, wise, and caring as Candice. It was Martin's choice to make Candice a part of our family, and I am really thankful that he made that choice, and that Candice did too. 

10. Any and all moments spend with my "grandson"
I am actually best friends with an eight-year old boy, and that has a lot of advantages. He laughs at my ridiculous jokes and he can eat a piece of birthday cake in two bites. He keeps me honest, too. Kids remember what they tell you, so you better be sure to mean what you say. I have often prayed for the "fruits of the spirit" as listed in Galatians 5, and this boy is helping me become more patient, kind, and gentle every day.

Power

When my Grammy Phoebe had dementia, she lived with my family. Sometimes I would accompany her on outings, like to get her hair cut or to buy something at the mall. I was a young teenager and if the inherent self-consciousness of being 14 weren't enough, I had the added benefit of moving at the pace of an elderly, confused women. I was always sure we were causing a scene, and I would be simultaneously apologetic to the people we were inevitably inconveniencing and agitated at my grandmother for her sloth-like ways.

***

My eight-year old neighbour came to sit next to me in church the other Sunday. He is fidgety at the best of times, and it church this seems magnified. When we sang hymns, he stood up on the pew and belted them out at the top of his little lungs: "JOY TO THE WORLD," as if in a competition for singing volume. I didn't want to tell him to be quiet, because, hey, he was a boy singing in church. I was afraid he'd never sing again if I told him "Shh." But I began to notice the annoyed glances of other parishioners, as his singing drowned out the slightly more reserved congregation, and I couldn't wait until it was time for him to go to his Bible class downstairs, and be disassociated with me. 

***

My friends and I had planned to go to a concert together, and the day of the concert, one friend learned that her university classmate, a close friend, had passed away. I asked if my friend still wanted to go to the concert. She did, and we drove the two hours to Moncton with not much talk about the heaviness we all felt. We tried to enjoy the concert the best we could, stopping at McDonald's, greeting friends from away with smiles, and taking in the music of a favourite artist. But during a slow song, a song about the joy we can have through Christ, the tears came, and we stood in the centre of a throng of people at a concert, surrounding our grieving friend. I have never been good at knowing what to do at times like these, and I just hugged her, trying to ignore the quizzical expressions of others around us. I am not good at comforting people. It makes me uncomfortable. 

***

When my mother had her stem cell transplant, she stayed in a place a block away from the hospital. It is a kind of a hotel for people who need to be close to medical care. I joined her for some time as her primary care partner. Every morning, we walked at a snail's pace to the hospital for the morning's appointment. At this time I had strained my knee and my mother was thin and pale and hairless and so we walked together slowly, the cancer patient and the girl limping with a cane. People had to pass us on the street. Once someone offered to carry my bags for me, which, as an able-bodied person, had never happened to me before. I was taken off-guard and insisted on carrying them for the few more steps into the building. 

***

These are just a few stories, and I have many more. They are stories of times I wished away the ugliness and the mess and all that is different and uncomfortable in the world. They are times I wish I could be seen with someone powerful instead of someone powerless, times I wanted to say to people, "This isn't me. I'm normal. I'm successful. I fit into society just fine." They are situations that make me really uncomfortable and that I would rather avoid. 

This Christmas, I am reminded, gracefully, of the kinds of situations Jesus chooses to be in. Jesus embraces the very situations I try to avoid. He, though human, forgoes that human habit of striving for upward mobility, and instead makes himself so vulnerable that he has to be delivered by a woman. This is the Christmas story: the Creator being fed at the breast of a new mother. Jesus your King is born. And it continues: he seeks out the messy, ugly corners of life that I like to forget about. He weeps with Mary and Martha for their brother Lazarus, even though he was just about to raise Lazarus from the dead. He chooses to suffer with his friends first. He eats dinner with Zacchaeus, a reviled tax-collector. He welcomes little children when people think he should be doing more important things. In one of my all-time favourite stories, he is on his way to heal a rich, powerful person's daughter when a bleeding woman, a social outcast, touches his garment. The Bible says she was healed just by touching his robe, but Jesus goes farther than physical healing. He stops. He asks for her story. He calls her daughter.

