While reading the Sermon on the Mount every other day, a kind of C25K for the heart, I'm keeping my eyes open for examples of people doing the Word as well as hearing it.
Jimmy Carter has a long standing and well known Christian commitment that has included teaching Bible Class before and after his Presidency.
More recently he has affirmed his commitment to the ministry and leadership of women in the church, even when that has created tensions between him and the Baptist denomination which has been his spiritual home all his life.
In these late harvest years he is still busy building the Kingdom by getting his hands dirty and living out his commitment to Jesus and to the poor.
It is mere coincidence that his initials are JC. But in another sense those same initials are like a hallmark stamp on much of his life, lifestyle and service to the community. I remember reading one of the early biographies of Jimmy Carter, published by Collins, and before later biographies became partisan and agenda driven, whether villifying him as a failure and much else, or hagiography making him into the saint he denies he could ever be.
He is undoubtedly a man of deep and life-changing Christian conviction. Flawed but faithful, a conviction politician of a past era, highly respected amongst those who care about global issues of ecology, social justice and racial harmony and peace amongst the major faiths, he remains for me, an example of a good man trying to do good in a world of clashing vested interests, global power plays by politicians, states, institutions and corporations. And he builds houses. My guess is, going back to the Sermon on the Mount, he is building the house of his life on the Rock.
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