Our You Version Plans are based on our weekly lectionary reflections called Word from Below.

I love church. I love singing. I love praying with others. I love when we weep with each other and when we whoop and holler in celebration. I love how the church feeds the hungry, cares for the sick, welcomes the stranger. 

Really, the only problem with church is all those other Christians. The ones I don’t agree with. The ones I don’t even want to be associated with. The ones I don’t think deserve to call themselves Christians. 

Jesus prays, “protect them, Father, so that they may be one, as we are one.” You want me to be one with those other Christians in the same way the Trinity is eternally Three-in-One? No thank you, Jesus. They’re pretty words. On paper. But in real life?

When Nic and Blake from Street Psalms visited Manila six years ago to formalize the partnership between our organization, Penuel, and Street Psalms, Nic commented on something I overlooked as a Filipino. As is often the case, it is the outsiders who see things most clearly; during Nic’s first forays into the humid air and cityscape of Manila, his immediate impression was that Jesus is everywhere.
I know that the Christian faith is an essential part of who we are as a people, given that we are labeled as one of the only two Christian nations in Asia, alongside Timor-Leste. This identity is a product of a complicated history woven between colonialism and Christian mission. For us, being Christian is like breathing air, a natural and almost invisible reality – until Nic pointed out the obvious, forcing me to pay attention to what it truly means to be a Filipino Christian.

A couple of years ago, I taught a class on contextual Bible reading to a group of pastors in Ixcan, in the northern jungle of Guatemala close to the border with Mexico. This region of the country experienced extreme brutality during the Guatemalan armed conflict.

For one of our lunch breaks during the class, a group of us went out to a local restaurant. The hostess walked us to our table and gave us some menus. After we ordered our food and drinks, we began making small talk. As our food arrived, one of the leaders of the group invited one of the pastors to share a little bit about his personal story.