Maybe I’ll just start doing this every week–a round up of recommendations and links and other things. Well. Let me just get through this first go and see what happens from there.
How are you folks today? How are you, fellow Houstonians? How are you dealing with Harvey aftermath? I was supposed to be in Orange today, helping a friend who’s a pastor there as his church got together to clean out houses, but I was experiencing some, um, gastrointestinal distress this morning and, well, now I’m sitting on my living room floor typing this.
It’s been a strange few weeks. First my church stopped meeting on Sunday mornings, then Harvey made landfall and drowned my city, and now we’re dealing with the aftermath of all of that. Three households from Kaleo got water in their buildings, which makes me sad. There’s a whole section of town where the water hasn’t drained off yet, almost two weeks later. And then DACA, and then an earthquake in Mexico City, our southern neighbors, and then Irma barreling through the Caribbean straight towards Florida. Scary times.
I’ve been very impressed, though, by how the body of Christ has stepped up and loved this town, and how it’s loving the other communities that got hit–Corpus Christi, Rockport, Beaumont, Orange, Port Arthur. And they will love their immigrant neighbors and Mexican neighbors and Caribbean and Floridian neighbors, I believe. The strange thing about being a Christian is that we bear the presence of God to the rest of the world–at the very least, that is what it means to be the temple of the Holy Spirit–and so we go out to give money and time and supplies and work to prove God’s love to the world. Mystery.
Anyway, here are some links. Hope y’all have a good weekend.
- My aforementioned pastor friend is raising money for his church so they can help folks rebuild their lives; donate here.
- Churches in the Houston metro area that are doing awesome Harvey relief work: Bayou City Fellowship, City Church, the Sojourn Network, Christ Community Church, Houston Northwest Church (select “Harvey Flood Relief”). And my church, such as it is, is raising money here.
- And I just found about Harvey Relief Hub–they need stuff and they need volunteers today (Saturday) and tomorrow.
- Our local magazine has been doing some excellent Harvey coverage.
- Now for something completely different: You should probably read this Ta-Nehisi Coates piece. I disagree with Mr. Coates on a lot of stuff, but the article’s still worth a read; he says some pretty acute things about race in America.
- The Bible Project’s doing a word study on the Shema and their video about the word “heart” is especially lovely.
- And for something that doesn’t matter that much in the long run but is pretty great nonetheless, Target’s new women’s clothing line makes me want to spend a whole paycheck on it.
- Finally, I’ve been playing this version of “Good Good Father” a lot lately–I know some of you, dear readers, straight up don’t like this song, or you might have a complicated relationship with it, but it’s been sorely needed by this particular heart recently. He is perfect in all of His ways to us.
Be excellent to one another.
