Soohwan, a native of South Korea, has spent over two decades of her life outside Korea, for instance in Bangladesh, Thailand and Canada. She worked among the poorest of the poor, and directed multi-cultural training programs, global human resources, and consulting projects concerning leadership in Christian nonprofit organizations before responding the call to go to Fukushima, Japan in March 2011. After forming a consortium of international Christian NGOs and local churches in Fukushima to create holistic disaster response to the unprecedented triple disaster (earthquake, tsunami, and ongoing nuclear crises), Soohwan continued the relationship with churches in Fukushima. In 2015 she founded Global Learning Consortium to create effective partnerships ‘bathed in prayer’ among local churches, Christian organizations and academic institutions for long-term sustainable impact in post-disaster Fukushima. She facilitates prayer retreats, writes, lectures and speaks at conferences on social justice and spiritual formation. Her primary focus these days is to reflect deeply on how to shape single-mindedness out of single-heartedness against multi-tasking, overachieving, anxiety-driven lifestyles. She obtained a BA in Education at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, Korea and a Master of Christian Studies at Regent College in Vancouver, Canada. Soohwan and her husband, Jonathan Wilson, live in Vancouver where they are part of a vibrant local congregation.
She wakes up. She knows she is ready. Ready for her big day. The sun has never been brighter. The sky has never been bluer. This is the day she’s been waiting for all her life. This is the day she has been working so hard to get everything ready for.
We live in a moment of history in which our way of living is characterized by shrill advertising, rampant over-consumption and wanton waste – all with disastrous consequences for the ecological communities we are part of and upon which we depend on for our very survival. And yet, there is an alternative narrative.
We join the many thousands of others who are grieving the loss of Eugene Peterson, who was a dearly-loved teacher and guide to so many of us in the A Rocha family around the world.
“Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” has been helpful in adopting wiser ways to consume. For Christians, however, living more sustainably has to be understood in terms of our relationship to the creator God as well. I want to suggest a new motto: “Relish, Redeem, Rest”.
Our demand for natural resources depends on how much stuff we consume, multiplied by how many of us there are. Readers of this blog will be no strangers to the myriad ways in which we are damaging God’s creation. Human population is discussed much less; it’s a political “hot potato” which conservation organisations, development agencies and churches tend to steer clear of.
By ‘plastic theology’ I don’t mean theology that is cheap, disposable and tacky! I want to reflect on the spiritual power and importance of something that has only been around for a very short time yet has become all-pervasive and all of us have become dependent upon.
Sometimes the Christian Gospel is described as a universal message that speaks to all cultures. I profoundly disagree! The Gospel is not a set of abstract philosophical concepts that are […]
History is written in the landscapes of the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon. Baalbek with its magnificent Roman ruins, more ancient rounded hills known as tells, and long rusted barbed wire and tank emplacements. For good or ill we leave our mark on the land long after we have gone. Can people tell what we believe about God from what we write in the landscape?
Most places that we know around the world have witnessed what has been called a ‘thinning of life’. How anyone lives experiences like this will, of course, depend on what kind of person they are. Miranda and I have an arts training and background, and at times our response to these multiple losses has been emotional and quite personal.
The grand drama of Easter took place as a three-day-event around the special Shabbat during Passover. Holy Saturday is the least remembered day of the Easter Mystery: after Good Friday and before Easter Sunday. Yet all of Jesus’ claims and actions regarding Sabbath point to this climactic place in time.
