Getting To Know God For Strangers

I was led by the spirit to write this book. On my journey in life, I have had my ups and downs. I remember when I was a young man. I was carefree, did not have a worry in the world. I had my strength and that was all I thought I need. I was strong, like a flower when the sun heats the morning dew. I had the job and all that came with it. I was doing good as a young man. I had been raised in the church as a child, and now I was of age and independent, had my own place, and no one could tell me what to do anymore. I even had the nerve to tell God I was too young to come and serve Him. I had everything a young man could ask for in the palms of my hand. I would go to the parties, stay out late—all the things that young people do. Little did I know what was lying ahead. I started getting hit with the storms of life. I was like a sheep caught in the dark in the forest. It took me years to get back on the track my mom started me on when I was a little child. I have been back on the trail for over thirty years. I know what it is to be in darkness and believe everything is all right. I kept stumbling along in this life in the dark. I really thought I was seeing things clearly. I have a high tolerance for pain, so I stayed in darkness longer than I had anticipated. Life pain was taking a toll on my life. Those things I thought were fun took more pain to have the fun. This life I loved did not love me anymore. One day I saw some people getting out of their car and going up the steps to the church. I said, “Lord, if you would change my life to be like them church folks, I will serve you the rest of my life.” You know, it is said that the deeper that you were in darkness, the more loyal you would be to God. Now I’m in the light. I see with insight, not as much with eyesight over the years. I come to see some things that require our immediate attention. This can’t wait. We have been brought to the light so we can show others how to get to the light, and there is a lot of work to do as a child of God. It is our responsibility to carry out God’s will. We can’t push it on the next person. We have to step up and do it. This book can help people to learn to treat people like they would like to be treated, and it gets you to know about the Lord. You can practice this in your daily life. I’m a new creature. Old things I don’t do any more. I thought that my old behaviors would be with me all my life until I was shown the light. Now I must share the light and show others how to get here.

We live in a world of oppositional relationships and increasing in-group/out-group divisions. Christian sociologist Matthew Vos explains how the problem of the stranger lies at the root of many problems humanity faces, such as racism, sexism, and nationalism. He applies classic sociological theory on "the stranger" to matters of faith and social justice, showing that an identity in Christ frees us to love strangers as neighbors and friends. The book also includes two guest chapters, one on intersex persons and the church and one on stranger-making in the "correctional" system.

Deep inside each of us a miraculous yearning to be known is sewn into the places God knows best. From the first movements within the womb to the last breath we take, "know me" is whispered throughout our lives. Author Lynn McLeod's,Loving Strangers by God, collides the two adages we were raised with - "stop to smell the flowers" and "don't talk to strangers." Happening amid the impact is where she reveals some of God's most mysterious artwork. What if strangers were actually disguised flowers? What if secrets within us could only be unlocked through their eyes? And what if the beauty in God's creation is especially miraculous when found there? Most of us can point to an unlikely encounter with a stranger that held a powerful new appreciation for how we could be known. Told through short stories, each chapter skillfully studies how God's mighty, powerful, and unfathomable hand touches us with the strangers who cross our path. Among those you will meet are a young girl accepting bubblegum from a stranger who teaches her the protection found in truth, a man in an elevator who redirects the path of a troubled woman as he prays, a millionaire who refuses to allow changes in life change her, a blind author who encourages a clear vision, and a nurse who comforts a critically injured patient by finding her missing dog. InLoving Strangers by Godyou will begin to recognize not only how strangers impact your own life, but also how as a stranger you impact the lives of others. "I remain confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living." Psalm 27:13 Now promise me with the loving guidance of our Heavenly Father you will take the very best care . . . then share it! Blessings of light, joy and peace!!!

From 9/11 to Israel-Palestine to ISIS, the fear of the religious stranger is palpable. Conservative talk show hosts and liberal public intellectuals are united in blaming religion, usually Islam, for the world's instability. If religion is part of the problem, it can and should be part of the solution. Strangers, Neighbors, Friends--co-authored by a Muslim, a Christian, and a Jew--aims to inform and inspire Abraham's children that God calls us to extend our love beyond family and fellow believer to the stranger.

