gregoryjenks

Tag: Ipswich

  • Not the palace but a cave

    Not the palace but a cave

    Christ Mass 2024
    St Paul’s Church, Ipswich
    25 December

    IMAGE: Public domain. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Herodium_02.jpg

    [ video ]

    For those familiar with the geography of Bethlehem there is a powerful theological message hidden in plain sight every time the Christmas story is rehearsed.

    As one stands down the street from the Church of the Nativity and looks towards Jerusalem, there is an odd-shaped hill about 5km away from the place where Jesus was born.

    That unusual looking hill is in fact an artificial mound created to disguise and protect the personal palace of Herod the Great, ruler of Jerusalem around the time that Jesus was born.

    In the centre of the artificial hill was a multi-story fortress which offered Herod and his guests luxurious accommodation and desirable security.

    SOURCE: Archaeology Illustrated. Used under licence.

    The top of the palace was 758m above sea level, so just a few metres above the highest point in Jerusalem some 12 km to the north.

    Herodion could be seen from all directions, and it offered surveillance over everything in its neighbourhood.

    At the base of this secure desert palace, Herod created a precinct described by the Jewish historian, Josephus, as a pleasure park with water features in the desert and structures that displayed Herod’s wealth.

    Such were the powers that be around the time that Jesus was born in Bethlehem.

    But the angels were not sent to Herodion.

    In the limestone hills around Bethlehem, there were groups of shepherds eking out a living for their families by running goats and sheep in the semi-desert landscape.

    They had no grand structures, just a few rows of field stones at the entrance to the natural caves where they kept their flocks of an evening.

    SOURCE: https://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/matpc.03289

    There were no aqueducts bringing water from mountain top reservoirs to these simplest of dwellings.

    There was no ostentatious display of wealth and power. 

    Some of the shepherds could see the desert palace of the murderous king, and on a still night the sounds of his parties would drift across the hillsides to their dark caves.

    In one of those caves, on the edge of the little village of Bethlehem overlooking an area now called Beit Sahour, a child was born.

    A child whose birth we celebrate some 14,000km away and 2,000 years later today.

    His mother had retired to the area of the cave where the animals were kept. She was seeking some privacy while she gave birth to her first child.

    She and Joseph were not seeking a place to stay, but for some privacy while Mary gave birth.

    In a cave with only the animals as witnesses to this most amazing moment.

    As Mary laboured to bring Jesus into the world, I wonder if she could hear the sounds of night time celebrations from Herod’s party palace just 5km away?

    For sure, Herod was oblivious to the birth of the child who would later hold sway over the hearts of millions of people across time and space, cultures and ethnicities.

    As he enjoyed the dancing girls, Herod missed the biggest moment of his entire career.

    But the angels did not go the Herodion.

    The angels went to motley shepherds who were keeping watch over their flocks safely tucked away in the caves behind them.

    The good news of Emmanuel, God coming among us to save and to transform our world, was given to the shepherds, not the tyrant in the palace.

    The angels came to the shepherds and sent them to another cave on the edge of Bethlehem where they would find a babe wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a stone food trough.

    Many years later, the adult Jesus would say to the crowds:

    What did you go out into the wilderness to look at? A reed shaken by the wind? What then did you go out to see? Someone dressed in soft robes? Look, those who wear soft robes are in royal palaces. What then did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. [Matthew 11:7-9]

    He was speaking of John the Baptist, but the image works for us tonight as well.

    Where do we look for Emmanuel?

    We shall not find him in the palace, but in those places where powerful people least expect to see God at work among us.

    May this church be such a place here in the heart of Ipswich.

    And may our homes be such places—ordinary places—where love abounds and the Christ Child is to be found.

  • Be like Luke

    Be like Luke

    Advent 4C
    St Paul’s Church, Ipswich
    22 December 2024

    IMAGE: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/ric/city_commemoratives/_thessalonica_RIC_187_arrowhead

    Listening to Scripture and reading our context

    [ video ]

    Throughout this year we shall especially focus on the Gospel tradition attributed to Saint Luke. 

    This is year C in a three-year cycle for the ecumenical lectionary shared by all the major Christian churches. During the past twelve months we have been especially listening to how Mark told the Jesus story, and when we start Advent all over again next November we shall refocus on Matthew’s telling of the Jesus story. But for the next twelve months we listen to Luke.

