Peace & Justice Ministry

God desires peace and justice for all individuals, families, communities, and nations. Founded by members Mary Buck and Ann Seufert, our efforts include the pursuit of justice and peacemaking locally, nationally, and worldwide. The Grace First Peace & Justice Ministry team engages in two main initiatives in order to serve others – raising money for worthy causes and educating the congregation and ourselves.

What We Do:

Raise Money

  • Alternative Christmas Fair –  we have sold a variety of items ranging from books to vitamin packets to soup in the name of raising money for a plethora of causes

  • Bread for the World – we donated money to fight hunger at home and abroad and encouraged others to get involved by writing letters to US representatives

  • CROP Hunger Walk – members of our team have walked to support local organizations, including COA, while also raising money for Church World Service for hunger projects such as water purification systems and food packets

  • Rising Tide – we spearheaded school supplies drives, focusing on backpacks, for the after-school program at Covenant Presbyterian Church in downtown Long Beach

Educate

  • Adult Education classes – topics have included environmental conservation, foster care, trafficking, mental health and will address the issues of the Middle East, including Palestinian Christians

  • South Coast Interfaith Council (SCIC) – SCIC provides the opportunity to learn about other faiths by interacting together in an casual environment, promoting tolerance and understanding between faiths

Mosaic of Peace Book Studies

Between April 2021 and March 2022, the Presbyterian Peacemaking Program will be offering a series of book studies focusing on the Holy Land, inviting participants to learn from its complicated history and to struggle with its modern-day context of conflict, occupation and opposing claims.  A variety of books will be selected and participants are invited to register for one or all of the 4-6 week book study groups.  The book studies are open to all: those who have participated in past Mosaic of Peace Conference, those planning to attend the 2022 Conference and those who simply seek to better understand the historical and modern-day Holy Land.


 
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The Lemon Tree:  An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East

By Sandy Tolan

A NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST
“Extraordinary … A sweeping history of the Palestinian-Israeli conundrum … Highly readable and evocative.” – The Washington Post
In 1967, Bashir Khairi, a twenty-five-year-old Palestinian, journeyed to Israel with the goal of seeing the beloved stone house with the lemon tree behind it that he and his family had fled nineteen years earlier. To his surprise, when he found the house he was greeted by Dalia Eshkenazi Landau, a nineteen-year-old Israeli college student, whose family left fled Europe for Israel following the Holocaust. On the stoop of their shared home, Dalia and Bashir began a rare friendship, forged in the aftermath of war and tested over the next half century in ways that neither could imagine on that summer day in 1967. Sandy Tolan brings the Israeli-Palestinian conflict down to its most human level, demonstrating that even amid the bleakest political realities there exist stories of hope and transformation.