God’s compassion needs to be experienced and expressed: experienced by us as his people and expressed to the people around us.
Tag: Neighbors
Elizabeth Glass Turner ~ Resolutions: The Problem of Shibboleth in 2018
This is what happens when we employ shibboleths. We don’t engage in critical thinking, we don’t assume the value of the other person, and we don’t speak with kindness to or about those outside the boundaries of our groups.
Cole Bodkin ~ Helicopter Pilots or Farmers?
If we are always on the go, never at home, what sort of fruit can we expect?
Elizabeth Glass Turner ~ The Global Neighborhood: World Methodist Conference
We are knit together fearfully and wonderfully in the womb of this galaxy, we neighbors, breathing the air of God’s breath as we blink and squall at the startling light of Triune love. We are still newborns learning to recognize the face of our Creator, learning to move through the example of Christ our brother.
Carrie Carter ~ The Enemy Who Was Not an Enemy
The man’s gaze dropped. Hesitantly, he spoke.
“We are from Iraq.”
Wesleyan Accent ~ Neighbors in the Middle East
One month ago, an American couple herded three children into a men’s room in the Istanbul, Turkey airport. The wife visibly pregnant, they settled in for the night and texted to family members in the U.S., letting them know that their flight was being delayed indefinitely – keeping some of the details to themselves. All night the parents kept vigil as the children miraculously slept through the sound of explosions, reports of shooting, sonic booms from low-flying fighter jets and men coming in with blood-spattered clothing to wash their faces and hands for their ritual Muslim prayer time.
Elizabeth Moyer ~ Easter’s Frayed Red Carpet
On the day when we had the least amount of time to tend to the needs of others, we boldly said come join us.
Omar Rikabi ~ He Had a Name
The first name given in creation was Adam. It means humanity.
The Scripture story tells us that God, through Jesus Christ, created all of humanity in his image and breathed into us the breath of life.
I thought of Adam when I saw the first hashtag given to Aylan’s story: Humanity Washed Ashore.
Talbot Davis ~ On the Up and Up: The Right Stuff
The “I” pronoun has disappeared in favor of “us” and “we.” Instead of asserting his rights – rights he was born into and rights he earned – the disappearing “I” pronoun shows he is instead relinquishing them. A psalm that could be about his personal religion instead becomes a song about our collective faith.
Visiting the Sick: How We Participate in Our Own Salvation
Wesleyan teaching affirms that all aspects of salvation come by the gift of God’s grace. Because grace conveys power to us, though, it gives us the ability—the freedom—to join in the very work God is doing for us.