Archive for the ‘poverty’ Category

Friday randomness

Not a lot of dialogue about the Advent Conspiracy stuff from the last post … thoughts?
———–
My dad sent me a question he received from a friend via e-mail. The question is: “Where do you find Jesus discerning whether or not his blessing a person would be empowering” or “enabling” that person? What’s the [...]

Continue reading »

Christian Politics, round 2

We must see what is going on today. Something different is happening. We have wasteful technologies used by billions of people growing exponentially, more expansive exploitation, more powerful bombs. And yet people’s hearts are the same as they were thousands of years ago: a chaotic mix of love and hate, creativity and destructiveness. But this [...]

Continue reading »

Sylvia

Because they are our neighbors and friends, I have changed the names of the mother and children in the story below to protect their identity.
Tears streamed down her face, which was just inches from her son’s.
“I love you so much, Jose,” she said, squeezing him tightly against her. “I love you with everything that is [...]

Continue reading »

true religion

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.
- James 1:27
This story is so, so sad.

Continue reading »

single mom … bar graph … sharing food

From Wednesday’s Boston Globe: Single Mothers Need $58K to Make it in Mass.
Wow.
—————————
This chart measures the U.S. population growth against church membership since 1980. Hmmmmm…… (HT: Fred Peatross)

——————————-
About the middle of this past week, I was thinking, “This Pantry Challenge better be over soon because I’m not sure how much more I can take…”  [...]

Continue reading »

more east boston friends

UPDATE: Today, I, Steve, was hired by Vantage Global Travel to be their newest copy writer! Praise God! This position is perfect in so many ways, which could only mean our Creator is responsible. He is the giver of every good and perfect gift. So thanks to those who have been [...]

Continue reading »

first Boston weekend

After four straight days of monsoon-like conditions in New England, today’s weather was stupendous. Blue sky, bright sun, 70 degrees. Amazing. We still feel like tourists in this town, like our vacation is going to end any day now. But alas, we live here now, and we’re loving it.
Our first weekend [...]

Continue reading »

wealth

GKB has facilitated quite a discussion of the Christian approach to wealth and prosperity. Discussions like that bring out every possible opinion, from “God wants us to be rich” to “God wants us to be poor,” and everything in between. Sometimes it makes my head hurt.
But instead of defining ourselves as Christians by [...]

Continue reading »

Beyond Brokerage

This is an amazing passage from Shane Claiborne’s The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical. There’s so much to glean from this little section of the book, but please read it all if you can. Allow it to shape you as it shaped (and challenged my socks off!) me when I read [...]

Continue reading »

tough situation in tanzania

A friend of mine and his wife are beginning a degree at ACU in preparation to join some teammates in Tanzania for long-term missions. (two couples, I think, are already in Tanzania planting churches in Mwanza) One of his teammates told my friend that a famine in the country has gotten so bad that [...]

Continue reading »