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Hearing the plea of the Syrian Orthodox, I realized that no one had ever laid a claim on me because I bore the name of Christ. “Christian” was the box that I checked in surveys and governmental forms to distinguish myself from Muslims or Hindus.

Can we shield ourselves from these anxieties altogether – I think not: Paul most certainly does not promise us a quiet life, any more than our beloved Lord Jesus does. But the transformation of anxiety through prayer, and its mysterious enfolding in the joy and peace of the Trinitarian life, though the Spirit and in Christ: this is indeed our Pauline heritage and we must urgently reclaim it to be effective ambassadors of the gospel at all.

All of earth’s empires crumble. Caligula’s did. I pray not, but possibly, someday, even the United States will crumble. The Apostle Paul taught that any religious system which humans have constructed with merely physical elements will disintegrate. Jesus told us that any religious power which has attached itself to the building blocks of an earthly nation will be left with not one stone standing an another.

If Starbuck is right in his argument that a.) any unwilled natural violence is simply a part of God’s beautiful and violent creation and b.) the malicious destruction of God’s creation affronts not only the creation but also God himself, then when my mom says “f*ck cancer,” Starbuck would conclude that at least part of her hostility is directed at the God that both of us revere.

As I continue to search for home, continue to long to find home—in all its dimensions—in more profound and endur­ing ways, I am keenly aware God has met me along the way. Those longings for home, some would say, foreshadow a desire for heaven—the heart’s true home.

The ninety-year life of Roger Schutz ended this past August in a cruel act of violence that violated the entire spirit in which that life had been lived. Even so, as we look back at this remarkable life–a treasure that the Reformed family of churches gave to world Christianity

Remembering can be a solo thing. We can stroll down memory lane on our own, but when I sit down for coffee with a lifelong friend, and my story-remembering meets her story-remembering, we aren’t just sharing our shared history, we are forging a deeper bond of friendship.

The church growth movement has led to weaker community, weaker theological acuity, weaker biblical knowledge, and little understanding or appreciation of the historic liturgies of the church. With so many fewer connections between the church and its members, it should be no wonder that many are fading away from the church altogether.