Jesus
Former President Jimmy Carter just published a new book about the ongoing violent unrest in the Middle East titled, We Can Have Peace in the Holy Land: A Plan That Will Work.
It seems that much of our conversation as a Church is in a perpetual cycle of reaction. We are tempted to exaggerate the neglected truth, and end up making incomplete disciples, either social justice disciples without Jesus or Jesus disciples without social justice. Then there are those special moments where Jesus and Justice kiss.
It's a better country than I thought it was. I honestly wouldn't have thought this possible. I guess I would have agreed with the older generation of African Americans in my neighborhood: This day would never come in our lifetimes-but here it is.
We waited for 30 minutes. Standing, awkward, we looked up at the board. When I arrived at Penn Station the board said train #167, enroute to Washington D.C., "25 mins late"... Five minutes later, "30 mins late." The terminal filled up, more people standing -- waiting ... and wondering if the others hovering with backpacks and napsacks and yoga mats were all waiting for the same thing.
As of Thursday, the Red Cross reported 900 Palestinians from Gaza killed, half of them civilians, over 3,400 severely wounded, and 28,000 displaced from their homes. The special medical supplies which I brought here from the U.S., augmented by blankets and powdered milk and other food bought locally in Cairo, all seemed a drop in the bucket compared to the dimension of need.