Since we moved into the downtown eastside at the end of August, my housemates and I have been hosting an “open meal” every Friday. Basically, we invite pretty much anybody and everybody — be they people from school, from church, or from the street corner — over for a big meal and we count on the holy Spirit to show up and bond us together in love, just as we count on Jesus to show up and host the meal (in this way we hope to — at least a little bit — recover something of the sacramental nature of the meals Jesus shared during his ministry, and we also hope, in these meals, to embody the proclamation of the forgiveness of sins and the reconciliation of people with God and with one another). Over this time we have always had one woman (let’s call her Jane Doe) come every week. Time after time, Jane was sure to be there. It became, she told us, the highlight of her week. Over the last few months we fell in love with Jane and, marvelously, she also fell in love with us — no small feat for a woman who has been continually rejected and wounded by Christians because she is a prostitute who happens to be gay and who also happens to be Wiccan.
Jane’s life has not been easy and yet, all things considered, she has accomplished some amazing things. Like working in the sex trade for 25 years (ages 18-43 and counting) and not becoming addicted to any drug whatsoever. Like living past the age of 40 when that is the average age of death for female prostitutes in Vancouver. Like valuing herself enough that she refuses to drop her price — even though the addicts that she has seen overtake the neighbourhood have driven prices down to amounts that cannot sustain a life, amounts that can only sustain a life-destroying addiction. Like maintaining her own place — even if it is a single room in a shitty hotel. Like working for herself and not for a pimp. Like teaching us some of the joys and wonders of opening our home to people that are usually rejected by Christians.
But then, last Friday, Jane never showed up for dinner. And so, over the week, my housemates and I would walk down to the corner she works to look for her, to try and find her and make sure that she was alright — because prostitutes tend to “disappear” all too often and all too easily in this neighbourhood (cf.: http://www.missingpeople.net/vancouver_missing_women.htm. See also this page for what tends to happen to “disappeared” women: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Pickton — is there any way to view these pages without weeping?). We were hoping that maybe she had just forgotten dinner, maybe she had been sick that night, but we never found her. Maybe, we thought, she was staying inside because of the snow and the cold weather. But, once again, last night at dinner, Jane wasn’t there. And all the ways in which we had been reassuring ourselves, ended up sounding pretty hollow.
Jesus tells us to go out and find the lost sheep but sometimes it’s damn hard to find them. I guess this week we’ll be putting up posters, checking the hospitals, and trying to track down her neighbours to see if they’ve seen her. I think we’re all more than a little scared that all these efforts will be futile. Those who get lost here, often stay lost, and those of us who should be out searching, don’t know how to find them.
Lord, have mercy. Teach us, we pray, how to find your lost sheep. We are not very good shepherds and we don’t know how to search out your little ones. Lord, make your Church a true shepherd, a true seeker and finder of lost sheep, because we need all the help we can get out here, and I don’t think our hearts can handle seeing another face added to the “missing women” sheet. Honestly, we don’t know how your heart can handle it. How long will you allow this to continue? This God-damned situation is more than we can bear.
Please, reader, if you pray, take a moment to pray for Jane.

When I was younger I always thought that violence was, well, stupid. Of course, I wasn’t then thinking about the big moral questions as they relate to violence; I was mostly thinking about fights at school, at the mall, or outside of clubs downtown.
As I have gotten older, I have thought much more seriously about issues of violence, in part because violence is so fundamental to the worlds in which I live (as exhibited by the consumer violence that much of the Church engages in, and the street violence that many of my friends continue to engage in) and also in part because what Jesus and the New Testament say about violence seems very clear.
My opinion that “violence is stupid” has matured into the view that, as a Christian, it is never right to inflict violence upon another person. I have since had the opportunity to see that commitment to nonviolence work out is some truly incredible ways in what could otherwise have been some very devastating encounters (I think especially of a few encounters I, and my co-workers, had with gang members in Toronto).
However, as I have become increasingly accustomed to the constant presence of violence in my neighbourhood and at my work (although not so much at my work these days), I have been coming to realize how much fear played a role in my previous expressions of nonviolence.
That is to say, as I have now arrived at a place where I am not really afraid of experiencing violence myself, I have also found it that much more difficult to not react violently in certain situations. A few encounters I have had recently have driven this point home. I’ll share one.
