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.
“Today the playground is transformed, adorned with flowers and the presence of many dignitaries.”
Those were the words of the Honorable Rebecca Joshua, government minister of Roads and Bridges in South Sudan’s capital city, Juba, during Monday’s ceremony celebrating 15 graduates of Nile Theological College. Presbyterian mission co-worker the Rev. Bob Rice is an instructor there; his wife, Kristi, also a mission co-worker, is an economic and development adviser for the South Sudan Presbyterian Evangelical Church. This report is taken from a Wednesday post on their blog, “Embracing Hope.”
Just months after celebrating its 40th anniversary, Zomba Theological College in Malawi received accreditation by the National Council for Higher Education (NCHE) and will soon become Zomba Theological University.
How would you celebrate your 50th anniversary?
One of the ways the Church of Jesus Christ in Madagascar (FJKM), the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)’s partner church, celebrated its 50th anniversary this year was by promoting free HIV testing at all of its commemorative events.