Jesus came and spent time with the powerless. He entered situations of pain and suffering and did not think about how that may affect his position in society. I need to be reminded of this, daily. I post articles on Facebook and hope they make me sound smart. I am a compulsive name-dropper, eager to advertise my connection to a Very Important Person, because that means I am important, too, right? Sometimes I read books just so I can say I've read them, or buy books just because they'd look good on my shelf. And I am even afraid to write these confessions, because I wonder: Does this make me seem insecure? What if people think I am insecure? 

So I confess: yes, I am insecure. I grasp tightly to power and status because somewhere inside, I still believe that is what brings success in this life. And daily I need to be reminded of what is truly important: to love God and to love others, even (especially) in the uncomfortable places. 

***

I can't say this is entirely original. It was inspired, a lot, by the Bible, of course, and by some things I have read online lately:

How No Ache or Fear or Division Can Steal our Merry Christmas [with Spoken Word Poem: “An Advent Lament & a Brave Merry Christmas”] 

Excerpt: "God knows suffering. He chose to be born in the middle of a genocide. God knows suffering. He chose to be born as a refugee.

God knows suffering. He chose to come from a place where people said no good thing could come from. God knows suffering. He chose to be poor. He chose to absorb pain. He chose to be powerless."

Listening well as a person of privilege: Solidarity first, collaborative problem-solving later 

Excerpt: "When you’re used to living life on the clean, paved sidewalk of society, it can be uncomfortable to descend into the muddy ditch of oppression in order to stand in solidarity with the oppressed.  In their haste to escape their own discomfort, privileged folks can choose the easy route: to fix the oppressed person’s problem ASAP, thus ridding the privileged person of the discomfort of standing in the ditch or even the awareness that such a ditch exists."

Jean Vanier’s comfort and joy: ‘What we have to do is find the places of hope’

Excerpt: "So, the greatest thing to calm anguish is the knowledge that we are loved. Not for what we do or have done or for what we will do, but in ourselves. The more we lose, the more we come close to the reality of what it is to be human. Which is to accept our weaknesses, to discover that they’re beautiful. So many people are running around doing lots of things, but they’re controlled by anguish."

Where is Jesus' heart?

I have been angry and confused since those Paris attacks on Friday.
I am angry because the world seems to be reacting the exact way ISIS wants them to react.
I am confused because many of the people who are now saying NO WAY to letting refugees in the confines of our borders are people who follow Jesus, just like me.
For me, caring for the vulnerable people of the world is one of the most important parts of following Jesus. When I hear other Christians who do not say YES to welcoming refugees, it does not compute. I wonder: are we serving the same Jesus?
The answer is yes, of course. Jesus is always good, no matter how much his followers just don't get it. He is disappointed, but not fazed, by quarreling within the ranks of his disciples.

But, if you are a Christian and still on the fence about welcoming Middle Eastern refugees, please join me. I am going to share my reading of the Scripture and my understanding of who Jesus is. It is this understanding that influences why I think helping refugees is important. What is your understanding? What is holding you back? What do you think is the proper thing to do?

Hannah's Selected Gospel Commentary (pretty sure this is going to be accepted as seminary required reading one of these days. IV Press, call me).

