Just before the entering the Lenten season, the Lectionary gospel reading was Mark 1:14-20 where, following his baptism, Jesus calls the first four disciples by the Sea of Galilee.
The small open pickup truck, laden with large boxes, made its way cautiously down Alexander Fleming Street, an offshoot alley of Mar Mikhael Road, and just a few minutes walking distance from the Port of Beirut. “Hello! Hello,” Norma Irani warmly greeted Elias Habib, a youth leader of the Joint Christian Committee (JCC). “And you brought my new gas stove!”
The winter storms themselves or torrential rains alone probably wouldn’t have had a huge impact. But combined, they left a trail of destruction it will probably take years to clean up in Eastern Kentucky.
When many Texas communities were hit hard by winter storms last month, Northridge Presbyterian Church in east Dallas found itself in a position to bless others.
Since conflict and violence began in Syria in 2011, at least two-thirds of Christians and two-thirds of health professionals have left the country, according to the Jinishian Memorial Program (JMP), a long-time partner of World Mission and Presbyterian Disaster Assistance (PDA).
Overlooked by most media around the world, the twin hurricanes of Eta and Iota last November devastated Guatemala, Nicaragua and Honduras, countries already struggling with the COVID-19 pandemic. The impacts of the overflowing rivers and resulting landslides brought about tremendous loss of housing and jobs and caused widespread food and clean water shortages.
People from Cameroon, Haiti and the Democratic Republic of Congo are held in immigration detention centers because they put their trust in the United States as a place of safety, only to be denied due process and ordered deported.
Forrest Palmer said a prayer as he received his initial dose of COVID-19 vaccine last month in the state of West Virginia. The prayer emanated from a place of gratitude, not of fear.
La Oroya, Peru is one of the most contaminated places in the world. Poisoned by the emissions of a U.S.-owned metals smelter, nearly 1,000 miles of surrounding land is contaminated as much as four inches deep with lead, cadmium and arsenic.
