Cape Town, South Africa
//South Africa’s amazing constitution was written from the perspective of protecting the vulnerable but sadly the proposed Protection of Information Bill betrays our constitution in that it is written from the perspective of protecting the privileged. Lean more about it from at the Rights To Know website.
//We’ve made significant progress since we began restoring CMM. This vid looks at the progress we have made so far.
Embedded in this post is our before video, too, so you can see, side-by-side, just how much we’ve managed to achieve.
Continue reading “CMM Restoration (Progress)”
//Welcome!
A special thanks to Dr Gilbert Lawrence for preaching this morning while I am preaching at Edgemead Methodist Church for a Manna and Mercy course this weekend. Thanks Gilbert!
During Wednesday Church this past week we discussed the “Protection of Information Bill” presently before parliament and how in its current form threatens our fledgling democracy. We decided to make a giant banner that we will hang from the bell tower declaring: “The Truth will keep us Free”
In our discussion we discovered that …
1. We need to confront our feeling of powerlessness to make a difference.
2. We need to confront our tendency to not do anything because we can’t do everything. We need to do the right thing in the right way, right now—regardless of the result.
3. We need to realise that the struggle for justice is not over even though for some of us our lives are comfortable and secure.
As a Pentecost people we do what we do trusting / knowing all the while that more is being done in and through us by God and for God. God needs us but it is not all dependent on us! Strength, Alan
//Why asking many questions of Jesus is a greater sign of knowing Jesus intimately, then merely ‘believing’ you’ve figured him out.
//What St. Paul can teach us of engaging with people with faiths different from our own
//On reading scripture with your feet wet, and a second example of how reading a chapter in isolation from those that precede it can be dangerous.
Be sure to catch part 1 over here if you missed it previously
//Reflections on Jesus’s saying that there are many rooms in my Father’s house, and how a break in scripture can mistakenly break a narrative.
//The greatest gift CMM gives to the hungry when it feeds them has little to do with their stomachs… It’s that we show up. Consistently.
//Why, in Acts Chp 1, did Jesus tell his disciples to return to Jerusalem, the place which held the greatest fear and represented the greatest pain for them? The very same reasons he would tell us to return to our ‘own’ Jerusalem.
//How can one enjoy joy, and celebrate life when there is so much suffering? It’s actually our responsibility to do so.
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Poem: A Brief for the Defense
Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies are not starving
someplace, they are starving somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
But we enjoy our lives because that’s what God wants.
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not be made so fine. The
Bengal tiger would not be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women at
the fountain are laughing together between the suffering they have known and
the awfulness in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody in the
village is very sick. There is laughter every day in the terrible streets of
Calcutta, and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction, we lessen the importance
of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure, but not delight. Not
enjoyment. We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the
ruthless furnace of this world. To make injustice the only measure of our
attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down, we should give thanks that the
end had magnitude.
We must admit there will be music despite everything.
We stand at the prow again of a small ship anchored late at night in the
tiny port looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront is three
shuttered cafés and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat comes slowly out
and then goes back is truly worth all the years of sorrow that are to come.
— Jack Gilbert
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All images used under Creative Commons license.
Image credits in order of appearance:
D. Sharon Pruitt
Joanne Q. Escober
Ubo Pakes
Ibrahim Lujaz
Ariful H Bhuiyan
Living In Kuito
Anant Rohankar
James Emery
Hamed Sabar
Clemson
Lisa Edwards
Pranav
Pedro Simoes
Ubo Pakes