The other night I was walking to the corner store and I was waiting at a street corner next to a few street-involved men — i.e. men that looked a little rough around the edges. It was the weekend when all the college kids were out celebrating Halloween and a bus full of drunk university students drove by (rather slowly, due to traffic). A few kids leaned out of one of the windows, sprayed something at us from a can and yelled, “Go back to East Hastings, you fucking bums!” (East Hastings, by the way, is the ghetto in which I live.) They then threw a can at us which happened to hit me in the chest and then fell to the ground at my feet. Anyway, before I really even realized what I was doing I bent down and picked up the can and threw it, as hard as I could, back at the bus. Now, usually my throwing accuracy is awful. Usually I couldn’t hit the side of a barn from twenty feet away. So without really aiming, I threw the can as hard as I could. Lo and behold, the can actually went in a window that was open about a foot wide and it hit one of the mouthy college kids smack in the middle of his forehead. At this point, I also realized that the bus had stopped because all the kids were getting out to go to a club that was just up the street. For a second I thought I was going to get mobbed by about 50 drunken college kids but they just looked at me and the street-involved men (who were laughing their asses off, while offering me congratulations) and then turned away.
Later on, as I thought about that encounter, I was pretty ashamed of how I had responded. I was worried, too. I had acted out of anger, I had acted violently, and it had come spontaneously — it had felt natural. It was at this point that I realized just how much of my prior commitment to nonviolence had been motivated by fear. I have come to realize that it is far more difficult to embrace nonviolence when I am not afraid of experiencing violence myself. Before I would ignore situations like the one I just related, or I would de-escalate them — and I would have, at least in part, been motivated to do so because I was afraid. Now, without the fear, it takes a conscious (and actually difficult) effort to not escalate a situation.
I wonder how often the moral qualities upon which we pride ourselves are like this? I prided myself upon my nonviolence, and then I lost my fear, and I’ve realized I’m far more violent that I ever imagined. As I look back on other issues, I’ve noticed the same pattern. I used to pride myself on my “sexual purity,” and then, somewhere around the start of college, I lost my fear of women and, yowza, was it ever a battle to get to a place where I was, once again, living in a sexually pure manner.
Pride is quite the insidious force. It can fool us into thinking that our weaknesses are our strengths. Thank God, that we follow a Lord who offers us strength in weakness. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

I was doing some work on the computer the other day when one of my housemates came in and announced:
“I just invited a murderer for dinner.”
My housemate volunteers at a drop-in for street-involved men and women in our neighbourhood (Vancouver’s oh so notorious downtown eastside) and he had decided to invite a certain fellow (let’s call him “Mike Smith”) to dinner at our place. Now Mike happens to be a man with a reputation for violence; he had just gotten out of jail, and he had previously spent a significant amount of time in jail for murdering somebody. Thus, when my housemate invited Mike over, he was reprimanded by a co-worker who essentially told him that he was too naive, and had acted too recklessly.
Consequently, when my housemate returned home and announced that he had invited Mike for dinner, he was worried a little and wondered if he had done the right thing.
Of course, inviting people from the neighbourhood for dinner is an essential part of the community house in which I live. Once a week we invite a random scattering of people into our home, we cook a big dinner, and we wait to see who shows up. Our dinners have been wonderful times of fellowship with all sorts of people from all sorts of backgrounds. One week we had a woman in the sex trade, a young homeless man, two first nations fellows who live in an SRO (Single Room Occupancy — basically cheap and dirty hotels that rent out tiny rooms for about $350/mo. There is one bathroom per floor and no kitchen included), and the pastor of my church along with his wife and two young children. It has been incredible to see the way the Spirit moves and brings everybody together. Consistently, week after week, we have found that total strangers have become close friends by the end of the night. And I feel like we are getting a tiny bit of a glimpse of what Jesus’ meals with “sinners” must have felt like. I feel like I’m glimpsing the kingdom of God breaking in around our dinner table, and I think we’re also getting a glimpse if what God’s final wedding banquet will look like. Opening our home to strangers, whoever that may be — the girl on the corner, the guy smoking crack in the alley, a fellow student at school, a new face at church — and inviting the Spirit to come and host the meal, well, this is probably one of the most exciting things I have experienced in my life. I feel like I’m finally starting to see the kingdom in the way that it was seen in Jesus’ day and I can’t wait to see where this trajectory leads us.
