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“If I stay in my country, my daughters will become criminals and I don’t want to raise one more criminal. I don’t want to bury my daughters,” one woman said. We met in a migrant shelter on the path north from Honduras to the United States. Her little girls, no older than 10, were sleeping soundly on a blanket at her feet.
In the early dawn of Sunday, June 25, 1950, without any warning, the Soviet-backed North Korean armed forces crossed over the 38th parallel (an arbitrary line chosen by the World War II victors in Potsdam) and pressed swiftly southward toward the city of Seoul, defying the orders of the Security Council of the United Nations to cease hostilities and withdraw back to the 38th parallel. So began the Korean War, which was one of the bloodiest and most destructive in modern history, leaving millions dead (including some 36,000 Americans) and roughly 43 percent of industrial capacities and 33 percent of residences of South Korea demolished. An estimated 150,000 Christians were also either killed, missing or taken by the North Korean Red Army against their will because of their faith.
June 20 is designated as World Refugee Day. Over the years the significance of this day has grown. For Presbyterians, it is a day to connect or reconnect with our own refugee heritage through our faith ancestry. As Scripture tells us, “You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Deut. 10:19). Throughout our church history we can find those who have fled persecution for their faith and those who have responded to the call to welcome the stranger: Abraham and Sarah; Moses, Miriam, Aaron and the people of Israel; Ruth; Jesus, Joseph and Mary; the apostle John.
Juneteenth, a blend of the words June and nineteenth, is an American holiday commemorating the end of slavery in the United States.
One of the prevailing ills in our society is domestic violence. Sometimes called “domestic abuse,” its victims can include spouses/partners, children, the elderly, or anyone within a household or family unit. And depending on the victim, the abuse may take various forms, including physical, verbal, sexual, psychological and economic. Victims also may be women or men, though the incidence is much greater among the former.
The men were taken first, then the women and children were brutalized. Witnesses saw the Euphrates run with blood, and women plunged into the river to escape the terrors of the desert march. Armenian villages throughout the Ottoman territories of 1915 were emptied out in a systematic campaign to demean and destroy innocent victims.
Writing a will is “an act of love and responsibility,” says Sherry Kenney, a ministry relations officer with the Presbyterian Foundation. A will enables you to designate guardians for any surviving dependents and to determine how your assets will be distributed. Without a will, the probate court will make those decisions.
May Friendship Day, a Church Women United initiative, is most often celebrated on the first Friday of the month of May. May Fellowship Day began in 1933 after two Christian women’s groups planned gatherings based on similar concerns: child health and children of migrant families. These groups united and over the years, eventually became what we now know as Church Women United. The May celebration has been continually observed since 1933 and each year the theme identifies a shared concern of Christian women and their communities. In 1999, Church Women United changed the name from May Fellowship Day to May Friendship Day.
Poet T.S. Eliot once wrote, “The Church must be forever building, and always decaying, and always being restored.” Through these words, our worldview of the church changes. It is an understanding that the church will continue to have life and vitality. From age to age, the church will continue to grow. This contrasts with the natural cycle of all living organisms, a life cycle that involves decay. Since the beginning of “church,” we have seen an endless cycle of decay. Be hopeful, though — the church is always restored! It is restored not through our human hands and effort, but by God.
Upon first feeling the chill of the air, upon leaving the swaddling security of the womb, the newborn wails. Having been forced from her snug home of nine months, she is adrift in what must seem like limitless nothingness.
