Should I Eat Pig Feet?

I wrote the other day about Perez Hilton and his questioning of Miss California.

I’m not sure I made my point as strongly as I would have liked. I wasn’t addressing the issue of same sex marriage; that is another topic for another day. I want to make sure that my thoughts are understood, because they regard what I think is currently an alarming trend in our society.

I see two issues here: the social requirements to maintain American democracy and the commitment that Christians have made to a faith that precedes and supersedes their national loyalty.

The second issue is what has always infuriated nations, kings, emperors and ideological narcissists against Jews. Jews are going to keep the Sabbath, refuse to eat shellfish, and circumcise their male children. The Jews that do not participate in these things practices nearly always begat children and grandchildren who no longer view themselves as Jews. Naturally then, the Jews who survive as Jews are the ones who “keep covenant for your children’s’ children and those who are afar off.”

Jews have often risen to the top of the social order in terms of advisory influence upon rulers and other cultural influencers. They have done this in Babylon, Egypt, Rome, England, and even the Soviet Union. They are smart. They give really good advice. So, they are useful.

However, there always comes a time when the Jew is asked to become a “real” part of the culture in which he resides. Joshua Wisenbaum gets invited to participate in some national religious ceremony or a ceremonially unclean social gathering. (Hey, come with us and eat some pork rinds with the boys. Afterward we’ll all bow to the statue of Bazabaheliah. Shucks, none of us believe that stuff either, Mr. Wizenbaum, we just do it to show our national pride! Come on; join us down at the temple. And why can’t you stop practicing that ancient barbaric ritual of cutting your little boys taliwhacker? Is doing that nasty piece of business really all that important? Isn’t it all just symbolic anyway?)

And so forth and so on.

They won’t do it. So they get disinvited to the culture.

Christians have faced this too. In ancient Rome, for example. In recent times, they faced it in the Soviet Union.

We have never faced this in the United States. The nation has resonated with some of the most cherished values of Christianity. This is because (as the Christian right continually points out) many of the colonies were established for religious reasons. However, there is another reason: the social contract implied by our founding documents and restated in our greatest speeches.

We form temporary alliances with people who have serious differences. Our economic system and political system has taught us to do this. We take for granted that you can make a business deal or broker a political agreement without agreeing in many other important ways.

Many societies have never learned to do this. It requires a system of habits called social graces and an attitude called civility.

The word “civility” is closely tied to the word “civilization.” A civilized people learn to treat another person with respect, even when in sharp disagreement if that person is an honorable man or woman.

A civilized man or woman does not purposefully expel gas in public, eat with his mouth open, or remind everyone at a party that the host’s father was a horse thief.

Civility means that we assume that a person’s political or religious views are honestly formed and sincerely healed. Once we have a relationship that allows a discussion on these topics, the assumption is that each person involved in the conversation is looking for truth. While the ideas under discussion are in mortal conflict, the conservationists are not.

Civility allows a Ronald Reagan and a Tip O’Neil to meet once a week for lunch. They respected one another as men – and as elected officials of a nation they both loved -- while maintaining sharp differences about what was right for the nation. They didn’t call one another names or call the patriotism of one another into question.

Christians should be civil, even with people whose ideas and ideas are deeply at odds with the gospel. This is not a compromise of the faith; indeed it affirms a central tenet of the faith: namely that all human beings bear the image and likeness of God. Our faith forbids us to humiliate others or to speak ill of our national leaders. We can disagree with them; we cannot rail against them or call them insulting names.

We remain civil in disagreement and treat even our enemies honorably.

But we do not bend. We do not bow. We do not conform.

The way Perez Hilton and Miss California have spoken of one another reveals this difference.

So far this has been true: one attacks; one remains civil. One speaks gently of her beliefs; the other demands compliance even of our private opinions.

What would a Jew do?

The Culture Wars and The Loss of Civility

I don’t get angry very often about the culture wars stuff like I did the other night.

I figure that the nation is not a church and that unbelievers have as much a right to express their lack of faith, as I have to express mine. I would not want to live in a theocracy even if we had the ability to vote one into power. (Would you want any of our denominations or parachurches to control the government? I wouldn’t!)

I really do believe in freedom as a basic human right and am persuaded by conviction and experience than a coerced faith is no faith at all. So I am much more comfortable living with difference of opinion and lifestyle than many of my fellow Christians.

