Monthly Archives: January 2004

In the most recent issue of Relevant, Issue 6, Cameron Strang talks about finding relevant churches to attend.  They don’t seem to have any relevant churches in Canada – which is too bad.  Anyway, he suggests that maybe the twentysomethings should begin to attend and get plugged into churches in order to be instruments of change.  He states: “Why?  Because we don’t have all the answers.  Because it’s biblical.  And because maybe we can be instruments of change there.  If we’re not trying to serve and make a difference, why are we complaining about the state of “irrelevant” churches today?

As our church approaches it’s annual meeting (we are a congregational church so need the involvment of members), I wish we had more twentysomethings who were there to be instruments of change.  I wish we had more in this age group who were not afraid of teaching us how to do “church ” in a way that would be relevant to their peers. And we have to face it, those who need God most desperately are not the few kids who continue to put up with our “modern” systems but the huge numbers of young people who no longer find anything about our church organization that appeals to them.  The really horrible thing is that these kids do not just drop church but they also lose sight of the relevance of their faith and begin to search in other places that only lead them into lies and half truths. 

And if we older adults have caused even one of these young ones to stumble, to be fed up with our hypocrisy and lose faith, we are to be pitied because we are condemming ourselves.

In Luke 17:2 Jesus said, “It would be better to be thrown into the sea with a large millstone tied around the neck than to face the punishment in store for harming one of these little ones.” 

If we really want a powerful faith that makes a difference in our lives, in the lives of our children and in the communities we live in, we had better not turn away the generation of children that are now becoming adults and thinking through their faith. 

I know I have made mistakes with my own kids.  But I know my deep desire to see God become the center of their lives has led me to try to look at life more from their perspective.  And I know that if I am going to see God make a differnce in their lives then I have to be flexible, I have to throw away some of my preconceived notions of what right behaviour is, I have to let God work in his own way in them and not expect them to turn out looking like me.  God forbid!  I think the whole objective, after all, is to get them looking more like Him. 

As I am writing one of my children is writing a special exam – a final in math.  I know she doesn’t want people to know that she is becasue she doesn’t seem to have told her siblings why she went to the school tonight.  Her teacher is a real gem.  She has provided evening tutoring and because my child needs special accomodations for the exam, she arranged to give it tonight.  I got a call a few minutes ago saying that she would need more time so to wait a bit longer before coming for her.  I hope she is doing as well as she can.  Half the battle seems to be an incredible fear of exams. 

Don’t you just wish sometimes that you could take away some of the problems your child has to face?  I know it wouldn’t be good for them but sometimes the pain is just too hard to watch!

Jordon supplied this link via Dennis Camplin to an article on how to market to introverts.  Being an introvert I can attest to the truth in it.  I don’t know how many times I have said to telemarketers – send me some written information.  I am not going to buy a product sight unseen over the phone under pressure – and yes I hate phones!

Isaiah 55:1
Is anyone thirsty?  Come and drink – even if you have no money!

Today we will be celebrating communion.  There is something of this theme in a poem I have been working at.  Then today my reading took me to this verse from Isaiah.  An invitation to quench our thirst. 

Wine Stained

Effervesence
Bursts old wine skins.

Wine He provides
Spills out.
Lives of the people it touches
Stained
With His blood red wine,
His love.

Stark red stains on the snow white
Hearts of his people
Should be highly visible,
Should be inviting,
Should say to those craving a drink
“Come there is more!”

Drink deep.
His cellars are vast.

I have been reading Our Daily Blog over at tallskinnykiwi’s new page.  I was actually reading throught the comments and another quote from Nouwen impressed me.  This one comes from jenn:

This passage reminds me of a Henri Nouwen quote in an article he wrote called “A Spirituality of Waiting.”

