Mission is a word that evokes a wide variety of responses in people I know. In some contexts it’s primarily connected to spies, the military and movies about both. For others it carries baggage from past...
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I turned around to see a young woman with a blue hijab trying to stop a girl squealing loudly and running. It’s a Saturday night in Lancaster County, Pa. The Route 30 Chick-Fil-A is filled with those of us...
[read more]No, I didn’t slide open the tomb of an ancient revolutionary in Israel. But I did rest on the half-open lid of what might be his grave at the town of Modi’in and consider what it takes to provoke oppressed...
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The eighth chapter of 1 Kings may capture the moment in the Old Testament where the two great covenants — Davidic and Mosaic — come together with the most harmony. Solomon, David’s successor as...
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“Hello, massa. Bottom rail on top this time.” That’s what a freed black slave in the Union army is reported to have said when he saw his former owner, captured in a battle during the U.S. Civil War,...
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The late Mennonite Brethren writer Katie Funk Wiebe, who died in 2016, was passionate about translating Die Hungersnot in Russland und Unsere Reise um die Welt (The Famine in Russia and Our Trip Around the...
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When we walk into the hospital dining room, we see a young girl seated waiting to eat. She is an inpatient at a pediatric hospital about an hour and a half outside of Pyongyang, North Korea, hospitalized after...
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Last month, Princeton University professor of economics and Nobel Laureate Robert Shiller published a book on narrative economics, which looks at how stories affect individual and collective economic behavior...
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When Pastor Jason Storbakken began planning his sermon for Manhattan Mennonite Fellowship’s commemoration of Native American Day (Columbus Day), he didn’t know it would be the second sermon he would preach...
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Though we’d just met when hospital orderlies called us each from waiting room to pre-op, she and I agreed: We didn’t want to go. Trained by a culture that prioritizes control over surrender, I asked my...
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Another year is about to pass into history. But before it does, let’s recognize some of the anniversaries of 2019 that commemorated special events and developments in the annals of Anabaptism. 450 years ago...
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The place of the temple in biblical faith is complicated — with emphases on the temple as the God-ordained center for worship contrasted with sharp critiques from prophets that the temple helped empower...
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An acquaintance said to me, “Another year is almost over. Christmas will soon be here. I can’t get into the spirit with all the divisiveness around me. When will it stop?” She was expressing what many...
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This autumn I participated in a retreat for CMC overseers and bishops in Columbus, Ohio. Serving on a panel, I and others were asked to share our vision for CMC, a 13,000-member association of Mennonites...
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After hearing a series of sermons on Jonah, I’ve started seeing this reluctant prophet in unexpected places. Jonah used to be safely confined to a wooden puzzle at my Aunt Ruth’s. You removed the big fish...
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This column is a combined effort by my fiance and me, written before our wedding on Nov. 23. Ivan: I like to read; therefore I get a few book catalogs. One day I noticed an ad for a new book, Anything But...
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Does America have a problem with pain? Specifically, do we have a problem with coping with pain? Perhaps with managing pain? And if so, does this problem lie at the very root of our widespread addictions? This...
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In the first three lessons of this quarter, we looked at how 1 Chronicles 15-17 presents kingship and the temple in ancient Israel. Now we turn to a story that seems to stand in contrast with David and...
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Speaking of God is the task of all Christians. A lot has been said, and the story of this conversation is not a simple one. But Anthony G. Siegrist has done it well. In Speaking of God: An Essential...
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First and Second Chronicles are pretty obscure for many Christians. The Common Lectionary that many Protestant groups use for worship covers most of the Bible in its three-year cycle but does not use a single...
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Over the last few months of the reconciliation process of Eastern District Conference and Franconia Mennonite Conference, I have grown to better understand the idea that “the devil is in the...
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Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in Jerusalem tells terrible truth about the complicity of many, including Christians, in Hitler’s campaign of hatred and genocide across Europe. I leave darkened halls of that...
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In 2016 Carol Penner, then pastor of Lendrum Mennonite Brethren Church in Edmonton, started a blog called “Dear MB Herald.” The reason she started it was because there were almost no letters to the...
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Dear Family: I know we’re all looking forward to gathering at Grandma’s house this Christmas to enjoy holiday food and catch up on the latest happenings with our loved ones. But, as you all remember, last...
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Both texts for Nov. 17 and 24 are from letters attributed to the Apostle Peter. Both take the gospel of Jesus from its Jewish origins into different ethnic contexts later in the first century. Both emphasize...
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