Fall is beginning to chill the land here in Korea, and yet some extraordinary events are slowly thawing the Cold War atmosphere on the Korean peninsula.
“The dishwashing detergent is lost.” In Cuba, one would say, “El detergente de lavar platos está perdido.” That means that you will not find dishwashing detergent in the store these days. As we enter our fourth year as mission co-workers in Cuba, we realize how easy it is sometimes to forget that we are strangers living in a foreign land.
Back in 2013, I joined a German colleague of mine who was working in Ghana at the time on a visit to a rural health clinic run by the Presbyterian Church of Ghana. The clinic was in the community of Kwahu Praso, about three hours northwest of Accra, the capital of Ghana, and for several years, it had been receiving financial support from some German Protestant congregations. The visit was a chance to learn more about the place and see how it was doing.
Pastor Juan Rodas, Moderator of the Presbyterian Church of Honduras, loves to tell the story of how two remote churches, El Horno and El Sute, joined the denomination.
When I was a little boy, my family took me on a trip to visit my uncle and aunt in Africa. They were both doctors, medical missionaries in Rwanda. We visited a game preserve where we watched lions, elephants and other wild animals from the precarious safety of our jeep. One night, my parents told me that the house we were sleeping in was right on the equator. I asked, “What is the equator?” My dad said it was an imaginary line running around the world. But what I heard him say was that it was “a lion running around the world!” That night, I couldn’t sleep. My eyes remained wide open as I imagined the lion running around our house all night. I didn’t think it was Aslan, but more likely the devil, waiting to devour me.
It’s Christmas! Every time we celebrate Christmas, we affirm that the Kairos of God has arrived with the force of a hurricane yet the gentleness of a breeze.
In Rwanda, “this present age” means living in a post-genocide world, where everything is colored by the brutality and betrayal of neighbor killing neighbor with machetes and clubs in the horror of 100 days in 1994.
To say “no” to the worldly passions that surround these memories is no easy task. The fear of “the other” and the desire for retaliation, even after all these years, is strong.
This time of year is all about Christ’s Incarnation — Emmanuel, God with us. The child that Mary delivers comes to deliver us. Elizabeth’s baby leaps for joy at Mary’s presence because Christ is within her.
I was in a cab headed to the high-speed rail station, on my way to preach at a Taiwanese wedding. While the groom is a Christian, he had told me that his parents were not. The vocabulary we use in Taiwan, when preaching to Christians, can often be language that non-Christians don’t understand. As soon I got into the cab, I saw that the cab driver, Mr. Jwang, had a small statue of Buddha on his dashboard. So, I thought to myself, it might be good if Mr. Jwang could listen to my sermon and tell me which parts he did not understand. That way I would be sure that the groom’s family was able to understand.
Outgoing moderator of the Presbyterian Church of Liberia, the Rev. Sando Townsend, has invited the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) to walk alongside the Presbyterian Church of Liberia, and U.S. church leaders are taking him up on his offer.
