Whatever He Says

Humans of New York  posts always grab my attention.  The photographs and short stories of   Brandon Stanton  help me see through the eyes of  people whose religion; ethnicity; sexuality; choices or circumstances are different to my own. Through his work he peels off layers of bias and prejudice like grubby bandages, and reveals people in a way that is closer to the way I believe God sees us--loved and precious regardless of what we've done or who we are--because he knows the whole story... Currently Brandon is telling the stories of inmates  from five different prisons across the North eastern United States.  Often the stories are heartrending, but t he face and story from February 8, stayed with me longer than usual : http://www.humansofnewyork.com/post/138933777431/i-was-alone-with-four-kids-my-mother-was-sick-i The words, "honest people like you," resonated, maybe because they could apply to me. And in a plight as desperate as hers, mightn't I...

By Belinda Her name was Ingrid and I was just nine years old when I met her, a girl a little younger than me, who lived at the end of the street of council houses we had just moved to. She had long, dirty-blond hair that was unkempt, and she smelled of stale urine. The other children call her "Pongo." I didn't know everything there was to know about God. My theology was formed by what I learned at school, in Religious Knowledge class. I learned a lot, too, from the hymns that we sang in morning assembly. I knew that Jesus had said that what we did to the person who was least in the eyes of the world, he considered it done to him. That made a deep impression on my nine year old heart, and I easily connected the dots when it came to how Ingrid should be treated, although I never knew her well. One day we heard that she had lain down in the road and tried to get run over. Wide eyed and dismayed, I wondered what would make someone want to do that. Her dad got sent away to pri...

It was a chaotic morning in the Furuya household. It began with Frances waking with a start from a deep sleep, at the sound of her teenage son Jacob's voice. "Mom, I slept in," he said, leaning over her with his flaming halo of red hair and serious brown eyes. Usually Jacob gets up at 7.00 and wakes Frances up, but on this day, it was 8.15 and he was late for school. Frances got up right away, rushing to get the girls, Summer and Eden to their public school. She was late dropping them off and had to sign them in at the office. Summer went off into the school by herself, and Frances and Eden were about to leave the office, when they found the doorway blocked by two small girls, on their way in. "You need to step aside," thought Frances, already out of sorts with the way the day had gone so far. Her thoughts found voice in a cool, "Excuse me please," aimed at the girls. Frances was focused on the two little round bodies in the doorway. She saw orange T s...

It was on the morning of March 4th that Ashna Khanna's world turned into a nightmare. That morning the 14 year old Alliston girl was repeatedly stabbed with a knife by her father; an attack that sent her to Sunnybrook hospital in critical condition. In those few moments, a girl's life was changed forever and her family spiralled into a vortex of horror. Her friends at school, awoke to the news that morning that left them in stunned shock. One of them, Summer, felt compelled to go to the hospital as soon as she could get there, just to comfort Ashna by her presence. In order to do that, she had to go into work with her dad at the Ontario Food Terminal in the middle of the night, so that he could take her to the hospital after work later that day. Her dad was filled with compassion too. When he thought of his own daughter, he couldn't imagine something like this happening to one of her classmates and his heart was full of the desire to do whatever he could to help. Wh...