Domestic Poverty

Your faith will not fail while God sustains it; you are not strong enough to fall away while God is resolved to hold you.”  ― J.I. Packer

"Arise, for it is your task, and we are with you; be strong and do it." - Ezra 10:4 

The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he refreshes my soul. He guides me along the right paths for his name’s sake. - Psalm 23

Elderly women from a near-by senior low-income housing building sat at the back of our church foyer, bending over boxes overflowing with apples, carrots, and onions. They unrolled plastic produce bags, rubbed the top edges to open them, and filled them with fresh produce. They talked and laughed as they worked. “Come on over,” one of them called, “You need to meet someone we invited to join us today.” The ladies were getting ready for the monthly food pantry at our church and had asked someone new to help. 

Surely the righteous will never be shaken; they will be remembered forever.  They will have no fear of bad news; their hearts are steadfast, trusting in the Lord.  - Psalm 112:6

"He put another parable before them, saying, 'The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field. It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown it is larger than all the garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.'” Matthew 13:31-32

There is a man I know. More than a man – a friend and a prophet. He is Indigenous, tall, with small piercing eyes that bore into you with gentle kindness. He is a stranger longing for a heavenly country. His home on his back, he wanders deserts and back alleys. He lives in caves and parkades. Did I mention that he also has an amazing mullet?

We're excited to welcome Jeremiah Damir Bašurić as a Do Justice columnist! Jeremiah lives in Edmonton, where he pastors a multi-cultural Reformed church plant called mosaicHouse Church, works at The Mustard Seed, and hikes with his wife Sarah. 

Ever since I realized my name was in the Bible, I wanted to get acquainted with the book and the prophet Jeremiah. I read Jeremiah 4:23-27 the other day looking for inspiration:  

About 700 women die each year in the U.S. as a result of pregnancy or delivery complications.¹ This rate of pregnancy-related death is higher in the United States than the rates in other industrialized nations.

But when the time came for her to leave the community, she didn’t want to leave. Not only did she not want to deliver alone far from her community, but she also had 5 young children that she didn’t want to leave behind. I remember the daily stress of worrying that she would deliver the babies before leaving the community.