A woman in the apartment, who also didn’t want to be identified, chimed in: “I understand, but what are you supposed to do? If someone isn’t able or ready to go to treatment — should they die?”

Even the founder of the Church of Safe Injection, Jesse Harvey, 26, acknowledges that he’s struggled with the same questions. But he says working in addiction recovery has made him frustrated by the deaths and barriers to treatment. He says there are criteria to becoming a legitimate syringe exchange program that he’s not likely to meet, so he started this church.

Harvey says there are now 18 chapters of the Church of Safe Injection in eight states — all of them funded by private, anonymous donations. Each one is independent but must abide by three rules: to welcome all people of all faiths, to serve all marginalized people and to support harm reduction.

But he says the group is not supporting legalizing drugs.

“We’re not saying it’s our religious belief to use heroin. No, not at all,” Harvey said. “We’re saying that it’s our sincerely held religious belief that people who use drugs don’t deserve to die when there are decades of solutions.”

Read it all.

Volunteers for a group handing out clean drug-using supplies across the U.S. could be arrested for doing so –– but they say they’re stepping up given the sheer number of opioid overdose deaths and the public health system’s failure.https://t.co/PqHi3T7q5i

— NPR (@NPR) February 12, 2019

Read it all.

Read it all.

For the reasons given above the argument presented by the Bishop of Bangor in his letter is not convincing. He simply does not make out a convincing case for changing the Church’s teaching and practice.

Where he is right, however, is in saying that many people with same-sex attraction experience the Church as a hostile place. However, the proper way to address this is not to change the Church’s teaching.

As the Ed Shaw, himself same-sex attracted, argues in his important book The Plausibility Problem,[3] the problem lies not with the Church holding that sex should only take place within heterosexual marriage, but with the way in which people within the Church collude with the culture in suggesting that you can’t be happy without sex, value marriage and family life above singleness, and wrongly identify godliness with heterosexuality.

What the Church needs to do, he argues, is recapture the importance of celibacy and singleness and provide a place where everyone is valued, loved and supported regardless of their sexual attraction. That is what is needed, not same-sex marriage.

Read it all.

You can listen directly there and download the mp3 there.

O God, come to our aid.
O Lord, make haste to help us.

Glory be to the Father and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit,
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and ever shall be,
world without end.
Amen. Alleluia.

Miraculous draught of fish,1610
Peter Paul Rubens pic.twitter.com/Mo934jyN2l

— Kalina Boulter (@KalinaBoulter) April 6, 2018

Two other men had pulled over on the side of the road and called 911, according to Sutherland, and when first responders arrived, Cameron was able to give everyone directions to his house.

“The ambulance came, the firemen came. The firemen were really nice to me,” he said.

After Cameron’s father got the injection he needed, it was the crackers Sutherland bought earlier that first responders used to help him come-to, helping normalize blood sugar levels.

Sutherland touted Cameron’s bravery Monday, and said that while she knows she was there for him and his father, she said Cameron was also there for her; reminding her that helping students succeed doesn’t always happen in the classroom.

She expressed gratitude for re-discovering her purpose.

“There’s no doubt that God placed me where he did when he needed me,” she said.

Read it all.

#southcarolina Teacher sees student riding bike on hwy, helps him save his dad https://t.co/CuYNtZFrGm #education #children #compassion

— Kendall Harmon (@KendallHarmon6) February 12, 2019

Gracious God, who didst call Charles Freer Andrews to show forth thy salvation to the poor: By thy Holy Spirit inspire in us a tender concern, a passionate justice, and an active love for all people, that there may be one Body and one Spirit in Jesus Christ, our Savior; who with thee and the same Spirit liveth and reigneth, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

O God, who hast sown in our hearts the precious seed of thy truth: Grant us to nourish it by meditation, prayer and obedience, that it may not only take root, but also bring forth fruit unto holiness; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God according to the promise of the life which is in Christ Jesus,

To Timothy, my beloved child:

Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.

I thank God whom I serve with a clear conscience, as did my fathers, when I remember you constantly in my prayers. As I remember your tears, I long night and day to see you, that I may be filled with joy. I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that dwelt first in your grandmother Lo”²is and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, dwells in you. Hence I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of my hands; for God did not give us a spirit of timidity but a spirit of power and love and self-control.

–2 Timothy 1:1-7