So, all of this leads me back to the invitation that my housemate extended to Mike. And I think my housemate did exactly the right thing. As far as I can tell, no “sinner” was so fearsome or so “evil” that he or she was excluded from eating with Jesus. As far as I can tell, Jesus ate with those who had not yet repented, Jesus ate with entrenched sinners — and by doing so he made new life possible for them. Therefore, if we are faithfully following Jesus, it seems that people like Mike are precisely the sort of people we should be inviting for dinner.
But isn’t that a little naive? After all, we still need to be at least a little safe and practical about how we go about this, right? Well, I’m not convinced. In fact, I would suggest that it is those who would not invite Mike who are being naive. This is so for three reasons. First of all, it is naive because those of us who live and work in this neighbourhood are constantly in the presence of violent people anyway. Going to work, walking the alleyways at night, these things are not any more safe than inviting a person like Mike over for dinner. We are being naive if we think that our daily routines are any more safe than doing something like inviting a murderer for dinner. Secondly, we are also being naive if we think that we faithfully follow Jesus while protecting ourselves from all forms of suffering. Following Jesus means taking risks, it means loving recklessly, and, if we do this for long enough, we will eventually get hurt. Indeed, Jesus tells us to expect suffering, it is almost as if suffering for Christ is one of the essential badges of discipleship. Thus, if we ever only act in ways that ensure that we will not suffer, then the chances are that we are not following Jesus faithfully. Thirdly, and finally, I think we are also being naive if we think that a person like Mike — or anybody else — can do anything to actually harm us. You see, the thing is that with Christ we are assured of victory one way or another. If Mike comes over, and if our meal goes the way that our meals have been going so far, then the Spirit will have come with power and triumphed. But if Mike comes over and something violent occurs then we will triumph through the cross. Sure we might get hurt but one way or another, whether in the power of the Spirit or the power of the cross, God’s kingdom will break in. It is not up to us to determine which way things will occur, it is up to us to be faithful.
Besides what’s with this thing about defining people by their actions? As far as I can tell Mike is a beloved, but broken, child of God, and he deserves to be treated as such. Indeed, if we only ever define Mike as a “MURDERER” then the chances are that we make his violent behaviour inevitable. If we treat him as a child of God we allow him the opportunity to live differently.
And so, if you think of it, you can pray for our house and our dinners. You can pray for Mike, you can pray for my housemate, and you can pray for those who are still naive and fearful. Lord knows, we all get afraid at times, but let us pray that God will raise up communities around us that permit us to travel through our fears so that we can be agents of God’s new creation, knowing both the death and resurrection of Jesus.
Oh, and if you’re ever passing through town, drop me a note and maybe we can have you over for dinner.

Homo Homini Lupus.
~ Plautus (translation: “man [sic] is a wolf to man”)
But I send you out as sheep among wolves.
~ Jesus, Mt 10.36
The other night I was walking down one of the streets by my house and a group of crack dealers asked me if I was looking for anything. I said, no. One of the dealers wasn’t convinced so he followed me for a block or so holding a few crack rocks out in his hand where I could see them. He really thought I was an addict.
I have been struck lately by the fact that Jesus sends his disciples out to the places where the “wolves” are. Jesus does not send his disciples away to form their own safe little community nestled away somewhere isolated from the rest of the world, nor does he send his disciples back to the lives that they once knew — he does not send the tax collectors back to being “better” tax collectors, he does not send the fishermen back to practicing a “more moral” form of fishing. Instead, Jesus sends his disciples out as “sheep among wolves.” They are sent, in the words of Maurice Sendak, to the places “where the wild things are.”
If such a call is still applicable to Christians today it would carry two implications: (1) we are to be sent out of the Christian bubble; and (2) we are to be sent out of the comfortable lifestyle to which we are accustomed.
So how does all this relate to the episode I narrated at the start of this post. Perhaps not in the way in which we first imagine. You see, in my neighbourhood one probably thinks that it is easy to spot the “wolves.” The wolves are the dealers, the pimps, the johns, the collectors and maybe even the cops who, collectively, are all of these things at one time or another. But I’m not convinced that this is so. I think Plautus got it wrong, I think that the real wolves are the drugs, the illness, and the evil powers and principalities that maintain a stranglehold over my neighbourhood. The man who followed me offering me crack held a wolf in his hand, and that wolf would have devoured me if I had stopped to smoke it.
We are sent out as sheep among wolves in order to find the lost sheep and ensure that they are not devoured. And the lost sheep are not only the prostitutes and addicts, the lost sheep are also the pushers and the gang-bangers. Our battle is not with flesh and blood, for all those who are flesh and blood have been bought by the broken body and spilled blood of Jesus.
