It’s Ash Wednesday! Here’s our first reading guide for today: the introduction.

The stories of peacemakers, community builders, and agitators for faith and justice “are difficult to hear–and to find. These people are like wild and crooked trees. They are gnarled and weathered, their very flesh bearing the marks of storms, persistent droughts, and long winters. They don’t care if they’re growing in inconvenient places; they grow where they are. They are unrepentantly unruly. They live in the freedom of Christ with open hearts and minds. These people aren’t good for church growth or the accumulation of political power. They don’t make anybody any money. Yet we are confident that their examples will outlast those of the multitudes scrambling to see who can bow down first to country, or party, or profit, or another reigning idol of the day” (2-3).

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