News from the Pews

Recently, I spoke on the phone to one of my neighbors who was terminally ill. She was excited to hear my voice though from afar due to COVID-19 pandemic. Social distancing is a necessity as we have to abide by preventative measures.  But support for those in need, in person, is our social safety net - especially in the African culture. Support, care and encouragement from others is a critical piece in life.  At the end of the conversation, I could hear from her feeble voice, “Yes,” to Christ’s lordship. She was introduced to Christ.

You can be forgiven if you find yourself not thinking about treaties very often.    After all, it is 2020 and for most Canadians, the term “treaty” conjures up ideas and images that seem to be part of a long-forgotten high school History or Social Studies class.   The relevancy of treaties to our everyday, ordinary lives seems non-existent.  Treaties – well, they tend not to make the news very often.  So, it is easy for us to assume they do not matter.

Dear Church,

As I write this letter, I find myself in a place of lament. I lament the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and many black lives taken by the grasp of white supremacy. I lament the numerous blacks lives that are being taken by this pandemic. 

In the middle of a pandemic of their own, the characters in Albert Camus’ The Plague are weary. The quarantine, disease, and death are enough to exhaust anyone. But -- of course -- the painful things that existed before illness struck are also still present: broken relationships, aching memories, questions of meaning and suffering, and deep injustice. 

As I’ve grown in my journey in the fight for social justice, it has been difficult for me to forgive the shames of my own past. Today, I am passionate about pushing ideals of racial equality, gender equality, criminal justice reform, etc. forward. But this was not always the case. Just eight short years ago, in my freshman year of high school, I began a slow descent into alt-right and supremacist ideologies online.

“We were at the Guatemala-Mexico border for three months. When the UN rights groups came to clean the showers every few weeks, we would rush for the showers so we could clean our kids. Later they gave us one diaper for our two kids, un pañal por dos niños!!!” she said, roaring in laughter, looking to her nephew in his late teens, who laughed along with her. 

“17.2 million people leaving their homes because of climate disasters is not a change.” This was a sign I saw as I first stepped off the metro in Madrid, Spain in early December. I had just arrived for the COP25 (Conference of the Parties), the global climate negotiations conference hosted by the United Nations. As I walked out of the metro to the conference center, more signs lined the hallway with startling statistics, many of which I had heard before. However, in the week ahead these statistics would become real people with real stories. 

Thank you for joining us this year on Do Justice.  It is our hope and prayer that these articles blessed you and moved you to new action.  Enjoy this look at the top Do Justice articles written in 2019 (ranked by top pageviews).  

In November we held a conference here in Truro, Nova Scotia called “Spark!”. It was a new take on an old conference – we’ve held a Day of Encouragement event here every two years for a long time, providing an opportunity for the CRC churches in the Maritimes to gather for a day of learning and fellowship. When I was asked to write about it for Do Justice, my first thought was, “this wasn’t specifically a ‘justice’ conference…” But the more I reflect, the more I feel that the themes of justice and mission and the future of the church are all intertwined.

I had a conversation with a friend from China today. He wanted to help me with a story of religious persecution, but he was hesitant: he hadn’t been questioned, detained, imprisoned, or beaten for his faith. What could he say about persecution? 

So instead of asking for some big, news-worthy story of dramatic persecution, I asked him about what he has learned about persecution through his experiences. This was his list. Maybe these aren’t dramatic, but these are stories. Stories from a brother in Christ blessed to grow up in the Chinese church.