    Who was Luke?

    Each of the Gospels in the New Testament are traditionally attributed to a particular apostle or close associate of the apostles.

    There is no historical basis to those attributions, and they really do not add anything to our understanding of the documents. We are better advised to pay close attention to the narrative that each Gospel offers us and then discern the different theological emphases that each provides. In other words, we read between the lines as we seek wisdom for everyday life.

    There is an added twist in that the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles seem to be volumes one and two of an original continuous account that has been separated into different parts as the NT took shape. The first half was eventually collected and transmitted in the set of Gospels, while the second part was often attached to the collection of Paul’s letters.

    The author/editor is never named, although they speak in the first person in the opening paragraph of each volume.

    Whoever crafted these two documents (which comprise more than 25% of the New Testament), seems to have been a Gentile (i.e., not a Jewish follower of Jesus) and yet someone who was deeply influenced by the Greek version of the Jewish Scriptures, the Septuagint. Whoever this person was, they wrote more of the New Testament than any other person in the early church. Even more than Paul!

    Let’s adopt as a listening strategy the idea that we are listening to the words of a Gentile Christian during the earliest stages of the Jesus movement. This will be somewhere during the last 25 years of the first century and the first 25 years (or so) of the second century. I would suggest later rather than earlier.

    By the time “Luke” is writing his account of things, several people have already written accounts of Jesus. Luke is aware of Mark and Matthew, and perhaps also the Gospel of John. None of this is 100% certain, but it is a reasonable set of assumptions to help us understand what we are going to be hearing in the coming year.

    Interestingly, Luke thinks the earlier accounts were incomplete or inaccurate and he writes to set the record straight!

    What did Luke do?

    Without delving too deeply into the details in a sermon, let me suggest that Luke was doing two things at the same time. Let me also suggest that he is offering us a model that we might well choose to follow.

    Luke is listening to Scripture, and he is also paying attention to his contemporary culture.

    I think that is exactly what we need to be doing as well.

    We see Luke listening to Scripture when he draws on the ancient stories of Samuel to provide colour and detail for his story of Jesus.

    This is especially the case today as we ready the Song of Mary, the Magnificat. This powerful prophetic song which Luke has Mary sing spontaneously after she meets her cousin, Elizabeth, is itself inspired by the song of Hannah from 1 Samuel 2. We read that prophetic song for our psalm portion on 17 November, as we began to turn our minds towards the Kingdom themes during the Sundays after All Saints Day.

    Any ancient reader familiar with the Jewish Scriptures would have easily recognised how Luke’s description of John the Baptist and Jesus echo the biblical stories of Samuel.

    Luke was not alone in searching the Scriptures when seeking to understand their experience of God in and through Jesus. All the early followers of Jesus did the same thing. For example, Matthew’s story of Jesus’ birth draws on themes related to Joseph the dreamer, Moses and the escape from a murderous king.

    But Luke does something that most of his peers failed to do. Luke also paid attention to the cultural context in which he and his readers were located.

    To express that in more contemporary terms (even if slightly outdated now): Luke did not just read the Bible, he also read the newspaper.

    For Luke and everyone else in the Mediterranean world around the end of the first century, the dominant reality was the Roman Empire.

    Rome had its foundation myth, its national story: the legend of Romulus and Remus.

    Luke is writing his account of the Jesus story for people living inside the Roman world.

    Instead of the legend of Romulus and Remus—two brothers—one of whom would become the founder of Rome; Luke tells a story about two boys—John and Jesus—one of whom would become the saviour of the whole world.

    As you prepare for Christmas this week, take the time to read the first two chapter of Luke in one sitting. It is not a very long read, but we mostly hear the story in isolated chunks. Read the whole story as told by Luke in one go, and imagine how his original audience living in the Roman empire around 100 CE would have understood Luke’s message.

    This outline I prepared some time back may be helpful …

    Be like Luke

    The challenge for us is to be like Luke: to be people who read the Scriptures but also pay attention to the cultural world in which we live.

    That is something that comes naturally to us as Anglicans, since our tradition has always valued culture (fine arts, music, scholarship) while remaining firmly grounded in Scripture.