Jesus is born. Oooh Christmas! Wow, Herod really hates this kid. He really needs to loosen his grasp on some of that power he loves so much.
Jesus and his parents flee to Egypt. I guess that would make them refugees.
They get to go back. The king is dead, long live the King! Also, I just noticed something that probably a ton of other people have noticed before me-- but do you think Jesus returning home from Egypt would have reminded the people about the Hebrew's rescue from Egypt? God is legit the best storyteller ever. Like I love Sarah Koenig and all but GOD.
Jesus gets baptized. As if he needed to. But that is important. The Kingdom of God is near! What is the Kingdom of God, anyway? Hopefully Jesus will help clarify this.
Nope. He just tells a bunch of stories and heals people and whatnot.
Oh wait. There may be some meaning in those stories and actions.
I think Jesus needs a better HR person. OK honestly Jesus. I don't want to be mean or anything, but those disciples of yours don't seem to be the sharpest tools in the shed. And why did you bring in a tax collector? Seriously. Nobody likes tax collectors. That seems obvious.
Wait a second. I am not seeing anything in here about Jesus being white, or anything about his eye colour. Why do all the paintings show him like that? Now that I think of it, he probably looks a lot more like those people we call terrorists. I bet he'd get "randomly" selected for additional security screening at the airport.

Jesus does not seem to like the Pharisees. It's a two-way street, though. The Pharisees really don't like Jesus. It's like they are following him around, all creepy-like. He might just be mad because they are stalkers, always waiting for the next chance to trip him up. Except Jesus owns them every time. When will they learn?

I wonder why he's angry with the Pharisees. It's scary because I see myself in the Pharisees in a lot of the stories. I am a lot more eager to accuse other people than myself. The scribes and the Pharisees have a whole lot of knowledge, but they  aren't using it in the right way. They are using it to make themselves important instead of being humble and loving others. They are scared to let go of all their customs because they are afraid there will be nothing left when they do-- no real connection to God at all. And Jesus sees through this 100 percent.

The Pharisees are threatened by Jesus. They are threatened because he has all this authority-- to cast out demons, to heal, to calm the sea-- and yet is totally free of all their nonsense. He has no worries about being powerful. He is not grasping on to his own power or pride or wealth. No denarius, don't care[ius? I am so so sorry]

He deliberately makes time for the least powerful. He stops on an urgent visit to an "important" person's house to heal an "unclean" woman, a social outcast. He visits a town and invites himself over to the most unpopular person's house for dinner. A man was born blind and every assumes he or his parents did something bad to deserve it. Jesus is like "nope," but that question becomes irrelevant anyway because Jesus heals him. A prostitute washes his feet with expensive perfume and her hair and Jesus acknowledges her gift, while the Pharisees look on in horror. You just don't DO that.

Ugh. That really irks the Pharisees and the Teachers of the Law. 

Not to mention those enigmatic stories he keeps on telling. When someone said "blessed is he who will eat a feast in the Kingdom of God", I bet they weren't expecting such a long reply from Jesus. I wonder if they got that the story was about them-- it seems pretty clear to me, but then again, I have the benefit of hindsight. I wonder if Jesus was trying to give them a chance, then. I wonder if he was saying "There's still a chance to receive the invitation. But these are the kinds of people you'll be dining with. You have to be OK with that." 

And the story of the lost son- did they recognize themselves as the older brother? Maybe, but maybe not. The older brother's main character trait is cluelessness. He has the opportunity to get to know the Father the whole time but never takes it. He misses the point of his Father. It's not about the farm, son. It's about me. 

When Jesus talks about the sheep and the goats- that must have really irked them. Sheep and goats are really pretty similar, when you think about it. It's not like he was comparing sheep to pythons or a Kitchenaid mixer or something. And yet the behaviour and the outcome of the sheep and the goats in Jesus' story are radically different. I think Jesus is acknowledging that it can really seem like people can know him, but they might just not get it. And the difference is in how they respond when confronted with need. 

So anyway, a few powerful people decided they wanted Jesus dead. Jesus knew this was going to happen, because being the Son of God, he had a lot of inside information. So he had a meal with his disciples. He asked them to remember him.

They did not do a very good job at remembering him. First Judas betrayed him for a couple of bucks. Typical. His priorities were not straight, at all. Then the others just kinda left. Peter even denied that he ever even knew Jesus, though he said he wouldn't do it.

