Celebration is a wonderful part of life. And Christmas is a Christian feast! We all need to feast now and then; we all need to celebrate God’s blessings in our lives. But, I must admit, there’s a fine line between recognizing how blessed I am and feeling the guilt that comes with affluence. It’s hard to [...]
How are you going to celebrate Buy Nothing Day? Just a reminder – this Friday, November 25th is Buy Nothing Day. It’s a day promoted by the team at Canada’s own Adbusters magazine. Like everything else done by this team, this day is plugged using striking graphics and remarkable pithiness: “Participate by not participating,” the [...]
When my husband moved to a different area of the city, he went looking for a church that was near his new apartment. The first one he tried out was pretty good. The hymn selections were appealing to him. The minister had a gentle and thoughtful presence in the pulpit. And the congregation seemed to [...]
Addiction is the topic of focus this month on the Ethics Centre website. The word “addiction” may sound simple enough, but people use it in varied and complex ways. Our society often narrows down addiction to two explanatory models. Sometimes these are called the “moral model” and the “medical model.” They’re also called the “sin [...]
Human trafficking is a problem with global implications. But it affects the lives of girls, women, and other vulnerable persons in deeply personal, deeply wounding ways. Hopefully during the Weekend of Prayer for Human Trafficking you were able to join us in learning more about human trafficking and praying for all those affected by this [...]
“The poor you will always have with you.” (Mark 14:7 || Matthew 26:11 || John 12:8) Often I find myself cringing when I hear this verse read aloud. It’s not because I resent it being in the Bible. It’s because it’s so easily taken out of context and used to support agendas that seem anything [...]
Matthew 25 tells that familiar story of the separation of the sheep from the goats. It’s an eschatological narrative punctuated by the severe polarity of eternal reward and eternal punishment meted out by a just and divine King. Personally, I don’t enjoy reading about damnation very much. But regardless of how unpalatable that topic is [...]
Rochelle McAlister With so many billions of people struggling with poverty, it can seem like an insurmountable problem, but God’s love is stronger than poverty. Poverty is tragic and deadly, but it can be overcome if do unto others what we would want done to ourselves, and if we do not do unto others what [...]
Rochelle McAlister I will never forget the first time I heard opera in a barn. I was visiting a refugee camp, where families had been living in stalls of barns for over two years since war had broken out in their country. I visited one family, where the translator introduced me to a beautiful woman [...]
Rochelle McAlister When I was in high school, I did a group research project on homelessness. For the project, two of us “dressed down,” picked a corner downtown, sat and begged for a Saturday. The other group member videotaped us interacting with others from a nearby coffee shop. It was an interesting, cold day. As [...]
