Keep mending
“Man is born broken,” playwright Eugene O’Neill once wrote. “He lives by mending. The grace of God is glue.”
Mend was an important word in our fall campaign last year. But the truth is, mend has always been vital to our work. Christian Courier is a small publication with a huge vision. That’s why the verbs in our mission statement have such high hopes: we write to inspire, build, and influence.
I’d like to reiterate, in this year of our Lord 2022, a verb underneath these others: repair. This verb goes back to this paper’s origins, and earlier; it’s at the root of a Reformed world and life view. We write to repair. We live by mending.
Inspiring, building and influencing are all important, but there are times when brokenness threatens to overwhelm us. Sometimes we need community renewal before further action. Relationships might need repair before building is possible. And church restoration may need to precede our ability to influence culture for Christ.
In this issue
We know that CC readers and writers hold different views on the issues of the day, but we all agree on one core value: that God is at work in the world. That’s why, as Maaike VanderMeer says, there is always hope. “Even if the disagreements among us threaten to divide our country, still we hope. Redemptive journalism is the joyful task of wading through our differences and finding the currents of hope beneath the surface.”
Wading through three different perspectives on covid vaccines is exactly what Maaike did on the front-page story. That conversation ended in smiles and the three interviewees blessing each other! Trying to understand all sides of the trucker’s convoy is what led Meghan to interview her cousins and an artist in B.C. for the other front page story.
This is the holy season of Lent, in which Christians might “give up” something to help us remember the reality of death. But the pandemic has already been an exhausting experience of giving things up, Ross Lockhart points out. This Lent calls for something new – not “giving up” on life but starting new practices that grant joy and enliven our hope in Jesus Christ. How? Find a new way of seeing, Katie Munnik suggests.
Discover some better F-words, Sara Pot says – family, fitness, fun, faith.
Turn to Scripture, as Tom Wolthuis reminds us, especially as Easter approaches. Ephesians 2 proclaims that Jesus destroyed dividing walls of hostility through the cross!
Current events remind us daily that the world is still broken.
Even so, we live by mending.
And God, in his great mercy, seals our every attempt with grace.