Jesus died anyway. This is the part that always gets me. It must have felt, then, like nobody cared. The people who had been hanging around him for two or three years had disappeared. He had tried to teach them and he wondered if it failed. He knew he had to die because that was the plan. It would be the ultimate display of love to the world. God, as man, dying, to make right all we had done wrong. A selfless act to negate all the selfish acts. And did he still think it was worth it, when everyone he knew either hated him or left him? He had done nothing but love people and this is what they did. Love threatened their power, their comfort, and their familiar way of doing life. Nonetheless, Jesus somehow loved them all and loves me and you too, so he died. I can't even imagine how much it hurt. What great lengths he went to love us. He did not ask if we deserved it. He just did it. 

.

.

.

He's alive. Did you really think that would be the end of the story? Of course not. He did not stay dead long. Jesus' authority can't be stopped by death. He eventually went up to Heaven, but gave believers the Holy Spirit so that we can carry Jesus' authority within us at all times.

Whoa. I know. A lot of times I am like the Pharisees and try to ignore it. But sometimes it just can't be ignored. The Holy Spirit, like Jesus, like God the Father (because they are all one and I don't even know how that's possible but I have given up even tying to define what is and is not possible with God), cares about the vulnerable and the outsider and the poor and and marginalized. That's where God's heart is. And because I listen to the Holy Spirit now and again, that's where my heart is moving.

That's my reading of the Gospels. This is what I think Jesus was trying to say to the Pharisees and the scribes and his disciples and the poor and the sick and the outcasts: My Kingdom is really great. You'll be missing out if you're not a part of it. But you'll have to give something up to be in it. You'll have to give up your pride and maybe your wealth and any part of you that thinks you deserve it. My goodness is so good that nobody deserves it. And when you know that nobody deserves it, you know that everyone needs it. The ground is level at the foot of the cross. So now that you're free from worrying about saving yourself, you can get busy loving others. It does not matter if they might hurt you or hate you or curse you-- because it's not about you and it's not about them. It's about Me. 


 Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? 

Voices

I deal with overwhelming things by writing. Here is something I wrote last night as I watched news reports come in about the Paris attack. 

On Friday November 13, 2015, seven gunmen attacked three restaurants, a concert, and a stadium in Paris.

And we ask:

What twisted ideology made them do it?

They all were born to mothers, born into a family.

And at some point in their life they had to choose between good and evil.

And perhaps sometimes they chose 'good.'

Perhaps sometimes the choice was between 'good' and 'almost good,' and perhaps sometimes the lines between the two became blurred.

Perhaps sometimes there were voices: people they talked to, books they read, radio shows they listened to, and these voices told them what was and wasn't good. 

And maybe these voices were not true.

In fact, these voices were liars.

The voices lied until the men did not know the difference between 'good' and 'almost good', so what was 'almost good' they called 'good.' 

And they continued to listen to the lying voices until the line between what they called 'good' and what was truly evil became blurred.

Until, finally, one day they called what was truly evil 'good.' 

There were too many lying voices, or too few truthful voices.

And the lying voices lied because they, too, did not know the truth.

And why did the lying voices not know the truth?

Because they, too, had listened to lying voices. And on and on, until here we are, in a Garden, and a man and a woman eat a fruit. 

The first lying voice still holds many in this world captive.

The only way to combat lies is with truth.  We must speak the truth in love. 

Love > Fear

If you have been around me lately, you know there are three main things that are taking up the majority of my time these days: my full-time job (which I love!), my research (which never seems to be on schedule), and refugee sponsorship. Sometime, I would love to talk to you more about those first two items. We could sit down for coffee and/or tea or over Skype and have a long-overdue chat. And then you could tell me what's going on in your life, and we would probably make some comment about how everyone else our age seems to have their life together and we can barely remember to floss our teeth.

But what I really want you to know about is the third thing--refugee sponsorship--and how God is changing my heart, and the hearts of others in my community, to be more like His.


I have told the story of the situation in Syria a lot of times, and honestly there are a lot more sources that can do it better than I can. And I hope you already know. Syria is not the only place in the world where people flee because of violence, but it is in an emergency situation right now, making international action inevitable. This video concisely explains the whole mess.