But the other night, I was outraged.

I wasn’t watching the beauty pageant when Miss California gave her now famous answer. I would rather walk three miles in the rain than watch a beauty pageant. As far as I am concerned, it is of no consequence at all whether the judges select Miss Twittlely Dee or Miss Twiddddley Dum to be the reigning monarch of bathing suits and hair stylists.

So I don’t care who wins. (Unless and until one of my granddaughters decides to enter the contest, which may change my present opinions about the entire subject.)

OK. Here’s what angered me.

Imagine this scenario:

There is a beauty contest and I am a judge.

I do my homework and discover that Miss Tennessee is a Hindu.

It comes time to ask my questions of the contestant and so I say, “Many states of our country have already passed legislation that recognizes the Judeo-Christian roots of our county. Do you support the current efforts of many in Tennessee to support such legislation in your state?"

Well, can you imagine? Even Christians would be outraged!

What possible justification is there for such a question to ever be posed to a beauty pageant contestant?

We all know better. The issue here is that a known gay advocate has been allowed to escape any consequences for his violation of this young lady’s rights. He is being allowed to escape because his cause is so just, so vital to our national interests, so upright and moral – that he can with impunity harass and insult someone who did not even wish to express her opinion about the subject.

In other words, she was judged not because she came armed and ready to fight, but because of a suspicion that she might have a private opinion that differed from that of the judge.

So this is democracy? This is a neutral public forum?

If a brain-dead, culturally irrelevant and spiritually vacuous event like a beauty pageant is not safe enough for a young lady to hold a private opinion that she does not even plan to express, what, pray tell, is a safe place now?

If this polarization continues, how will our democracy survive?

Orthodox Christians will not embrace a secular worldview. They will die first. They will resist the state. They will not conform.

Secular minded people will not embrace a Christian worldview. They will rebel against laws that impose faith upon them. They will not conform to Christian values.

Is this a new situation? No! It is as old as our Republic.

So what has changed?

Our loss of civility, of that unspoken contract that we will reserve our ideological struggles with one another to certain venues: the ballot box, the party platforms, the magazines and radio programs, and blogs. In other words, we have thought it civil to offer our political opinion only in those times and places in which people CHOOSE to offer and to hear political opinions.

When it comes to the American culture wars, I am one of those despicable moderates. I didn’t choose the adjective “despicable” for myself; the likes of Rush Limbaugh chose it for me. (I actually agree with Rush most of the time, but as with all narcissists, even 80% agreement is not nearly enough for the king of American conservatism.)

I am a conservative that still relates to the ideas of William Buckley, a great thinker from the bygone days before “conservative” came to mean “libertarian.”

I am not a libertarian. Therefore, in the eyes of a new generation of conservatives, I am not a “Real Conservative.” I view political opinion as a spectrum instead of just two huge groups of “them” and “us.”

I am a Christian first, a patriot second, and a conservative third.

My Christian beliefs are formed by my view of scripture, which one might call Protestant orthodoxy. I believe and confess without internal reservation the two great creeds of the historic church and hold to the major tenets of the Protestant reformation. That is about as “conservative” as it gets, at least when it comes to Protestant Christianity.

As for my patriotism, I believe I would lay down my life for the ideas of contained in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States, and the nearly biblical lines of the Gettysburg Address and Lincoln’s Second Inaugural. I even believe that an exercise of American citizenship ought to involve the memorization and understanding of these documents.

That’s pretty conservative.

I reject libertarianism because it is only a half a shade removed from anarchy. If the government is always the problem, then what do we do with the fact that in a democracy “government” is simply the way the people rule themselves?

I believe that our increasingly inflammatory talk about the government and our disdainful attitudes toward our elected officials is incompatible with Christianity. Jesus Christ did not allow his disciples to fight the temple guard or to even take up arms against the Romans. He was willing to give his life on behalf of those who opposed him and prayed for them as he was dying.

How then should we live in a cultural situation that is only mildly uncomfortable for our faith?

Like that young lady in the beauty pageant... she kept her end of the unspoken contract. She was civil. She entered an area of the public arena where people of vastly different views and beliefs are supposed to be able to meet and enjoy the event.

There was an understood cease-fire agreement so everyone could take a break from the culture wars.

Mr. Pervert broke the cease-fire.

