Good News Friday, May 13, 2022
Good News Friday, May 13, 2022
sharing some good things
I haven’t done a Good News Friday post in a while, so here are some personal highlights of good news. I know it has been a rough few weeks politically and internationally. There are also rough issues personally. I’m not ignoring these things, I’m dealing with them in my personal real life life, as I hope you are, too. I’m making a choice, as all writers do. And today is Good News Friday.
Christianity Today produced a beautiful magazine issue highlighting the global church and I have a piece in it about my church community in Djibouti. Please read the whole magazine and remember the humbling and powerful truth that we are all members of one body. I do not know what could heal the American church right now but I am convinced that at least part of that healing could come from a more profound appreciation for the global church.
I have struggled with our church here. It has not, is not, always easy to attend. But one of the most tangible evidences of God’s grace in my life in ongoing sanctification and growth has been the deep joy I have come to find in participating in this community. It is eclectic and small, transient and beautiful, messy and joyful. I recently was in Minnesota (more about that below) and we attended church and the strongest feeling I had during the service was that I really missed our funny, precious and precocious, Djibouti church.
What is your church experience like? Have you participated in communities in multiple countries? What is hardest or most joyful about it for you?
Pillars: How Muslim Friends Led Me Closer to Jesus won GOLD in the religious category of the Independent Publishers!
This is a high honor and I told my family it is basically the Oscars of indie publishing, which is totally the same as the movie industry, we just earn less money. They asked if I wanted to give a speech. I didn’t. Seriously though, I was excited and surprised and encouraged by this award.
If you go to the book’s Amazon page you will see it already noted as a gold prize winner. While you’re on the page, pick up the book! And leave a review. Just four more and there will be 100 reviews, which would be awesome. While you’re there, just one more click away is Stronger than Death, my first book. Check that one out, too.
My husband and I just returned to Djibouti from 10 days in the USA because our eldest daughter (by 47 minutes, twins) graduated from university. She earned a degree in chemical engineering, declared by multiple professors to be the hardest degree on campus. The ring on her pinkie is a sign of her joining the “Order of Engineers”. And she did it with honors (the gold tassel) and being on the Dean’s list every semester, during Covid, and including a semester abroad in Australia. A little mom-boasting here. Like the slides on her feet? Haha. High heels came out later.
What are your good things from this week, or this past month?
Congratulations to you on this fantastic and very well-deserved award, and congratulations to your daughter on her graduation! I absolutely love the Christianity Today piece as well, particularly all the vivid, powerful illustrations you shared as well as your conclusion: "I attend because from Christ “the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work” (Eph. 4:16). That truth holds for all of us around the globe. As we practice dying to self, church becomes a place where we encounter God in the imago Dei of someone we might disagree with. We remain together, because corporately, we can cling to a bigger vision of God than one we could hold to alone. Right there in that space, we’re transformed more and more into God’s likeness, and church becomes a sacred gift." Such a vital message particularly at this moment in history when it seems there are ever more divisions both in church communities as well as the world outside of churches. Thank you for this wise and inspiring message!