    To repeat the metaphor I used earlier, we need to have the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other hand.

    The Scriptures teach us how best to recognise God in everyday life, and our world invites us to express the good news in ways that transform lives and communities.

    That is our task this Advent, and during the year ahead.

  • Joy to the World

    Joy to the World

    IMAGE: https://media-cldnry.s-nbcnews.com/image/upload/t_fit-860w,f_avif,q_auto:eco,dpr_2/rockcms/2024-12/241211-syria-ted-turner-mb-0648-4b734b.jpg

    Advent 3C
    St Paul’s Church, Ipswich
    15 December 2024

    [ video ]

    On this third Sunday in Advent, we are invited to reflect on JOY as an essential attribute of our lives.

    So far this season we have done a little thinking about HOPE and PEACE, but today we shift our focus to JOY.

    It was certainly central to the various passage of Scripture that we heard just a few minutes ago. As Saint Paul puts it:

    Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice.

    It is a bit harder to find much joy in the Gospel reading this week, where Luke offers a thumbnail sketch of the message proclaimed by John the Baptist. As Luke tells the story, John was not calling people to celebrate, but to turn their lives inside out as they prepared for the coming of the Messiah, for the coming of God’s kingdom.

    The time to celebrate would come, he assured then, but first there were some serious spiritual exercises needing to be completed.

    ———

    If you were following the news from Syria this week, there were multiple scenes of joy.

    Despite the 2,000-year time difference, those events in Syria echo the message of both John and Jesus. They proclaimed the kingdom of God in a world dominated by the Roman empire and its local proxies: Herod and his sons.

    John and then Jesus assured people that God’s kingdom was about to arrive. For John, that seems to have been imagined as the arrival of the Messiah, but when John—who was already in prison—sent messengers to check whether or not Jesus was the Messiah for whom they were waiting, Jesus replies as follows:

    Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me. [Luke 7:22-23 NRSV]

    In describing what the arrival of God’s kingdom looks like, Jesus was drawing on the words of prophet Isaiah who inspired both John and Jesus, and whose words have had their own echo again in Damascus this week:

    The spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the broken hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the LORD’S favour, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn; to provide for those who mourn in Zion— to give them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit. They will be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, to display his glory. They shall build up the ancient ruins, they shall raise up the former devastations; they shall repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations. [Isaiah 61:1-4 NRSV]

    In Damascus this past week and in Capernaum 2,000 years ago, these words capture what JOY looks like.

    Those prophetic lines sketch what the world looks like when God is active among us.

    This is the JOY that erupts when the impossible is achieved, when the unthinkable happens, when the mighty are indeed cast down from their thrones, and when the humble and meek are fed.

    This JOY is exuberant, as we have seen on our TV screens these past few days.

    Yes, it may all end in tears, but for now there is celebration and delight. JOY.

    The people who stumbled out of Assad’s prisons blinking in the bright light of the sun, understood what JOY is.

    Indeed, the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness— on them light has shined.  [Isaiah 9:2 NRSV]

    This week we hear words about JOY, but we have also witnessed scenes of great JOY as the ancient words of the prophets find an echo in the events of our own time.

    ———

    While we celebrate with the Syrians who have been surprised by joy and rediscovered hope after decades of tyranny and almost 15 years of civil war, we must not forget that there are people still incarcerated unjustly much closer to home.

    To our shame, Australia turns away people seeking safety.

    Equally to our shame, we pick and choose who we assist, based on the colour of their skin or the way they worship God. 

    We were generous with assistance to Europeans fleeing Ukraine after the Russians invaded. That is a cause for celebration. But we turned our backs on the people of Gaza when they attempted to find safety while Israel destroyed every hospital, school, university and mosque; not to mention water systems, sewerage systems, electricity plants and almost every single home for 2.4 million people.

    Were Mary and Joseph to be seeking refugee with the baby Jesus here today, I fear that our government would reject their application and send them to offshore detention.

    As we enjoy the outpouring of joy and hope in Damascus, let’s also have the courage to be more generous as a people.

    As we do that, may we give others cause for JOY and may we find deep JOY ourselves.