So who is at fault? The young Christian woman, apparently.

What will we do if neither Rush Limbaugh nor Perez Hilton allows anyone to be moderate or civil? We will fight – first with words and then with more dangerous weapons.

Welcome to Yugoslavia.

Welcome to Sodom.

The Birthday Blog!

I am fifty-six today.

I had just been getting used to the idea of ‘being in my fifties.’ Now, I must face the fact that I am entering the second half of my fifth decade. I would say that this is sobering; but it’s not. I just don’t grasp it.

Fifty-six years ago today, my father’s tug boat was stopped at the Winfried Locks on the Kanawha river so someone in the control tower could yell down to inform him that I had arrived into the world. (He had taken the precious week off to welcome me but I had not cooperated with his schedule.)

My mother had something else on her mind, no doubt. My older brother had died a few days after his birth. I was number two. She was concerned that I survive and thrive, which I did and have.

The world of Southern West Virginia in those years immediately after the Second World War is gone now. It’s hard to imagine: no color TV – very few televisions at all, as a matter of fact. No FM radio. No computers. Jet aircraft was so new that few private citizens had ever been in one. There were no interstate highways. No cell phones.

Butter was butter, cheese was cheese and ice cream was frozen cream. Our food did not contain amino-biocrapious-pourizine-poopicancercausinate. The tomatoes were misshapen ugly things from the backyard; they tasted wonderful instead of being beautiful and perfectly round globes that taste like Styrofoam.

Decades, presidential administrations and world crisis have come and gone...
Practicing getting under the school so we wouldn’t die when the atomic bomb went off really didn’t prepare me for any real emergency. The Beetles didn’t usher in the antichrist. Mussolini turned out not to be the antichrist either, nor Pope Paul IX, nor Kissinger, nor Anwar Sadat, Pope John Paul, Gorbachev, John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Edward Kennedy, or any other Kennedy so far.

The conspiracy theories that scared the beejees out of us all have all proven to be malignant myths that wasted our time and spent precious energy. The things that have really changed the world snuck up on us while we were preoccupied with trivia.

I don’t really miss President Eisenhower, Nikita Kruschev, Perry Como, or Ed Sullivan. I don’t care if I ever see another black and white western, a Tide commercial or play with a hula hoop. I don’t want most of that world back. I just miss my grandparents, old pastors, listening to the Grand Old Opry with my grandpa and uncles, and Christmas Eve with all my cousins.
The great issues of today will come and go. They do not constitute the essence of life. What matters the most wears stocking feet and sneaks silently through the moments and then sneaks away– time, love and the meaning of life.

As it happens, those were the three birthday presents I received from the world as I got out of bed this morning. I still have some time, even if it’s just today. I have more love than anyone will ever deserve. And my moments, thoughts and actions have meaning – fifty-six years of it.

Letter To The Church Family

Dear Christ Church Family,

A few years ago, Alberto Motessi, a much respected Latin American evangelist, called me with a strange request. He wanted me to go with him to Mexico City to visit a Catholic priest. The priest had just been excommunicated for his public stance on the gospel and the baptism in the Holy Spirit.

The day I arrived, the priest, who was an older man, showed me some vegetables from a town in Guatemala that had experienced a massive move of the Lord. If I try to describe the size of the carrots and cabbage that he showed me, you will surely believe that I am exaggerating. I had heard of this phenomenon but had been “just a bit skeptical.” Now I was seeing them with my own eyes.

We went on to that service that Wednesday evening where over eight thousand people were worshipping in an open field. I can still hear and feel the power of their prayer.

In his video series “Transformations,” George Otis tells the story of the Guatemalan revival. He tells how the blessings of God on the agricultural produce completely reordered the economic life of the Guatemalan people in that area.

Ottis also tells about other cities in the world that have experienced similar transformations.

These stories are true. I was once skeptical but I have seen with my own eyes what God is doing in many parts of the world.

Why not here?

This is the question we should ask as we enter the Pentecost season.

In Never Silent, Bishop Thad Barnum, a highly educated Episcopal priest, tells how his encounter with the East African revivals turned his life around. As he dedicated his life to the Lord, he was forced to reorder his life and relationships but in return, he experienced the presence and power of God in a brand new way. He claims that Christian leaders around the world now worry about our commitment to the gospel and are praying that we join the current move of God now shaking the globe.