“To wait open-endedly is an enormously radical attitude toward life. So is to trust that something will happen to us that is far beyond our own imagninings. So, too, is giving up control over our future and letting God define our life, trusting that God molds us according to God’s love and not according to our fear. The spiritual life is a life in which we wait, actively present to the moment, trusting that new things will happen to us, new things that are far beyond our own imagination, fantasy or prediction. That, indeed, is a very radical stance toward life in a world preoccupied with control.”

I guess this pretty much spoke to where I am right now – waiting, learning to trust.  Trying to at least.

As part of my food for the spiritual journey I presently seem to be on, I am reading A.W. Tozer’s The Pursuit of God.  I find the language in it very typical of the age of my parents – lots of “thees” and “thous” and other terms that make for more difficult reading than some of the other books I’ve read lately.  

But the book shares Towzer’s own discovery of spiritual things.  I do like how he puts it in the preface to the book:

“Others before me have gone much farther into these holy mysteries than I have done, but if my fire is not large it is yet real, and there may be those who can light their candle at its flame. “

Seems to me that his little candle has helped to light many others. 

So this is where I have been spending time lately.  God is here.  Somehow he is doing his own thing in my life. I’m in that sort of place where I don’t know exactly where we are going or what God is doing.  But this is an exceedingly good place and I am happy that God is taking me into some deeper stuff. 

But it is the deeper kind of spiritual stuff that is hard to understand or even talk about and make a lot of sense of unless you have been in this sort of place too.  I am learning more of the awesomness of God and sometimes the presence of God with me is totally overwhelming.  This is a good place to be but my words can describe it in only a limited way.  It is a place of life and blessing.  A Holy place here with my God.  A place of God’s mysteries where there is an immense amount of energy and power just under the surface waiting.

I hope more of my friends will join me on this journey into the deeper places of God.  We need the kind of life and blessing that only comes from visiting these places and experiencing his power and goodness.

The kids are all getting ready studying for final exams.  They start tomorrow at the school our kids go to.  So of course everyone is busy craming.  Sara is the only one who has made the statement that she is “excited ” about her exam – not sure what class that is but at least one of the kids is “looking forward to” this week.  And she is trying to talk the other two sho she shares a ride with to get her to school early so she can be there ahead and look at her subjects and calm herslf down.  That sounds like me when I was in high school.  The other two are not such students and this will not be a fun week.

Tonight I just reconnected by phone with one of my cousins.  He lives in Ottawa andleo has had a chance to visit him and his wife while down east on business.  Now Patrick is down in Ottawa for the Francophone Youth Parliment and Leo goes back to Ottawa for a very short visit on business again at the end of next week.  We have had more contact with them in the past 6 months than we have had over the past 5 years I am sure.  One of these days I will actually get to go along with Leo and visit them too.  I have never been to Ottawa and it would be nice to see the nations capital.  But somehow the cost of the trip didn’t seem to make a one or two day trip very practical for me this time.  Leo was hoping to do some sightseeing last trip he made but they had an ice storm and thought better of trying to drive in to Ottawa from Nepean.

Today was a pretty ordinary day – work – cold(but not as bad as yesterday) – stuff that happens everyday pretty much.

This morning I had a big procedure scheduled.  And then following the bridge preparation, I was anticipating having a grouchy patient come with a crown that had fallen off.  I didn’t really blame her for being grouchy about what happened.  I would have been grouchy too if it had happened to me – having a crown come off while I was in BC on vacation.  But the extremely rude phone call we received from the patients daughter made me look forward to helping this patient about as much as I looked forward to – well maybe parent/teacher interviews.  Or maybe going to court or getting some other justifiable but hard to take scolding.  I was NOT looking forward to her visit.

This one I knew I had to pray through.  I knew I had to help her – it was my responsibility.  And I knew that I wanted the treatment I did for her to be the best I could do.  But I also knew that I did not want to see her very much.  So I guess I sort of  got to the point where I knew I had to turn this one over to God and let him use me to help her the best I could without resenting her. 

