The Spirit goes ahead of the Church
It does not sound like much, to sit and talk with somebody, yet if somebody had not stopped and answered your questions, or been willing to sit down and talk with you about faith, would you be here today?
It does not sound like much, to sit and talk with somebody, yet if somebody had not stopped and answered your questions, or been willing to sit down and talk with you about faith, would you be here today?
Rather than making one little change in the past in the hopes of changing the present, what if we resolve to make a change today so that we might change the future our children inherit?
Watching the “alien” character in Star Trek series often helps viewers connect with the greater principles that the episode writers and series creators aspire to impart. Spock, Saru, and other “aliens” show us that the stranger or outsider in our midst is usually the one who helps us understand how to be better humans along the way.
Acts teaches us that when the people of God lose the plot, God will raise up those who still know the story—people like Stephen and Philip. The other bit of good news is that if you’ve lost the plot, it isn’t too late to get back in the story.
In sharing his scars with others, Jesus convinces the disciples, even Thomas, that the season of Eastertide is one of emergency, but it is ultimately one of hope. Our raw wounds do turn into healed scars. Life does overcome death. Depression does end. Love does conquer all.
Mitri Raheb’s latest book forces me to re-appraise my own Christian assumptions from the ground up, not just about Palestine and the most recent escalation of a longstanding practice of settler colonialism, but about my own complicity in settler colonialism here at home, and the ways all of that complicity and blindness is intrinsically related to how I’ve read the Bible and believed as a Christian.