Will we? 

During this season, we will explore what it means to open up our church and ourselves to the presence, power and direction of the Holy Spirit. We are going to study what the scriptures say about the work of the Holy Spirit. Then we are going to invite Him to enter (and to reorder) our church as it pleases Him. 

We will invite you to view the transformation videos, to read literature and to study the scriptures together. We will pray that the Lord will use Thad Barnum who will join us on the Friday before Pentecost and will be with us all day that Sunday. 

I don’t know if the Lord will bless our agriculture, descend in tongues of fire, or send great blasts of wind into the worship services. Such have occurred around the world and may or may not occur here; that is the Lord’s sovereign business.  However, we know He will come if invited and if we are ready to do things His way.

Please pray that we will be sensitive and obedient as we enter this wonderful and exciting season.

 

Pastor Dan Scott

The Problem With Civic Religion

The United States is not a church. It is not a “new Israel.”

It is a nation, founded on high ideals and moral principles, that is highly informed and influenced by Christianity. Therefore, we can assert the American people are, culturally speaking, a “Christian people.”

This means that many of our customs, laws and ideas are rooted in the Judeo-Christian scriptures and spirituality. For all these reasons, I am a patriot. I am moved by patriotic songs and patriotic speeches.

But patriotism is not holy and the nation is not a church.

For a long time now, many American Christians have confused their patriotism with their spirituality. In most Evangelical churches, the people will stand as we bring the flag down the aisle. If we bring the cross down the aisle however, the people seem confused. Thus, some feel that honoring a cross may be idolatrous but that honoring the flag is not.

I honor the flag. I will stand when you bring it into the room. But I am not worshipping the flag. I am merely showing respect for what it represents. If we worship the state, we cannot confront the state when it is in the wrong. That makes us bad citizens. It also makes us unfaithful Christians.

As a minister of the gospel, I exercise authority in a few areas that precede and supersede the authority of the state. For example: marriage. I perform marriage ceremonies. My actions as God’s representative make a man and woman “man and wife.” This ceremonial action creates the beginnings of a family. The family then has a diverse origin. It is not an institution that derives from either nature of the state.

What the state does is “recognize” marriages. The state decides what sorts of unions are “legal,” which is to say “are recognized within the realm that the state rules.” The state cannot decide what God will recognize or what He will not recognize. So what happens when the state recognized a marriage as “legal” that God judges as “an abomination?”

Well, those who view the states authority as legitimate in that area – businesses, military, civic organizations and such like – will bow to the states decision.

But what does the church do? It depends.

If the church exists at the pleasure of the state and automatically acknowledges the authority of the state in all areas of life, it will join the various communities and organizations that submit to the states decision.

If the church understands its own origins, precedes within its proper realm of authority, supersedes the state, it will resist any laws that contradict and defy the rule of God. The church has no authority over those who do not belong to it. We should never seek to rule the state. We have tried that and it always corrupts both the church and the state.

The church does have authority over the flock of God. We proclaim, defend and teach the Bible – Old and New Testament – as the viable word of God. We insist that all followers of God order their lives by God’s law.

In short: we submit in all things that the state requires – except when its requirements are in clear violation of God’s word.

May God grant that American Christians never be forced to choose between the authority of God and that of our country. Or, if it comes to that, may we have the courage to move beyond civic religion to embrace the cross.

(To get an idea of what got me thinking along these lines, read Never Silent by Thad Barnum.)

Something Americans Can Agree On!

On this date, in 1865, our greatest and most noble president died at the hands of a fanatic.

Lincoln was far from a perfect man.

Writers and painters have tried to make him out to be some sort of statesman that was never motivated by political considerations but did what was right regardless of the consequence. That is hardly the case.

Lincoln was a political genius who was uncannily perceptive to the winds of political and social change. He was not above timing his stands to coincide with some shift of public opinion.

For most of his life, he was a good writer, a great speaker and a mediocre leader. He lost most of his elections and did not achieve great distinction until the presidential election of 1860, in which so many candidates had split the public vote that he was able to slip into office. His transformation into our national icon was slow and excruciatingly painful.

The war waged on and could neither be won by bullet or ballot. His political skills failed him. His public approval ratings plummeted. He was hated and ridiculed. He walked the halls of the White House as everyone else slept.

