Mark Vermaire

Exploring life and calling after leaving fulltime work. Learning more to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with the divine mystery. Ever grateful for life.

[Mark Vermaire @markvermaire]

@JJ_Denhollander Amen! A really important insight. Trump holds grudges—he’s small like that (and in so many other ways) and won’t change until he’s bowed down to and worshiped.

[Catherine McNiel ☕📚🌱 @CatherineMcNiel]

The only "Christian Voters Guide" I've ever found helpful. Or Christian.

[Rev. Justin Berkobien @JustinBerkobien]

The kingdom of heaven is like…

[Mark Vermaire @markvermaire]

@BrianZahnd 👍 Interested!

[Rich Villodas @richvillodas]

I am so tired of waiting,
Aren't you,
For the world to become good
And beautiful and kind?
Let us take a knife
And cut the world in two-
And see what worms are eating
At the rind.

- Langston Hughes

[Mark Vermaire @markvermaire]

@philvischer Thank you, Phil, for bringing this important and good review to my attention. And thank you for your important voice that disturbs so many people today who are ignorant (I don’t say “stupid,” but “ignoring”) of faithful truth-tellers and non-simplistic questions and answers.

[Mark Vermaire @markvermaire]

Yes! Thank you, chuck degroat! My story and authors are different, but the political result is essentially the same. To play off the phrase, “Make CHRISTIANS think again!”

[chuck degroat @chuckdegroat]

Ron Sider’s book Completely Pro-Life changed it all for me at Dordt College in 1989. Reframed pro-life for all of life. Following that, courses in liberation theology, philosophy & economics, environmental stewardship, Newbigin & Bosch, etc. ruined the easy binary choice. For 35 years now it’s not been elephant vs donkey but what policies and parties champion life and flourishing for all, including God’s good creation, and that’s a tad bit more complicated than one-issue voting. I dare say that the usual, often self-interested “me and my rights” evangelical choices make little sense to me as a (hopeful) Sermon on the Mount living Christ-follower anymore. But that’s part of what a liberal arts education ought to do. #FollowJesusNotTheFlag

[Mark Vermaire @markvermaire]

@JoshEakle “One looked on with delight as [he] achieved what we could not: winning over the circles of the little people and undermining [political norms]. We overlooked the dangers his demagoguery presented…. The cure was worse than the disease.” In “Hitler: Ascent,” by Volker Ullrich.

[Fr. Joash P. Thomas @JoashPThomas]

Last morning, before leaving my parents’ home, our family took a picture to send to our family tree publication (published once every 10 years).

This family tree traces its ancestry directly back to a Jewish man and a Hindu Brahmin woman in Kerala (southern India) who got married after their families were kicked out of their communities for receiving Christ because of the work of the Apostle Thomas among them in 1st century AD.

I am a direct male descendant of this family bloodline. It’s not a heritage that I take lightly but I share all this to make this point again:

My people were worshipping Jesus for centuries before our colonizers showed up.

[Shane Claiborne @ShaneClaiborne]

I just keep thinking about that time Jesus wept over Jerusalem because they “didn’t know the things that would lead to peace.”

For decades, the state of Israel has been crushing the people of Gaza and the West Bank, doing things that do not lead to peace. In response, Hamas has chosen to terrorize and kill people, doing things that also do not lead to peace. Now Israel is returning the harm, dropping bombs and killing women and children, which certainly does not lead to peace.

I’m pretty sure Jesus is weeping over Jerusalem… and Gaza… right now. Maybe we should be weeping with him.

Let us each take a moment to pause and pray…

Let’s ask ourselves and our God, what are the things that lead to peace?

What does love require of us at such a time as this?

What does it look like to resist injustice without mirroring injustice?

What does it look like to stand against terror without becoming terrible?

What does it look like to choose the way of the cross rather than the sword, and to follow the enemy-loving Jesus, the Prince of Peace?

[Peter Leithart @PLeithart]

A friend pointed to this remarkably irenic passage from Bavinck's Certainty of Faith:

"The Catholic righteousness by good works is vastly preferable to a Protestant righteousness by good doctrine. At least righteousness by good works benefits one’s neighbor, whereas righteousness by good doctrine only produces lovelessness and pride. Furthermore, we must not blind ourselves to the tremendous faith, genuine repentance, complete surrender and the fervent love for God and neighbor evident in the lives and work of many Catholic Christians. The Christian life is so rich that it develops its full glory not just in a single form or within the walls of one church."

[Shane Claiborne @ShaneClaiborne]

In Philadelphia there are more vacant, abandoned houses than there are people in need of housing. But there are thousands of people waiting for affordable housing, on a waiting list that can take years. One of my neighbors waited over 10 years… It doesn’t make sense.

So this is what we’re doing about it.

Please consider supporting our work: https://t.co/QlvwlIFiUj

[Mohamad Safa @mhdksafa]

The irony - what humanity looks like 2023!

Rescue teams of a tourist submersible carrying 4 millionaire and 1 billionaire went missing during a dive to the wreck of the Titanic, and a rescue teams of a refugee boat carrying 800 poor people looking for a better life for their children.

The rich The poor

[Mark Vermaire @markvermaire]

@BethMooreLPM @mbird12 @tracesoffaith I eat breakfast alone, listening to biographies (cf. books read at monastery meals). The last five: Antoni Gaudi; Chesterton on St. Francis; Ivereigh on Pope Francis; Beth Moore on yours, truly; and now, Marsh on Bonhoeffer. All were wonderful! Thank you, Beth! Ty church history!

[Mark Vermaire @markvermaire]

@AndrewTDraper Thanks for this helpful post. Jesus speaks to this today as ever: “You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that testify on my behalf. Yet you refuse to come to me to have life” (John 5:39-40 NRSV).

[Mark Vermaire @markvermaire]

@EdKrassen FOX

[Mark Vermaire @markvermaire]

“Lewis is not overrated, people are simply not interesting enough these days to be sufficiently interested. To borrow from Chesterton, there’s no lack of wonder, only a lack of wonderers.” Still grateful for writings that transformed my life!

[Fr. Joash P. Thomas @JoashPThomas]

A Christianity that cares more about ‘lost souls’ than oppressed bodies is not the Christianity of Jesus Christ.

It’s the slaveholder’s Christianity.

[Mark Vermaire @markvermaire]

@jezthomasart Beautiful! The Psalm in an image. And so true about its relevance today as much as ever. Thank you!

[Beth Moore @BethMooreLPM]

I mean, I just don’t think we’re going to stand before God on the great day & hear him say, you did such a fabulous job of publicly humiliating heretics. Those pictures were hilarious! Those quotes were the perfect burn! Get in here & let me hug your neck & hang a medal on it.