  • people of hope

    people of hope

    Advent Sunday
    St Paul’s Church, Ipswich
    1 December 2024

    [ video ]

    Here we are: 

    • 1 December
    • Advent Sunday
    • the beginning a new year of faith and mission here in the heart of Ipswich.

    Over these four Sundays we are asked to reflect on key themes:

    • Hope
    • Peace
    • Love
    • Joy.

    I have no idea who chose those 4 themes or determined their order.

    However, I am glad that someone did. 

    They are great themes for us to reflect on over these 4 Sundays.

    I am not interested in them as abstract ideas, but I am very interested in them as real-life challenges for us as a faith community:

    1. How do we be(come) a community of hope?
    2. How do be a community of peace?
    3. How can we make love the spiritual DNA in our life together?
    4. And what about joy? How do we as a church move beyond fake smiles to genuine happiness?

    We can work our way through those 4 sets of questions over the next few weeks, but for now let’s focus on HOPE.

    How hope can flourish here

    Sometimes hope gets squeezed by all the awful stuff happening in our lives, in our community, or around the world.

    Yet hope can flourish when it is grounded in faith and love. 

    Maybe that is why St Paul concludes his powerful Hymn to Love in 1 Corinthians 13 with the line:

    And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three …

    If we stick with that triple list for a moment longer, we might think of faith as the soil in which the seed of hope is planted; and love as the sunshine that ensures the plant (in this case, faith) is healthy and abundant.

    If someone has not experienced much love in their life, then their capacity for hope is going to be diminished.

    And if they are not sure that life is a precious gift to be enjoyed and lived to the full, then their capacity for hope is going to be diminished.

    There we have a first clue as to how this church can be a community that grows hope.

    As a first step we need to stop talking so much about evil, sin and guilt. Instead, we should affirm repeatedly that life is a precious gift from God. Every life. All of life. Even the tough bits.

    Faith is not the art of believing 16 impossible things before breakfast (as someone once said), but rather the confidence that life is good; even when it seems far from good some of the time. Even much of the time.

    As a church we proclaim our faith that God is good, that our world is inherently good because that is how God caused it to be. Indeed, one way to talk about God, is to use the phrase “the love at the heart of the cosmos.” 

    If we connect people with that love at the very heart of the cosmos, then they will discover the deep truth of creation:

    God saw everything that he had made, and indeed it was very good. [Genesis 1:31]

    There is always much to learn as we travel along the road of faith, but the most important thing is not how many things we know but rather whether we have understood this one truth: life is good, and it is a blessing to be here.

    From the ground of that confidence grows the seed of hope.

    As that seed grows, we can say YES to God. Here I am, Send me.

    Our role as a faith community is to nurture that seed of hope as it grows within each person who comes within our circle of faith.

    This is not to ignore the need for us to overcome blindspots, moral and spiritual injuries, and plain old nastiness at times.

    There are weeds in even the best-kept gardens, and there is a need for renewal and transformation in each and every person within this community.

    Conversion is a lifelong process, but it need not begin with shame. It can begin with delight and the joy of being loved .

    The profound truth that we have to offer our world is this message of hope.

    Because God brought us all into being in the first place, there is hope.

    Because Jesus shows us that love overwhelms fear, there is hope.

    Because the Spirit of God is at work in us, there is hope.

    Because we discern the Word of the Lord when the Scriptures are opened, there is hope.

    Because we affirm the faith of the church, there is hope.

    Because we pray for the world and the church, there is hope.

    Because we gather around the Table of Jesus, there is hope.

    Because we baptise babies and adults, there is hope.

    Because we feed the hungry, there is hope.

    Because we are church, there is hope.

    This Advent, let’s pray for God’s help to become the kind of people who inspire hope in others, and the kind of church that nurtures hope in the heart of everyone who walks through our doors.

  • It’s complicated

    It’s complicated

    Pentecost 26B
    St Paul’s Church, Ipswich
    17 November 2024

    [ video ]

    From widows to rival wives

    Last week we had readings that featured several women whose husbands had died, leaving them in particularly vulnerable situations as widows in ancient societies where there was no public social security system.

    Today the first reading features the rivalry between two wives: one of whom was the mother of several children, while her rival was unable to have any children.

    To use a modern catchphrase: It’s complicated!

