Little notes from Heather and Martin

Recently I've found myself in a number of conversations about why God hasn't healed various people.  Implicit in the question is the assumption - an assumption I've shared - that the primary reason God would heal a person is to relieve their suffering.  However, as Martin and I have been reading the New Testament book of John, that assumption has been challenged.


Firstly, in John 9 Jesus and his disciples encounter a man who was blind from birth.  The disciples want to know why this has happened.  Jesus tells them it is "so that the works of God might be displayed in him" - presumably by the healing Jesus then carries out.

We come across something similar in John 11.  Firstly, Jesus hears that his dear friend Lazarus is very sick, at which he says: "This illness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it."  A few days later, news reaches Jesus that Lazarus has died.  Jesus passes this news on to his di…

Late last year I acquired a coffee bean sack. Here are some of the things I've made from it :-) 

Coffee bean sacks are huge!  All of this has used just over half of one side of it!

At our Bible study group today we got talking about the collapse of the sweatshop clothing factories in Bangladesh and about how we can avoid supporting such factories.  It's a topic Martin and I have been wrestling with for some years: we want to buy products from the Majority World in order to support the employment of desperately needy people; however, we'd rather buy from producers who treat their workers well, if at all possible.


Unfortunately, finding clothing produced in the Majority World in decent conditions is really difficult.  It's easiest to find baby clothing, then childrenswear, then womenswear: menswear is next to impossible.  For adults, T-shirts seem to be the easiest things to find, then really dressy clothes: everyday stuff is hard to source, as is underwear.


With those caveats, here's a list of all the retailers I've been able to locate that sell adult clothing:

T-shirts
Marketplacers (an initiative of the Baptist Union here in NZ)
Liminal
Micah cl…