All I ask is that a few more Christians would consider taking Jesus seriously and coming to journey with all the sheep who live (and die) in the presence of these wolves. After all, these wolves are strong and they’re vicious — and they will only be defeated when the Church, as a corporate body, is roused to action. Because I’m tired of hearing Christians say, “sure that’s one way of following Jesus… it’s just not my way.” Well, great. I’m glad your way is that much more comfortable, but know that my friends are dying because this way is not your way. Know that these scattered sheep are the ones who are paying the price for your comfortable living.

Some months ago, I got to be friends with a young woman (late teens, early twenties) who was living in a residential program — let’s call her Jane Doe (I’ve changed her name and a few other minor details in the story so that Jane — and others — can remain anonymous).
Jane was one of the ones who really break your heart. She tried so hard and so had such a tender heart for the people around her… it’s just that she was addicted to crack, and — since she was staying in a residential program that operated on something like a “three strikes and you’re out” system — her love for her drug was causing her some problems with her housing. I mean, she was trying hard to stay clean but she still enjoyed getting high too much. So, despite the fact that she cleaned up for several months, I learned one day that Jane had started going out in the evening and not coming back all night because she was using. I always worried when Jane went on her binges, she’s a young and beautiful woman and she would walk alone through the alleyways in the downtown eastside searching for her next hit. Not a good place for her to be.
One night I was at work and I heard that Jane had disappeared again. All night I waited for a call to tell me that Jane had come back but morning came and she was still missing. I decided that I would go and look for her. I figured I would do a run through the parks and alleys and down the main strip before I went home to bed. In fact, every now and again I get the feeling like the Spirit is really hassling me to do something and this was one of those times.
So, after I finished work, I headed to the park across the street in order to cut from there into one of the major alleys. Lo and behold, Jane was sitting alone on one of the benches in the park. I had been looking for less than a minute and I had found her (again, I think the Spirit was at work)! I sat down beside her and we started to talk. She told me about being robbed that night, she told me about nearly getting raped in a hotel room, she told me that she had been sitting on that bench for hours debating between going back and trying to beg for her bed (she was worried that she had lost her room permanently since she was out of strikes) or saying “forget that” and going out and continuing to use. She was unable to make any decision and so she had sat there, feeling paralysed, and watched the sun come up.
“You know, Dan, when I walk down those alleyways, the cops will roll by and they’ll lean out the windows and call to me, ‘go home, little girl, go home.’ Because, I don’t look like I belong in an alleyway in the downtown eastside. And that’s what always gets me into trouble. The guys will give me free drugs and neglect their women hoping to get with me and, because of this, the women are always looking to start things with me.”
I thought about that for a moment and said:
“It’s true, Jane, you don’t look like somebody who would be in an alley in the eastside at night. But I’ll tell you this much, if you spend a little more time down there, you’re going to start looking like you belong there and pretty soon the cops will drive by you without saying a word because you’ll no longer be that blue eyed, blond kid, you’ll just be another junkie scanning the cracks in the asphalt hoping to find a lost [crack] rock.”
We both stopped talking for a little while after that — I think we were both scared that what I had said would come true. Then the conversation started up again and Jane decided she would go back to her program after I guaranteed her that I would make sure that she wouldn’t lose her bed (and, thank God, she didn’t lose her bed). Just after making this decision, a fellow sat down on the bench beside ours, pulled out a pipe and started smoking a rock. We got out of there pretty quick. I realized that if I had come even fifteen minutes later, Jane would have been lost, there’s no way somebody in her state can resist the pull of the drug when another person lights up right beside her.
We walked around a bit, I bought Jane a pack of smokes, and then took her back to her program.
A few weeks later Jane left for a treatment program on the east coast and that was the last I saw of her. A few months went by, and then one morning I got a phone call at work. It was Jane and she was doing amazingly well. She had gotten clean and she was training to be a mentor in the program she had joined! She wanted me to know that she was doing well, and she wanted to say thanks to me for coming out and finding her that night. She told me that’s what pushed her over the edge and made her start putting her life back together. I was speechless. It did my heart a world of good to hear from Jane. It reminded me of the story in the Gospels that tells about Jesus healing ten lepers and only one coming back to say thanks. Maybe, I thought to myself, maybe there is more transformation going on here then I dared to hope. Maybe for every Jane there’s another nine who have made it that we never hear about (of course, the analogy doesn’t totally work, I’m not Jesus, and I’m not healing people like Jesus healed people — when anything good comes out of my actions it is because of the Spirit, and not because of me).
