Editorial

The period in the church calendar between Advent/Christmas and Lent/Good Friday/Easter can leave us spiritually somewhat uncertain. Can we learn anything from this “in-between-time”?

The year 2017 is the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. But there is another upcoming anniversary that is also significant, 2018 and 2019 will mark the 400th anniversary of the Synod of Dordt (1618-19).

Our son Maynard lives in greater Vancouver. He works at the University of British Columbia (UBC) situated on the far-west coast. It’s a large research university that serves about 52,000 students. He and two other labour relations specialists represent the administration, who oversee the close to 10,000 or so staff (not including faculty) at the university.

Working as a nurse in Canada today is challenging. “We have way too much to do,” Gaudaur says, since government-regulated budget cuts have replaced RNs with RPNs and increased the nurse/patient ratio. “Tasks and expectations” are impossibly high, yet “people who don’t know me need me to be kind.”

Author and teacher Richard Lederer highlighted our need for words by, fittingly, creating a new word. He said we are “verbivores;” we must consume words to live.

The primary values that should shape a Christian public engagement with migration are “welcoming embrace and justice” rather than “economic interests and cultural integrity”.

And all of this is good because we live in a universe that far exceeds our dimensions, and it is big enough and lasts long enough to give evidence of God’s plan to gather in all the treasures he has generously distributed through the ages.

Puns and parodies might get some laughs, but Christ’s humble, miraculous birth is already timeless and universal. It doesn’t need to be made more relevant or relatable.

How about you? What would it be like if you were to follow Jesus, politically, at the most local level, in 2017?