One of my favourite classes I took at university was an Old Testament class. And one of the best parts of that class was the discussion of the prophets. When we think of prophets today, we think of people who know how to tell the future or say "The end is near" or something like that. But in the Old Testament, prophets were the ones who spoke to God's people, speaking what God had to say to them at that moment. And these prophets did not always have good things to say. God didn't really speak to them and say "You are doing a terrific job. Keep up the good work." Mostly they didn't do a terrific job. I can relate to this. Being the people of God is tough.

When God spoke through prophets, it was usually reminding them of the people they were called to be. They reminded the people who God was, and who they were. They reminded them what being the people of God looks like in the everyday, flesh-and-blood, dirt-under-the-fingernails life.

Excuse me while I act as prophet.

This is what I know about God: I know that he is more loving than any of us could ever be. I know that he cares about people on the outside of society. When I was speaking to kids at camp this summer, I explained to them that Jesus is God, and that means that when you read about everything Jesus did when he was on earth, that tells us about who God is. And what did Jesus do while he was on earth? Well, for one thing, he welcomed the very people the ruling class of the day saw as outsiders. Jesus chose to spend time with and to heal the very people who the insiders said would never be the people of God.

Which is good news for all of us in the church, because deep down I think we all know that we are outsiders. We are all broken beyond repair, born separated from God. We all know that if it weren't for Jesus, we would still be there on the outside of God's kingdom. Also we all know that we aren't really broken beyond repair, that in fact Jesus has healed us and is healing us. Once we were not a people, but now we are the people of God. Once we received no mercy, but now we have received mercy.

One of the best-- if not the best--gifts that God gives to believers is the Holy Spirit. Church, we are carrying around God's Spirit. When we have the Spirit, we get to know more about God's heart. He speaks to us. He transforms us, making us more like Him.

In the light of the Syrian refugee crisis, let's listen to God's heart within us. God's heart is different than our heart because while we are attracted to beautiful things, God's heart is attracted to ugly things. I don't mean that God loves the ugliness. I mean that he loves the things that are difficult to love, and he is in the situations that we naturally tend to avoid.

I have no doubt that God's heart right now is in the Middle East. There are four million refugees coming out of Syria and millions more within the country who have lost their homes. The government of Canada has committed to receive 10,000 Syrians by September 2016. Make no mistake. This is barely anything. Canada has not raised the quota of refugees to welcome; our government is simply putting Syrian refugees ahead of others. I think some people in our country are scared of refugees because they may be Muslim, and Muslim is different. And they may not speak English, and English is the best. And they may take away our jobs, because we expect the government to provide jobs for us.

Please pardon the sass. But there is a lot of fear around this issue, even from those who do truly want to help. But fear and love are polar opposites. We cannot love well when we are afraid of the people we are loving, or afraid of not having enough, or afraid of our lifestyle changing.

Because welcoming people who have no homes is scary. It is very scary. It may change the way our everyday lives look. But God's call is to make love the priority in our lives. I cannot stress how unlikely this is, but there is an extremely slim possibility that we may welcome a terrorist. But Jesus calls us to love our enemies.  Jesus did a lot of scary things in order to love his enemies. He died an ugly, painful death out of love for us.

There is really no getting around it. Loving people, especially people different than us, is hard. But it is very, very necessary.

So that is why a group of outsiders who have been welcomed in--aka Christians-- have gathered together in a living room and prayed and talked and dreamed and decided. We have decided to take on the challenge of welcoming a family to our little town. We have decided that no matter what happens, God has called us to love. This involves us giving up a lot of time, money, energy, and resources. It involves emotional ups-and-downs. It requires us to put aside our differences for the purpose of showing God's love. We are outsiders who have been invited in to God's kingdom. We know that all we have is from God, and we don't deserve one bit of it. And so we say: "Welcome. Come inside."