Throughout history, many Christians have existed on the margins of society; deviants and strangers in lands they call home. To survive, they have had to construct alternate identities that not only make sense of their religious experiences and beliefs but also equip them to successfully negotiate their social worlds. In Thailand, a nation where social identities are thoroughly intertwined with Buddhist religious adherence, Christians must come to terms with such a marginalized existence. By leaving Buddhism and adopting what is considered a foreign faith, Christian converts become deviants to "normal" Thai identity and belonging. In response, they have discovered creative solutions for traversing this complex terrain of marginalization. This book presents a deep exploration of the phenomenon of marginalization as experienced by Thai Christian converts. In it, readers will follow participants through the heights of transformative religious experience, the lows of severe social displacement, the tensions of managing two disparate lifeworlds and two conflicting selves, and the comfort and joy of finding a new place to call home. In the end, the reader will gain deep insight into what it is like to successfully navigate a minority religious identity on the margins of society.

A brief guide on how this spiritual practice can enrich your life. By reading and reflecting on scripture, especially the life and teachings of Jesus, we draw near to God and God's word dwells in us. When we open our minds and hearts to scripture, we learn to see God's story and God's activity in everyday life. There is a prayer in the Book of Common Prayer (Proper 38, page 236) that asks, “Grant us so to hear, read, mark, learn and inwardly digest” the Holy Scriptures. Again we state, “I will with God’s help” when asked in our Baptismal Covenant, “Will you continue in the apostles’ teaching?” This is what it means to learn about God: read, study, discuss, and engage in the story of God and God’s people, including the life of Christ. This series of seven Little Books of Guidance are designed for you to discover how following certain practices can help you follow Jesus more fully in your daily life.

These pages represent the compendium of a long journey of more than twenty-five years. It would be simplistic to define this journey as exclusively intellectual, because it would be unthinkable without frequent visits to the Middle East, in particular to Turkey, the second Holy Land of Christianity, the ancient Asia Minor of biblical history, with its overwhelming Muslim population today. The fact is that, since many years now, the theme of hospitality has been the subject of numerous publications, studies, contributions and gatherings with protagonists of various opinions and expertise convening to give answers to questions related to the challenge of living together in the complex society of our contemporary world. It is precisely by letting ourselves be questioned by these complexities that we become aware that the challenge of hospitality is not merely economic or political but also spiritual. Claudio Monge addresses one of the key questions of today with an extremely ancient text from the deepest roots of our civilisation, Genesis 18, in which Abraham welcomes the three strangers who come to his tent and announce the conception of Isaac. Today, when millions are in movement, fleeing war and poverty, the question of how we are to receive strangers is urgent and inescapable. Monge explores this text through the traditions of three religions - Judaism, Christianity and Islam - which claim the assent of approximately half of the population of the world. Yet these three religions, all looking back in one way or another to Abraham, are often strangers to each other. If we could offer welcome to each other, what a powerful sign of hope this would be for our conflict torn world!

Before the Bible Belt fastened itself across the South, competing factions of evangelicals fought over their faith's future, and a contrarian sect, self-named the Primitive Baptists, made its stand. Joshua Guthman here tells the story of how a band of antimissionary and antirevivalistic Baptists defended Calvinism, America's oldest Protestant creed, from what they feared were the unbridled forces of evangelical greed and power. In their harrowing confessions of faith and in the quavering uncertainty of their singing, Guthman finds the emotional catalyst of the Primitives' early nineteenth-century movement: a searing experience of doubt that motivated believers rather than paralyzed them. But Primitives' old orthodoxies proved startlingly flexible. After the Civil War, African American Primitives elevated a renewed Calvinism coursing with freedom's energies. Tracing the faith into the twentieth century, Guthman demonstrates how a Primitive Baptist spirit, unmoored from its original theological underpinnings, seeped into the music of renowned southern artists such as Roscoe Holcomb and Ralph Stanley, whose "high lonesome sound" appealed to popular audiences searching for meaning in the drift of postwar American life. In an account that weaves together religious, emotional, and musical histories, Strangers Below demonstrates the unlikely but enduring influence of Primitive Baptists on American religious and cultural life.