Slowly, he began to focus on what he believed and what he would do.

He would redefine the union.

He would end slavery.

He would provoke a rebirth of freedom and national spirit. He redefined the union and the nation’s shortest and most beloved speech: the Gettysburg Address.

The day before the speech, the grammatically correct form of the verb “to be” what one used when referring to United States was “are;” as in, “these United Sated are.” The day after the speech, the newspapers begin to use “is;” as in, “the United States is.” It was a profound change of attitude as well as grammar.

He decided to end slavery in prayer. By his own account to his staff, “I have made a commitment to the Almighty to press forward on this matter.” He now believed this to be the reason God had given him life.

The rebirth of freedom and national spirit began with his second inaugural address, also a very short speech, in which he told the nation hat God’s wrath had been poured out on the country for its sins against humanity but that national repentance and an end to slavery had at last brought the favor of the Lord upon us.

His death burned his spirit and ideology deep into his country’s psyche.

The country at last realized the gift that this awkward, strange looking man had been. As the secretary of the state said at his death: “now he belongs to the ages.”

And the ages received him.

The Loss of Christian America

Well, its official:

Newsweek Magazine said that Christianity in America is declining (April 13, 2009 edition.)

Even our president said that we are not a Christian nation anymore.

Oh my, what shall we do? Not a Christian nation? What does that even mean?

If it means that churches don’t write the laws, or that preachers don’t run the military or the ministers of music don’t censure the nation’s music -- of course we are not a Christian nation.

Most of the American people are not “born again.” Most of the leaders are not discipled. Most of the cultural products are not favorable to a Christian world view.

But all of this has been true for a long, long time.

On the other hand, what famous speech, what national document, what monument to fallen heroes does not quote from the Bible? Our music, movies, art and everyday speech is peppered with phrases from the scripture. Doesn’t that make us – at least culturally speaking – a Christian nation?

In the very same edition of Newsweek is another article. This one is about Bishop John Rucyahana and his work among Rwanda’s poor. Bishop John is an acquaintance of mine and the subject of Thad Barnum’s new book, Never Silent. What a paradox.

The magazine talks about American Christianity’s decline in one breath and with another gives witness to its furious spread.

In a way, that’s what Thad Barnum does.

He says on one hand, the American denominations are writhing in apostasy, each one trying to outdo the other in a race to debauchery and heresy.

On the other hand, entire nations are coming to Christ. What in the world is going on?

The world is dividing into sheep and goats and our country is taking the wrong direction. The Lord’s church in our country is too often a tool in the hand of the left or the right.

It needs to be a tool in the hand of the Lord.

If by “decline” the writer means that the church is starting to back away from its love affair with political life, then this is a decline that I welcome. Such a “decline” may mean that we join what God is doing in other nations – saving souls, healing the sick, and proclaiming the Word.

But Thad Barnum already said all of this a lot better than I can!

Wondering about Wesleys

I discovered something interesting a few days ago. My wife, Trish, is a direct descendant of Samuel Wesley, brother of John and Charles. My father bought me a software program for genealogy research and I have been playing with it, trying to add a few links here and there. Since my parents and I had already done fairly extensive research on our family tree years ago, it was easy to find the data banks that have been made available in the last few years and their relevant information.

So, my children and grandchildren are living links to one of the most significant movements in all of Christian history: Methodism.

That doesn’t just mean the United Methodist Church of course, but Nazarenes, Church of God in Christ, AME, most of the Pentecostal movement – a huge portion of Protestant Christianity.

Trish’s great grandfather and his father established the little Methodist Church in Willow Springs, KY. Together they pastored that church for over 50 years. The older pastor, Ruben Richardson, moved to Kentucky from Tazwell, Tennessee in 1800. His grandfather, William Wesley, had moved from Devon, England to establish a church in Rockbridge, Virginia.

Williams grandfather was Samuel Wesley. There’s a woman behind all of this: Susanna Wesley, mother of John, Charles, Samuel and nine more.

Scholarly, sassy, and struggling with doubt, she was the daughter, wife, and mother of Anglican and dissenting clergymen. Nevertheless pushing toward faith, Susanna molded the life and faith of generations of believers.

My wife, daughters and granddaughters are her children. The question is, what will we do with what we have received?