And today when she came in things went smoothly.  She was not at all grouchy – not like her daughter had been on the phone – #1 thing I was very thankful for.  And we ended up being able to get her crown back on and she was happy.  I was happy about being able to get her work done and to give her an explanation of what probably went wrong the first time we put the crown on.

Worship practice tonight – that was fun.  Kind of nice to be past the Christmas season.  Randall’s getting us to try a new song and that was fun. 

Then Dave and Annette wanted me to drop by their house after practice.  Got to visit my grandson who was in a great mood.  Tomorrow Annette starts a term position at my office filling in as reception staff as our staff all do a shuffle to accomodate the assistant who is beginning a maternity leave next week.

When I got there they handed me the last part of my Christmas present which didn’t arrive in time for Christmas – it is my Ukranian Christmas present.  They had ordered for  me the book by Erin Noteboom Ghost Maps Poems for Carl Hruska.  A signed copy no less!  Wow!  Another very special gift that I will treasure – and enjoy reading. 

  Now – to look forward to tomorrow – beginning to implement this new privacy legislation.  What a big hassle this is going to be.  We called the Privacy Commission today with some questions like –  what is the age of consent at which a child can sign this document.  They had no idea.  They couldn’t even seem to grasp why we would want to know.  Obviously this is a well thought through piece of government work!

One of the neatest things happened tonight – actually more than one neat thing.  I was out with the group of women that are studying Yancy’s book The Jesus I Never Knew.  We had been sitting around discussing the chapter on Revolution of Grace.  There were a lot of things we discussed as we wove around what the chapter was saying. 

First of all we had to go over what our most special gifts had been at Christmas.  All of our best gifts had to do with some very special relationships.  I liked V’s story the best.  Her mom ended up in hospital with a broken hip and they took her home to Melville on Christmas Day.  Since they were all busy with getting her home no arrangements were made for a real Christmas dinner.  V just though they would make something a lot simpler to eat since they didn’t feel that they could go through cooking a turkey ahead and taking it with them.  And then down came the upstairs neighbor.  She told them to come up she had prepared a dinner for all of them.  What a gift.  Totally unexpected.  Sometimes it is a blessing to be in a situation where love is expressed so freely and to be on the receiving end. 

So we shared our stories and were getting around to talking about what was in the chapter.  We exchanged thoughts on how we had experienced God’s grace and on how we had come to see that we are called on to love the people God puts in our paths – with an unconditional sort of love as shown by Jesus.  I think this is what made Jesus so attractive – no judging, no criticizing, just acceptance and love.  That kind of love is what drew people to him.  They already knew how bad they were – no one had to tell them that. 

And then our waiter(the waitress who had started serving us had finished her shift) came over and began to chat.  Wondered what book we were reading.  Said he had heard of Yancy but had never read any of his books.  He told us he had been to Bible School but that now – well he had kind of left the Christian faith and was exploring other things.  So we stayed longer and he came by a few times to chat.  Told us how he was exploring Buddaism.  Told us a little about a bad experience he had at Bible School that turned him off Christianity.  I think he was surprised that these women the age of his parents didn’t get all shocked when he told us about his searching in other religions.  It was cool talking to him.  A searcher.  What he doesn’t know is that God works in strange ways and that prayer is a powerful tool.  I think we may try to stay in touch.  We know some guys his age that he may just relate to. 

So two days of fairly intensive labor and we have gone from this

to this.

Those of us who live with hair that is straight and relatively thin have no idea the amount of work it takes to keep naturally curly hair manageble.  Going from A to B in Sara’s case involved cutting off her extensions, unbraiding (in reality untangling) the natural hair, washing, conditioning and combing it all out.  Tonight we did relaxer and voila!  Now she will be able to keep it combed out on her own but even relaxed, it is a lot of work to keep it all manageable.

Extensions are a nice alternative to having to do something every day.  Actually braids of any kind would do the same but my girls have a mother who is not a gifted braider and to date they have not had the patience with each other to learn to do each others braids.