Aussie Quote of the Year: Socceroo Awer Mabil defines multiculturalism: “It’s many journeys, with one jersey.”
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Finding Preac-hers: The Fixing Her Eyes website has updated a list of evangelical Anglican, Baptist,, and other churches that feature women regularly preaching, especially in church networks that don’t always encourage the practice. Obadiah thinks this is a great achievement – the list is at https://www.fixinghereyes.org/women-preach-church
It occurs to Obadiah that this is a great list to pray through. Fixing her eyes is bound to want to add to the list (that’s a deliberate ambiguity by Obadiah!)
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Feeling kind of sorry for J.D. Vance: Carlos Lozarda has read Vance’s new book, Communion-finding my way back to God and he sees a man struggling with himself in a New York Times column.
“Vance seems to acknowledge, however grudgingly, the imperative, shared across major religions, to welcome the stranger. ‘I can believe (as I do) that I owe a given immigrant — even an illegal one — duties of charity and grace,’ he writes. And he admits that ‘immigration is a particularly thorny version of a challenge I encounter every day in my job: how to take an accepted moral principle and apply it in the real world as a Christian leader.’
“Vance neglects his duties of charity and grace when he does not acknowledge, let alone apologize for, spreading unfounded rumors in 2024 that Haitian immigrants were eating pets in Springfield, Ohio. He writes that critics say the administration is ‘too tough’ on immigration, but he waves it all away. ‘The point is not to litigate this issue on these pages,’ Vance writes, ‘but to highlight that any application of moral principles in the real world requires a constant evaluation of trade-offs.’
“It’s just as the hymn says: They’ll know we are Christians by our constant evaluation of trade-offs.”
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Lest we forget: Whatever else happens at the church of England’s General Synod, here’s one very positive outcome. This week’s meeting in York will take the final step to commemorate the 21 martyrs of Libya in the yearly list of special days (or “Lesser Festivals”).
On 12 February 2015, the Islamic State released a video online showing photos of 21 Christian construction workers—twenty from Egypt and one from Ghana—whom they had kidnapped in the city of Sirte, Libya. The gruesome video released by ISIS showed they had been killed for their faith in Jesus Christ. The Video was titled “A message signed with blood to the nation of the Cross”.
The special prayer: “God of faithfulness, your servants praised you in their death. Receive all we bring before you this day, and give us the strength of will to proclaim your righteousness and love. We ask this through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”
The actual Coptic prayer the martyrs said as they died fits alongside: “My Lord Jesus Christ, help me”
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Up to God: Obadiah does not follow the NRL closely, but a reader has alerted him to a story from the local team, the Wests Tigers. Their star player and co-captain, Jarome Luai, has accepted a too-good-to-refuse deal to join the new PNG side in 2028. But now the Tigers have said he can go a year early. Will it be a gap year? Luai has taken to social media, saying, “God’s plan, not mine.”
Whether or not you are an NRL star or not, that is a great attitude.