In Never Silent, Bishop Thad Barnum writes about the alarming erosion of Christian faith in the great American denominations. He urges the members of the younger denominations and independent churches to shake off the apathy before the spreading flame of heresy overtakes us and destroys our inheritance.

I was delighted this week to know that my children are genetically linked to great heroes of our faith. In the end though, genes will not count for much.

What counts, on this holy week during which our Lord gave His life, is whether we will walk the same path as the saints. If we decide to do so, when we will begin the journey?

“Be favorable and gracious to Zion, O Lord; and rebuild the wall of Jerusalem. Then you will be pleased with the appointed sacrifice.”

Where Is Home?

“I am a stranger and an exile living among barbarians and pagans, because God cares for them." (St. Patrick’s Confessions)

I experienced my first airplane ride the day before my sixteenth birthday. It was not a pleasure trip; I was with my family on our way to Ecuador. We changed planes in Atlanta and then continued on to Miami where we spent the night.

Late the next night we boarded a Braniff jet (the first company to paint its aircraft in bright colors). We landed in Panama about daybreak and got out for a while to stretch our legs. Then we got back into the plane for the trip to Quito. In those days, the Quito airport was a small and modest building. The immigration officer sat at a crude desk. After a brief conversation, he would personally stamp each passport.

Soon we were in the front of the airport, several miles from the city. (Now, of course dense housing and business districts surround the airport.) My father hailed a taxi and soon we were riding on the old cobblestone covered Pan-American highway.

The sights and smells were so unfamiliar. In the center of town, the people who filled the sidewalks were dressed in clothing I had never seen before, brightly colored ponchos, strange hats and shoes made of rope. Others were cooking on the street and the fragrances of the food startled me. The buildings were older than any I had ever seen. Everyone was speaking words that I did not understand. I was now an immigrant. I was in a country where I did not belong.The first night we slept in an old adobe home near the center of town.

I awoke shortly after daybreak, hearing people laugh out in the courtyard. Several houses opened up to the same courtyard, and people were washing their faces in the cold mountain water of the fountain. I could smell coffee and freshly baked bread. Soon our host offered me papaya, some toasted bread, and the strongest but most flavorful coffee I had ever tasted.

After a few weeks of continual strange experiences, I began to experience what we now call culture shock. It is a sense of social vertigo, an intense feeling that the world is not right and that one is out-of-place.

In the grip of culture shock, one begins to feel a profound longing for home. That is what happened to me. I longed for the Appalachian mountains and for familiar sounds, smells and foods. I dreamed of home. I cried myself to sleep thinking about home. My mind recreated West Virginia as a mystical, Garden of Eden sort of sanctuary. If only I could get back there, all would be well.

I have been back to West Virginia many times since those days. I even lived there for a brief time.

While I still love my boyhood home, it is no longer home. Alas, I have never quite recaptured the same sense of belonging anywhere I have lived. I have liked in Nashville longer that anywhere else; but in a sense, Quito is home, Montreal is home, and Phoenix is home. I left a part of myself in each city, and each city gave me something new. However, when in any of them, I long for things I experience in the others.

Both St. Patrick and St. Augustine speak of this sense of homesickness and dislocation.

“Why is the heart of the Christian heavy?” Augustine asks in his Confessions, “it is because he is a pilgrim and seeks his own country.”

Like me, Patrick also experienced a traumatic dislocation on his sixteenth birthday. One day he was playing in the fields beside his father’s house; the next day he was in a boat in chains, traveling to Ireland. He hated Ireland every day he was there and prayed constantly for his release.

When God finally answered his prayer, how he rejoiced to be going home! But home was no longer home.

After a while, a voice came in the night, calling him back to Ireland. When we think of Patrick, we can only think of Ireland. Late in life, he writes the Roman churchmen, lamenting that “you mock us for our backwardness and ignorance because we are Irish but I remind you that we are the children of God.” He no longer thinks of himself as an outsider. He has become a defender and advocate for the people and the nation that he once despised. As we mature, a Christian begins to realize that “here we have no continuing city but we seek one to come.”

We love our country; we love our birthplace.

However, the people who once filled those landscapes with laughter slowly slip into eternity. The places they once occupied become like picture albums on our coffee tables: reminders of what once was. As this happens, our grasp of a geographical place as sanctuary loosens its grip.

We begin to find our sense of home in God, in the work He has given us to do, and in the people that He has given us to love and serve.