Last week, King Mang Zam, Pastor of the Burmese fellowship at City Bible Church, attended World Refugee Day and walked in support of refugees all over the world.
A leader of the event had this to say about the walk:
"We are former refugees living here in freedom; we feel for people who are not free in other countries, people living futureless lives," said Thar Nge, a political dissident from Burma who arrived in the United States four years ago. "People come here to escape racism, genocide, religious pressure, ethnic conflict. But the feelings are the same — without freedom there is no safety."
Maybe, it's just because the Bush Administration has turned me into a pinko commie liberal, but I'm kind of down with supporting this type of event.
Anyway, when asked about the event, City Bible Pastor King Mang Zam, had this lovely quote:
King Mang Zam, pastor of the Burmese fellowship at the City Bible Church, also praised the work of the sponsoring organizations, drawing an analogy between the towering maples in the South Park Blocks and the network of support from earlier-arrived refugees and the LCSNW, Catholic Charities, and EMO-SOAR programs: "I am very grateful that someone planted these trees so we can enjoy this shade."
Greatest. Quote. Ever.
Several years ago, I spent sometime traveling around China with a school group. And by far, our favorite past time was finding signs in China that had been translated into English. You always knew what the signs meant, but they always had a little flair. They were the best.
(My second favorite pasttime was finding someone who sold coffee. You could find tea at any little sidewalk cart in that country, but coffee was impossible to find. And when I did find it, it was always a huge production, with all of the restaurant staff going into the storage shed to find their last remnants of instant coffee for the hungover white foreigner.) …good times. but I digress…
Anyway, good to see someone at City Bible has their priorities straight. That seems like something Christ might do.
.
I haven’t reached the pinko commie liberal stage yet (although I have been moving closer and closer to the left the more I realize how dumb the right has become) but I do agree that events like these need to be promoted and encouraged by churches and church leaders. Christ stands for true freedom! All Christians should stand in the gap for those who have no voice by speaking out against injustice and fighting for the rights of others who can’t fight for themselves. And I’m not just talking about those in other countries, there are plenty of poor and neglected her in America who have no voice as well. Imagine if all these idiot prosperity preachers who drive luxury cars, fly private jets, and own multiple mansions would choose to live typical middle class lives instead and put all that money where Jesus would want it to go. They could put millions of dollars to causes that actually matter. They could help reduce poverty, feed the hungry, send kids in poor neighborhoods to better schools, cloth the homeless, start drug prevention/rehabilitation programs, etc. This is why I am so angry with the prosperity message. It takes Christ out of Christianity.
Totally agree.