Such a simple gesture of love — going out to find a person, be with them and bring them home when they’re ready — had quite a profound impact. And here’s the thing: when I think back to my time of being street-involved, and when I think about the ways in which people tried to care for me, the one thing that stands out, far above everything else, was something my best friend “Curty” did for me. I was living with him at the time but I was pretty messed up. I couldn’t really handle being around groups of people and so, when we would have people over, I would usually wait a bit and then sneak out the door and just walk the streets. Curty would always notice that I had left and he too would sneak out and find me. He would never really say anything, he would just fall into stride with me and we would walk around all night, not really talking, just being together. I never felt more loved than I did when he caught up to me, walked with me, and eventually walked me home.
Curty found me, stayed with me, and came home with me; I found Jane, stayed with her, and walked home with her — and it seems that those events have transformed both Jane and I. Maybe if Christians started practicing a little more of this kind of love — instead of getting completely absorbed in programs, objectives, pragmatics, and goals (which aren’t bad in and of themselves, but which also are not the all in all of journey with those on the margins) — maybe then we would see a little more of the transformation for which we long. Let us become like the Father in the story of the prodigal son, let us run out on the road to meet those whom God loves so dearly. Let us go to where the wolves are so that we can find the lost sheep and help them to come back to the shepherd.

A few weeks ago, I was reading in the park two blocks away from my house and a knife fight broke out. I was reading a book and chatting on and off with a couple of older prostitutes and a few crack dealers when all of a sudden there’s a two foot blade flashing around about ten feet away from me. Nobody was too surprised and, after the business was concluded, everybody went back to talking as though nothing had happened.
Then, just last week, I was walking home past the working girls about a block away from my house. Generally the women who work the stroll in my immediate neighbourhood are older and drug-addicted. Consequently, I was a little shocked when I ran into a fresh-faced kid (maybe fifteen or sixteen years old?) working on this stroll. It’s not that fifteen year old kids are uncommon in prostitution (they’re actually quite common) it’s just that one doesn’t usually find them in low-track neighbourhoods — they work the high-track strolls, or the kiddie strolls. There were several men standing across the street watching the kid and there was another man leaning on the wall behind her (one of them was probably her pimp, there’s no way a girl like that is being left unattended in a neighbourhood like mine).
Finally, the other night I was walking to work and a woman walked out of the alley by my house… and she wasn’t wearing any pants. It was around 9:30pm. She didn’t seem to think it was a big deal.
This is the neighbourhood in which I live. It has the wonderful privilege of being the poorest postal code in Canada. It also has the highest concentration of people living with HIV/AIDs in all of the Western world. It is the home of more than 5000 active needle drug users (this stat excludes the number of users who take drugs through other means) and surveys show that more than 50% of the people who live here have mental health issues.
I live here because I think that this is where the people of God should be rooted. Not to say that we should not also be in other neighbourhoods, it’s just that our presence in those neighbourhoods should exist as branches from our roots in the groaning places of the world.

I used be able to dismiss God’s existence pretty easily. I mean, come on, look at my life, look at what has been done to me. But I can’t dismiss God so easily anymore because I believe in you… and you believe in God.
~ From a conversation between a homeless youth and a Sister of Charity
And this is precisely the way things should work if Christians are living as God’s true Christ-shaped new humanity. This is the way in which people should respond to us if we are living as the imago Dei. Through the Spirit we become as the Son and thereby manifest the Father.
Naturally this leads me to ask myself this question: how am I living in a way that causes others to reconsider the question of the existence of the Christian God?
How about you, dear reader, how are you living in a way that causes others to reconsider the question of the existence of the Christian God?

You’re God is okay, I guess, but he’s sure not part of anything I’ve been into. I sure hope he can’t see what I’m going to have to do tonight. I do have to. I don’t like it very much but I’m afraid to hate it too much.
~ From a conversation between a child prostitute and a priest in New York City
What good is all this Christian talk about the evil of prostitution? Do these Christians really think that prostitutes don’t know the evil involved in the trade? Come on. These men, women, and children bear the scars of that evil on their bodies. And everybody’s had a “bad date.” Because in the city where I live, prostitutes tend to “disappear.” A few years ago they found about thirty of them, dead, buried on a pig farm outside the city. And then there was the girl who was found cut up in Blood Alley — that didn’t even make the news. And there was the girl who was cut from her groin to her throat and then dumped naked outside a community centre. Yeah, these people know more about living with evil than all these outraged Christians might imagine.
