Praise Him Anyway!

Today I awoke to yet another rainy day in a string of less‐than‐desirable June days, and right away my energy and outlook (not email!) seemed sapped. But hey…we should be used to it out here…and if not, well…the Lord has prepared this day for us, so let’s rejoice and celebrate Him in it! (Ps. 118:24).

    If you’re anything like me (which one of me is enough!), then your week can often start off by the tone set emotionally, physically and spiritually from within you. If you don’t believe me, then take a moment to ponder the events of your past week. Let’s say the weekend was sunny, warm and you got to hang out with friends/family…maybe had a nice bar‐b‐q…went for a run…played some golf…went on a hike. Your relationships seemed to go without incident, and you went to church, heard a good message, sang songs that really connected with you…and you even remember the kind words your employer gave you the previous week about a job/task done well, or your kids seemed particularly appreciative and respectful of your parenting. Your spouse pays extra attention, and perhaps surprises you with some extra love and kindness…what a great weekend.  Monday rolls around, it’s still sunny and you’re ready to get on with a “good” start to the week, and you find that little voice within saying; “Praise God…what a great life I’m blessed with!”

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Building Faith Muscles

Dear Friends,

Have you ever been convinced of something only to find out that what you thought to be true was really a misconception, a deception, a lie?

Please laugh with me as I tell you how I was lately deceived. Remember a few weeks ago I mentioned that I’m jogging now and hoping to get up to 45 minutes without a walking break. Well, my treadmill broke one day. I had already jogged for 25 minutes, so I quickly grabbed a hat and watch and started down the road – praying the whole time, of course, that no one would see me. After only 1 minute I was panting like …

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Don’t Waste the Waste

Dear Friends,

Its spring as I write this. And if you live in a farming community like I do, you will be smelling, shall we say, a nostril-cleaning, bone-jarring aroma. This aroma is attached to, and finds its source in, a substance as old as and as natural as the earth. There are many names given to this substance … let’s call it “waste”.

The reason why we always smell it in the springtime is because it is a necessary element in producing bountiful crops such as hay crops or raspberry crops or carrot crops.

Here’s the thing though. We don’t like smelling it. We don’t like watching as its spread on the fields. And we certainly don’t like thinking about where it comes from. Yet we depend on it for our own nutrition. How ironic – the very substance that we consider waste is actually for our benefit.

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The Fog of Worry

Dear Friends,
Have you ever driven in a fog so thick you couldn’t even see to the end of your vehicle? Even if it was midday, it felt like the blackest of night to you.

That is what worry is like. When we worry, it’s as if a curtain of fog is right in front of our face. All we see is the issue at hand and nothing else, making it impossible to move forward.

You might have gotten the following advice as too how to handle worry:

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Remembering…

Amnesia (ām-nē‘zhə) n. “The loss or impairment of memory.” (Stedman’s Medical Dictionary)

One of my favourite programs every December is the one where they compile all of the news highlights of the past year. I wonder if it’s because of my propensity to keep forgetting them, always being caught up in the ‘tyranny of the urgent’. So, I find myself saying out loud throughout the program, “oh, I remember that”, and am usually struck by how far from my immediate thoughts’ that event was, even if it was mere months or weeks ago, and extremely significant.

Sadly, I think I also get that way about ‘God’ moments in my life. So many times I catch myself in a state of thinking that God is not involved in the everyday ‘doing’ of my life. I like to refer to this as ‘spiritual amnesia’, because like the people of Israel, I seem to forget all of the good things that God has done in my life! 

The patriarchs of old had a habit of building altars as memorials to significant ‘God’ events – encounters, victories, etc. Jacob set up a pillar (Gen. 28), Joshua made a pile of river stones (Josh. 4), Moses… Abraham… all built Altars of Remembrance in order to worship God and bear witness for future generations. Even in our New Testament era, we have the Lord’s Supper as an act of Remembrance for the ultimate way God answered mankind’s greatest need – forgiveness once for all for sin.

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