Domestic Poverty

“No act of virtue can be great if it is not followed by advantage for others. So, no matter how much time you spend fasting, no matter how much you sleep on a hard floor and eat ashes and sigh continually, if you do no good to others, you do nothing great.”   - John Chrysostom     

I have three children. I work full-time. I volunteer in several ministries at my church. I am busy. Busy. Busy. Busy. But I also know that as a Christian, I am called to make mercy and justice, advocacy and generosity, a way of life.

What this pro-life series has taught me is that the CRCNA is deeply, unapologetically pro-life. 

To me, being pro-life means that you commit to the life, goodness, hope, image-of-God in a person—even when that person can be really, really difficult to be around. Being pro-life means that there’s no such thing as running out of chances. To be pro-life is to learn to see a person’s whole story—not just the front cover.

I want to beg them to put down their signs and instead invest that time in helping vulnerable women and their children. 

“Why are they doing this to us?” I will never forget when an individual with several disabilities posed this question to me.

My cousin phoned me out of the blue. I haven’t heard from him for awhile. Usually that is the case. I only hear from him when he is in dire straits and this wasn’t the exception. He asked if he could spend the night at my place before heading off to his moms for awhile. I said yes. I have the room and space.

We need not be afraid to teach our kids hard things and ask difficult questions.

Rarely do we get out of our left/right echo chambers here in the US when talking about these things – so this was a real conversation not just an exercise in embellishing each other’s views.

A First Nations baby who had difficulty breast-feeding was diagnosed with allergies that required special formula. The Canadian federal government would not cover the cost of the special formula, so the nutritionist begged the company for free samples. A non-aboriginal child in the same province would have received the formula through provincial health care. 

There is a 36% chance that Aboriginal students in Canada will graduate high school, compared to 72% for non-Aboriginal students.