This post by Bryan Loritts gives us something to think about at a time when there are no quick or easy solutions. He points to family, government and a multi-ethnic church as vehicles to a more just society.
Click on the link below.
I found this article by Izabella Taborovsky well worth reading. It is not full of sensationalism, hype or doomsday prophecy. It is, however, a sober reflection on the reality we now inhabit.
Click on the image to go to the article:
The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
The gospel message, euangelion or “good news,” begins with Jesus Christ. It is the message about him and his coming and about his work. Mark’s book gives us the story of his life, death and resurrection. Unlike the quotation that allegedly comes from St. Francis of Assisi, it is full of words from beginning to end.
You may know the little saying that I am talking about, the one that says,
Preach the gospel at all times; when necessary, use words.
With respect to this saying, a little debunking is in order. First of all, it is not likely that Francis ever said it. Second, he did gobs of verbal preaching, so he evidently thought using words was necessary pretty much all the time.
How on earth can news, bad or good, be faithfully and continuously communicated without words anyway? This is no criticism of good deeds. It is simply stating the obvious that deeds and words are different things and the gospel is something that takes words. That is no doubt why Francis preached so much verbally, out loud and in public. It is also why Mark wrote a book with words rather than a coloring book or a comic book without captions.
Mark Galli wrote a little biography of St. Francis, which is short and readable enough to enjoy by almost anyone. It is presently available on Amazon for more money than you want to spend on it. When I bought it, the price was way lower. If you want, I might cut you a deal on my own copy, and I’d send it to you for much less than that current high price (and still make a handsome profit). Then again, even the first few paragraphs of his article on Christianity Today will give you enough information to back up my point about the quotation. The title alone will help. It is “Speak the Gospel: Use Deeds When Necessary.”
For the next few months at our church we will be going through Mark’s Gospel and reading every word, chapter by chapter and verse by verse. Every week we will look at one more portion of Christ’s life and ministry. We just finished Matthew and the plan is to go through Luke and John after we finish Mark. This will be lots of gospel, lots of words and lots of Jesus. It will also give us lots of good news.
26 And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, 27 so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us.
Paul was speaking in Athens to the philosophers on Mars Hill. What he evidently knew back then was not particularly controversial to his Greek audience at the time. For some reason this no longer seems obvious today, but turns out Paul was right. This is one of the points we tried to emphasize in the recent series Unity, Diversity and Our Identity in Christ.
Check out this post appearing today from Peter G. Prontzos of Scientific American.
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/the-concept-of-race-is-a-lie/
Central Reflections 