I know this is a slight deviation from the beloved German Christmas carol, but you know how sometimes on a Monday morning you have a hymn stuck in your head from Sunday’s worship? I have one particular Christmas Eve etched into my childhood memories.
In the first seven months of this year, more than 20 school shootings occurred. The refrain “I never thought this would happen here” has become a mantra on the evening news. The circle of those experiencing trauma — or knowing someone who has — widens daily.
“I have faith that God will dry up the Rio Grande so that I may safely cross,” he said. He had been on the journey from Honduras to the U.S. for a month and a half when we met him in a migrant shelter in Arriaga, Mexico. His teenage son was traveling with him. He told us about the pressure on his son to join a gang and the lack of lawful means to support oneself in his nation. He talked of seeing people murdered in the street.
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. The communities of these churches are at the top of a mountain in the department of Comayagua, Honduras. They are so remote, so small and so economically poor that the utilities that built electric transmission lines overhead, crossing the mountaintop, didn’t bother to connect the communities to the lines. Most people in the communities are of indigenous Lenca descent and are farmers, of coffee, mostly, and of corn, beans and other staples. There are roads, but not good ones, so most people walk, or if they’re well-off, ride mules or horses. It’s a five-hour walk to the nearest paved road.
Presbyterians should reach out to those in need, in a world “where a few have a lot, and a lot have less,” says the Rev. Dr. J. Herbert Nelson, II, Stated Clerk of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).
If anyone has the right to think she had an extra-special connection to Jesus, it’s Mary. After all, she carried him in her body, birthed him in the stable and nourished him with her breast milk. As he grew up and engaged his ministry, she scolded him when he disappeared, commanded him at Cana, stayed with him when he hung on the cross and rejoiced in him when he rose again.
If there is a revered profession in my family, it is a life given to the ministry of the Presbyterian Church. In 1884, my great-grandfather J. Vernon Bell began his ministry as pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Dubois, Pennsylvania, almost 100 years to the day that I entered Union Theological Seminary in New York City.
As we reflect our heavenly Father’s love this Father’s Day, it becomes extremely important that all men show love for all of God’s creation. We must lift our hearts together, working together to spread God’s love.
