So much is at stake here at the dawn of the year 2017. The fate of the planet is in the balance as never before, as is the very integrity of our faith. We cannot waste our time hoping on a faraway unimaginable heaven where there is no war and baby Jesus sleeps safely in his manger.
What we desperately need is the disarmament that Christians and other seekers of peace throughout the world — from Dorothy Day to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. — have prayed and struggled for.
“You want it to be meaningful not only to your president-elect, but you want it to be meaningful also to the nation,” Graham said.
“I’m taking time just to pray and ask God to give me wisdom and guidance because it’s a responsibility that I take very seriously.”
This is the third inauguration Graham will have attended, he noted. The first was to assist his father Billy Graham at the second inaugural of President Bill Clinton in 1997; the second, to offer the invocation at the first inaugural of President George W. Bush in 2001.
I saw ailing patients. I saw the neighborhoods surrounding Hartford Hospital, which belie the city’s reputation as the home of pin-striped actuaries bored with their BMWs. Connecticut’s capital is, in fact, one of the nation’s poorest communities, its many marginalized Hispanic and African American neighborhoods barely seen by the BMW drivers. The cerebral palsy victims trapped in their bodies; MS patients; old women fumbling for change on the bus while hooked up to portable oxygen; old men wheezing with emphysema. So many people we barely see — and I was one of them.
I took solace in knowing that Jesus makes a bee-line for my new world.
1. David Fahrenthold Tells the Behind-the-Scenes Story of His Year Covering Trump
The winner of the Post’s first Ben Bradlee Prize for his coverage of the 2016 election pens an essay on his experience covering Trump. “I thought I’d be through with the story in a day or two. I was wrong. I didn’t understand—and I don’t think Trump understood, either—where that one check, and that one question, would lead.”
2. 2016: The Best Year for Black Musicians Since ‘Purple Rain’
If you noticed that a staggering amount of the music you loved from the past 12 months was made by black artists, there's data to back that up.
3. The Internet Law That Explains Why 2016 Was So Terrible
Spend most of 2016 feeling crazy? That’s thanks to Poe’s law, which “stipulates that online, sincere expressions of extremism are often indistinguishable from satirical expressions of extremism.”
I want to err on the side of love and inclusion over doctrinal borders. I want to stand with the marginalized against the status quo. I want to be an ally because gay rights are human rights.
I join with those who celebrate the birth of this spirit-child, even while knowing his life led to murder at the hands of a corrupt Roman regime that for years had been using power and wealth to silence and oppress people. It is said that after his murder, this same person rose from the dead, his body and bloodshed becoming a bridge from violence and trauma to wholeness and healing — showing that hope could conquer hate, and that the power of integrity, justice, and love could win over corruption, fear, and violence.
Since coming to power in 2012, the government has made abortion completely free as part of the National Health Service, scrapped a requirement that a woman must be “in distress” to obtain permission to abort, and dropped a weeklong “reflection period” between applying for and carrying out an abortion. It decided to act again in part because several anti-abortion sites were found to be ranked higher on search engines than the government’s own abortion information site. Although their home pages appear to be neutral, the sites and their advice hotlines — run mostly by Catholic anti-abortion activists — are on closer inspection clearly against abortion and stress the physical and psychological damage they say the procedure can cause.
Southern Baptist Pastor, Dwight McKissic of Cornerstone Baptist Church in Arlington, Texas, wrote in his blog on Christmas Eve about the “lynch mob” that is forming to remove Russell Moore.
Although they have lived in the country of Myanmar for generations, the country refuses to see them as citizens. They are often seen as intruders from Bangladesh. Treatment of the group varies from violent to genocidal with many, including The Aleteia, claiming that the Myanmar government is practicing a form of ethnic cleansing.
1. The Man Who Saved 200 Syrian Refugees
Would that the world’s leaders felt the same: “I didn’t want to be 80 years old and know that I did nothing during the greatest humanitarian crisis of my time.”
2. Merry Christmas! The North Pole Is 50 Degrees Warmer Than Usual …
“No word from Santa on the forecast — or from President-elect Donald Trump, who is exercising his Twitter fingers while the Arctic melts.” XOXO, Grist.org