The meaning of rainforest

After going to bed before 10 last night (which is in itself a record), I was woken numerous times by the rain. At times, it fell so hard it was disconcerting to hear as I wondered if the roof would hold.

It continued to rain, unabated, all day. There were moments of harder and less hard rain, but it kept falling till around 3 in the afternoon, spit for an hour or two, was dry and lighter for another hour, then starting raining again. Now, at 8:00 pm, it sounds like it's not raining. Nevertheless, that's a mighty lot of rain. You start to think it will never end. The girls just laughed when I kept looking out the window saying, "I can't believe it's still raining!" "It's called a rainforest for a reason," they said.

Indeed.

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Living stones in the holy land

I met Jesus in Israel-Palestine a few years ago. I found him not in the rocky, desert ground he trod, nor in the ancient stones of the towns and cities he visited; not in the subterranean grotto in the Church of the Nativity, nor in the mammoth Church of the Holy Sepulchre, encompassing the traditional site of his death and resurrection. No, I met him in the lives of Palestinians who incarnate his spirit, in humble, passionate people who are convinced that love is the only way. I met Jesus in people who spoke like this: “We need to be soaked in the love of Christ. Love is not a hug and a kiss. Love is to seek the life of the other that the cost of one’s own.” --Labib Madanat, coordinator of the Palestinian and Israeli Bible Societies “Love is not an opportunity to overlook justice. Love is an opportunity to pursue justice…. [But] we want to resist any form of evil with the heart and mind of Jesus Christ.… There is no love without justice. And there is no true justice without lov...

Broken people...

After reflecting with one coworker on how often churches in all their forms really mess up and hurt a whole bunch of people in the process -- and how "we gotta do better" -- I stumbled into another conversation with a coworker which highlighted our brokenness, and I suddenly realized what was wrong with my take in the first. I wanted the church to be better at fixing our mistakes, or better yet, at not making them in the first place. But maybe this "fix-it" attitude is partly the reason we keep blowing it again and again! My friend recollected an experience when a church community was in a terrible place: compounded mistakes, hurts, and frustrations had blown up, spewing pain all over all parties. (I'm sure anyone with a long history in the church can think of one, if not several, such occasions in their past.) A new Christian who observed all these goings on responded in an unexpected way. Instead of "you people are a bunch of screw-ups! How could this pos...

Community, continued

I had some more thoughts on community last night but it was getting kind of long, so I saved them for today! (In other news, for those of you less interested in my ramblings -- I got some of my shots today and now my arm is irritatingly sore from, hmmm, I think it's the Typhoid.) There's lots of talk these days about the importance of family. Conservative Christians in particular get really caught up in family -- family values, family friendly, family time -- are buzzwords you hear bandied about. Yes, family is important, and God does delight in family, but not for family's sake, but as a model of community. Unconditional love and acceptance. Time. Support, both emotional and material. Accountability. These are qualities we associate with "good" families. They are the qualities which make good community. I believe this is what God calls us to be; this is why He put us in families, and why we are taught to place value on families -- because they are a metaphor for...

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