The thing is, as far as they know, it’s the only option they’ve got. Prostitution is what so many people “have to do” in order to survive. Don’t bother telling them it’s evil. Journey with them in a way that provides them with genuine alternatives. When that’s what we do then it’ll be okay for prostitutes to start hating what they do, instead of being afraid to hate it because there is no real alternative. Of course, there are always alternatives on paper and in theory, but a lot of those alternatives don’t work in reality. They are just part of the fictional accounts that society accepts in order to live comfortably.
And God, I don’t know how you do it. Is the kid right? Are you going to see what is done to survive? Maybe you’re not looking, maybe you don’t see what happens night after night? Because I don’t know how you can go on looking without doing something. Why it’s enough to kill a person, being aware of what goes on night after night.
But I guess it did. Kill you, I mean.
And I think it’s killing me, too.
And that’s okay.
Because I’d rather learn to lay down my life for the people that I love, than learn how to live comfortably in a city so full of apathy and violence.
Not that I’m saying I have some sort of heroic martyr complex or any of that bullshit. I guess I just decided to love the wrong people and now I’m hooked. Even though everybody tells me they’re broken and ruined and wasted, I can only see beauty, and glory, and the body of Christ.
Lord, have mercy.

There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear.
~ 1 John 4.18a
Previously when reading this verse I had always only thought about the implications it held for my relationship with God. And that is an appropriate line of thought to apply to this verse, especially in light of the comments about punishment at the end of the verse. However, when one solely thinks about this verse in terms of “me and God” then we are missing out on another significant aspect of what the author is saying. After all, in this section of 1 John 4, the author is intimately linking together the love of God and the love of neighbour. So, a further implication of this verse is as follows:
Just as those of us who are in Christ should not fear God because of the love God has for us, so also we should not fear our neighbours because of the love we have, in Christ, for them.
Now that sounds all fine and sweet, but here’s where things start to get uncomfortable for a lot of us all-too-comfortable Western Christians. Yes, that’s right, I’m going to apply this verse to the Christian call to journey with the poor and those who still, two thousand years after the death and resurrection of Jesus, needlessly suffer the most under structures of exile. Sure, a lot of Christians say they care about the poor. They see they love the needy. They are oh so concerned. But when the rubber meets the road, Christians are usually not found in the vicinity of the poor or the needy. Not for long anyway. At best they swoop in around Christmas time, give out some sandwiches, and then bugger off to their much safer environments. Even those who began with a more radical commitment to the poor usually disappear to the suburbs once they marry and raise a family. It’s one thing to put myself in danger, it’s another thing altogether to endanger my wife and children. Therefore, we have churches full of loving people who are too afraid to journey too intimately with the marginalised. Bring the street person a lunch? Okay. Invite the street person into my home? No way, that’s crazy. Consequently, the language of “practicality” and “responsibility” is used to mask our fearfulness. All too often the language of responsibility is used to transform cowardice into a virtue.
And it’s exactly at this point that 1 John 4.18 hits us between the eyes. This verse shows us that we cannot be identified as lovers held back by fear (or “practicality”). Instead it suggests that our fear reveals that we do not even deserve to be called lovers. At best, we are only sentimental. And that’s why our acts of compassion are so often scorned by those on the margins. Sure, they’ll take the sandwich you offer, but they’re not fooled into thinking you’re some sort of saint. And that’s why we’re generally only helping people to survive, instead of genuinely offering the sort of transformation that is possible in Christ. We are have become virtuous cowards instead of vulnerable lovers.
But here’s the catch, even in the hard times, even in places that are “dangerous,” the danger is more imagined than real. After all, what danger is there that can intimidate those who are in Christ? What harm can to done that is lasting? For even when we are being put to death, even if we are to be treated as sheep to be slaughtered, even then we are filled with the conviction that nothing can separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. We are to be a people from whom nothing can be taken because we have already given it all to God and to others. We are also a people from whom nothing can be truly lost because all that matters is sealed for us in Christ. So maybe we encounter pain in these places. Maybe we too will be broken. But that’s okay. Then we too will be able to say that we bear on our own bodies the brand-marks of Jesus. And, like Jesus, our sufferings shall be salvific.