Human Rights

As the end of the year approaches, many of us long for peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Our hope and advocacy efforts focus on bringing an end to the occupation of East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza that began in 1967. At that time, small groups of Jewish citizens began to settle in the West Bank and became known as “settlers.” By 2018, according to Peace Now, the Israeli settlement population grew to more than 400,000 Israelis.

Several years ago, when Lindsay Wieland Capel first learned of the CRC’s Disability Concerns, she was so impressed by the ministry that she sat down and wrote a letter to director Mark Stephenson.

Introducing herself, she commented how blessed he was to do the work he did in advocating with and for people with disabilities and providing resources and support to both them and the ministry’s many volunteers. She confided he had her dream job and that one day she’d love to work in a similar position.

Disability is a theological topic, because people of every kind of ability are created in God’s Image; moreover, through both our limitations and our gifts, people with disabilities indicate the uniqueness and breadth of God’s Image. Disability is a political issue too, because people with disabilities long for equity—freedom and human flourishing—for people of all body types. In this short post, I’m going to do two things. First, I’m going to briefly define disability, ableism, accessibility, and justice.

Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths. - Isaiah 2:3

A Prayer for Daunte Wright’s Family, Friends and Community

On April 11, 2021, Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old African-American man, was fatally shot by Brooklyn Center police officer Kim Potter during a traffic stop in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul metropolitan area. 

I sometimes find that the word refuge or phrases like seeking refuge lull us into a false sense of safety and security, especially when talking about people who are forcibly displaced from their homes and are given the label refugee. 

The rate at which marriages break up, the magnitude at which misunderstandings erupt into quarrels, and escalating levels of domestic violence is so alarming. We receive at least three cases every week of grievances among couples. 

In day to day life, I experience what I call “extreme empathy,” meaning that at times I feel the pain of others very deeply—almost as if it’s my own. Because of this extreme empathy, often when I look at the world around me, I am overwhelmed by the pain and sorrow that is seemingly everywhere. I want to fix it all and feel completely insufficient to make even the slightest difference or improvement. The ironic reality is that if I allowed myself to stay in those moments of despair, I would neglect to do the very thing I long to do: seek justice.

Mark 10:31 “But many who are first will be last, and the last first.”

When people say 

‘we’ve made it through worse before’ . . . 

all I hear is the wind slapping against the gravestones

of those who did not make it, those who did not

survive to see the confetti fall from the sky, those who

did not live to watch the parade roll down the street.

Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. - Psalm 119:105