Janet Jonas > Recent Status Updates

Forgiveness is gut-wrenching, mind-bending, and plain awe-full work.

We are charged with re-covering grace in a world that suffers from a nakedness of God.

"I finally ask him... to explain the spoon. He answers me without looking, 'It's the weapon of a Christian.'" "It is a powerful weapon, an instrument of peace, a source of love and power, a means to Christ's end: feed my lambs. To use the power of a spoons is to employ every skill we possess as peacemakers at the table in the household of God."

Service is the rent we pay for the privilege of living on this earth. -Shirley Chisholm

Intro. Erosion is so much harder to recognize than earthquake damage.

By the fall of 2011, one in seven people, and one in four children, were receiving food stamps.

Intro p xviii. Public policy is essential, but so is civic action. The millions of one-on-one, one-by-one connections that occur every day, both professionally and through volunteering, make a huge difference. Individual responsibility is indispensable, too.

Intro. "America" and "poverty" are words that should not appear in the same sentence. We are the wealthiest country in the world; that we should have poverty at all is oxymoronic, and that we have the highest child poverty in the industrialized world is downright shameful.

Holes are good for making friends, and friends are the best fillers I've found yet. Maybe because other people are the closest we get to God on this side. So when we use them to find God in each other, we become holy.

Life is brutiful. Like stars in a dark sky. Sharing life's brutiful is what makes us feel less alone and afraid.

Struggles are the fertilizer for spiritual growth.

You can't be a Christian by yourself.

Hospitality, then, is a spiritual discipline... (it) is the practice of meeting with friends or strangers so that we can meet God. We share a meal and share a laugh; we open our homes and open our hearts; and we discover Emmanuel - God with us.

Empty people do not bring canned solutions or panaceas - they listen to what others have today about issues and possible solutions.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Those who know themselves to be empty (meekness and humility are kinds of emptiness - not claiming knowledge, power, or standing) will inherit the kingdom. Empty of what?

There is no merit in loving only those who love us.

Salvation is not so much going to heaven when we die but about heaven coming to earth. Salvation includes a profound harmony with God, the creation, and one another.

AM Lindbergh : "Man had to free himself from earth to perceive both it's diminutive place in a solar system and it's inestimable value as a life-fostering planet. We see our planet earth with detachment, with tenderness, with some shame and pity, but at last also with love."

God loves is at least as much as the one who loves us most.

The garden is the perfect place to learn... death and resurrection all over the place.

As people of faith, it is time to rethink our throwaway mentality. Our current course of continual consumption and planned obsolescence exacts an outrageous price: The poor of the world die that the wealthy may live. We must find a new way.

No matter how much money you may have, affluence can never take the place of abundance.

Our wealth symbolizes a hidden poverty... rich in things but poor in spirit.

Going green is not a checklist of deprivations to endure, habits to change, or things to but. Going green is ultimately about respecting the well-being of every community on earth... even future generations who have yet to be born are part of our community

Matt. 6:25b. The Bible envisions a different kind of life for us: a life focused not on what we privately possess but on what we share in common.

Matt. 6:20a. The word heaven is a Jewish way of referring to God. Storing up treasure, then, means serving others and honoring God by doing so.

philopatry - love of homeland.

The Scriptures call us tone stewards of the creation; science lets us know how we are doing at it.

As we think about reducing our impact on the earth, there is no better place to turn than to the Bible for guidance. It contains the first environmentally friendly law on the books, the covenant of sabbath.

As we think about reducing our impact on the earth, there is no better place to turn than to the Bible for guidance. It contains the first environmentally friendly law on the books, the covenant of sabbath.