    Some of us—perhaps most of us—come from families that are a bit complicated at times. For sure I do.

    I have been told that were the story of my family offered to a TV studio, it would be rejected as too far-fetched.

    Yes, sometimes life is complicated.

    Life is complicated. Families are often far from story book perfect. And we are complex people as well.

    Even church families.

    Last week we had the story of Ruth and Naomi. It was set at Bethlehem, and in the fields of Ephrathah. Echoes of Christmas reaching across the lectionary, since Ruth was not only identified as the great grandmother of King David but—in the Gospel of Matthew—becomes a direct ancestor of Jesus!

    That was one complicated family story indeed.

    As is the story of Jesus’ immediate family, for that matter.

    This week we have two rival wives—Hannah and Peninnah—who were both married to Elkanah son of Jeroham.

    There are lots of families like that in the Old Testament. Indeed, King Solomon—supposedly the wisest man ever to live—had 700 wives and 300 concubines (1 Kings 11:4).

    Such families were complicated, as we often see in the biblical narratives.

    Elkanah comes across as a caring and compassionate husband, even if Hannah had to share her husband with another woman. But the other (perhaps younger) rival was cruel and Hannah found her life was both complicated and bitter.

    We all know stories like that. Some of us may have families like this, and the cruel control games may be played by men just as much as by women, not to mention intergenerational abuse.

    And, yes, it happens even in church families.

    As the story unfolds this nasty plot is resolved when Hannah does eventually have a child—Samuel—who she promptly donates to the elderly priest at the temple! 

    Another complication.

    Not to worry: God gives Hannah 2 more sons as well as 2 daughters, while Samuel stays at the temple with Eli the priest.

    Yes, it is definitely complicated.

    It all ends well, but a happy ending does not take away the pain and the abuse in the middle of the story.

    Not then and not now.

    So where do we find holy wisdom in stories such as this?

    For me, that wisdom is especially to be found in the raw faithfulness of Hannah.

    Hannah comes across as a woman who lives with domestic and family violence, and yet keeps her dignity because she has such a strong faith.

    Elkanah also emerges as a good character in this complicated story. He supports, protects and loves Hannah. He even allows her to donate the long-awaited child to the temple.

    Their personal situation was complicated but they were there for each other, and they were people who practised their faith.

    As the story goes, their faith did not waver.

    In real life—and not just in this archetypal story—their faith may have been a bit more complicated as well. We shall never know.

    But the storyteller added to this story the beautiful Song of Hannah that we read together a few minutes ago. That song was fashioned by countless anonymous women from ancient Israel who discovered that God was with them, with the powerless and the vulnerable. It comes from a later time when there were kings and princes in Israel, but its message of hope is timeless.

    Yes, life can be complicated.

    Yes, our faith can gives us hope and enable to survive and thrive.

  • Noticing the widows

    Pentecost 25B
    St Paul’s Church, Ipswich
    10 November 2024

    [ video ]

    Yesterday I was in Lismore for a refresher course as part of the Safe Church Ministry training offered by the Diocese of Grafton. As we began that program we looked at various biblical text about vulnerable people, since our duty of care for vulnerable persons is such an important responsibility.

    The biblical passages offered the usual categories of people: widows, orphans, the poor and the foreigner (that is, aliens resident in the villages and towns of ancient Israel).

    Did you notice how our readings today featured several widows?

    The Old Testament reading came from the book of Ruth. It mentioned by name two of the three women (all of them widows) in that delightful little story: Naomi, the mother-in-law; Ruth, the daughter-in-law who came back to Bethlehem, with Naomi; and it referenced indirectly Orpah, the other daughter-in-law who followed Naomi’s advice and stayed with her own people in Moab when Naomi returned home.

    It is unusual for the Bible to offer us stories in which women play a leading role, and even more unusual for those women to have names.

    In case you have not read the book of Ruth recently, let me remind you of the story. 

    When famine breaks out in Bethlehem, a local man (Elimelech) relocates across to the other side of the Jordan river with his wife (Naomi) and their two sons. They settle in the territory of Moab where they are made welcome and make a new home. The two sons marry local women, but then all three men died. This leaves Naomi, Orpah and Ruth as widows. Naomi hears that things are back to normal in Bethlehem, so she decides to head back home and she encourages Orpah and Ruth to stay in their own land and make a fresh start with new husbands. After some back and forth Orpah agrees to stay behind, but Ruth insists on going to Bethlehem with Naomi. Famously, Ruth says:

    Do not press me to leave you or to turn back from following you! Where you go, I will go; Where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God.  Where you die, I will die— there will I be buried. May the LORD do thus and so to me, and more as well, if even death parts me from you! 

    [Ruth 1:16-17 NRSV]

    You may have heard those words read or sung at a wedding.

    By the time we pick up the story in this morning’s reading, Ruth has come to the attention of a wealthy relative (Boaz) who agrees to take over the property of his deceased cousins, which includes accepting Ruth the widow to be his wife.

    Clearly that is not how we do things these days; at least not in our society. But if you read the story for yourself, as I hope you will this week, Naomi and Ruth are not exactly passive agents. They scheme to get their man, and Boaz goes along with their plans.

    There are some twists in this story. Jews were not supposed to have anything to do with the people from Moab. There were deep memories of ancient conflict between these people, but Ruth is the hero of the tale. That makes this a remarkable story already. But there is another twist to this story. 

    Ruth and Boaz have a son together. They call the boy, Obed. As time goes by Obed will have a son, who was Jesse. Then Jesse will have several sons, including David, the future king of Jerusalem!

    That makes Ruth, the foreigner (the ultimate outsider) the great grandmother of King David.

    Whoever crafted this little narrative had a point to make, and it was all about making room for the vulnerable people; in this case someone with a double handicap since she was both a widow and a foreigner. 

    This outsider would become the ancestor not only of David but also of Jesus.

    But Ruth and Naomi (and Orpah) are not the only widows in our readings today. There is also the anonymous widow from the Gospel passage. Let’s call her “Penny” since she is famous for the two copper pennies that she dropped into the moneybox outside the temple.

    Of course they were not pennies, as this a term for English money. When the Bible was translated into English more than 400 years ago, they described her coins using the English word for the smallest coin available at the time: a mite.

    Not a halfpenny, or a farthing, but a mite.

    That is one very low-value coin.

    In the time of Jesus that coin was called a prutah, and I have several examples of those tiny coins from the time of Jesus here with me in case you want to have a look at them later.

    A silver denarius was the basic payment for a day’s work in the field, and you would need almost 1,000 prutotto exchange for one denarius. Yes, these were very low-value coins indeed.

    In our Gospel today, Jesus has been warning people about the spiritual games played by powerful people. Then he sits opposite the collection point for cash offerings outside the temple. 

    In among all the rich people making large gifts, Jesus notices a poor widow who made a very small gift: two small copper coins.

    He draws the attention of his disciples to her.

    Her gift, while very small, is more substantial than the larger gifts contributed by people who were wealthy by comparison. Their bank accounts were large, but her heart was bigger than theirs.

    Jesus was not encouraging the church to extract all the money we can from vulnerable widows. Sadly that has sometimes happened, and it needs to be recognised as a form of elder abuse as well as spiritual abuse.

    Jesus was simply saying, “This woman has her priorities right.”

    She is not worried about the future, but as Jesus himself encouraged people to do, she was confident that God would provide for her needs. Her generosity was a simple act of faith.

    So today we have stories about 4 widowed women. They were highly vulnerable in their societies at the time, but they were each women who had agency and they chose to live into the promise of a God who provides what we need.

    They were not nameless widows, but people of faith and courage.

    When we encounter vulnerable people, do we see the labels placed on them by our society: homeless, hungry, poor, drug user, drifters, drop outs, dysfunctional, disturbed, mentally ill, refugees, asylum-seekers, lost souls, losers, single mothers?

    Or do we see them as people? People with potential? People with dreams? People with names? People loved by God?

    I hope you will take the time this week to read the whole story of Ruth, and to notice her amazing legacy in the little family tree at the end of the story.

    And I hope we all take some time this week to think of those we might too easily lump into categories, like “poor widows” and other kinds of vulnerable people.

    Boaz noticed Ruth …

    Jesus noticed Penny with her two small copper coins … 

    Do we have eyes to see those people God wants us to notice this week