Wednesday, May 25, 2016

            We spent a good part of the long weekend up in Goderich where our youngest daughter and her fiancé have made their home.  We hadn’t seen them lately, so it was great to have a long visit. The weather was perfect. We toured the farmer’s market and the beach and ate at a good local restaurant down by the water.  We especially enjoyed meeting Finzy for the first time – a gregarious, eight-months old, Newfie dog. It was hard to come back home.

            You may recall that Goderich was the small town who was ravaged by a F3 tornado in 2011. The downtown was hit especially hard. Stores, businesses, churches were utterly destroyed. There is a plaque where the United Church used to be.

            But today, there is scant evidence of the devastation. The town valiantly engaged in rebuilding itself. People pitched in to help each other to pick up the pieces and start anew. There may be a few, old, tree stumps here and there, but the town has survived and thrived and is as good as new; maybe better if they can keep alive the spirit of community and helpful neighbourliness.

            Stories like what happened in Goderich or what is happening in Fort MacMurray remind us of the resilience, strength and resolve of people under deep duress.  When we come together we make the whole community stronger and better able to face the challenges that are ahead.

            A lot of people believe that the adage, “God helps those who help themselves,” is a verse out of the Bible. It is not!  That doesn’t make it wrong, necessarily, but I would like to suggest that the better, more-approximate, biblical-like, Jesus-like saying would sound more like, “God helps those who help others.”

            Jesus didn’t “invent” the Golden Rule (other religions have their own versions of it), but he did give us the most positive expression of it: “In everything do to others as you would have them do to you,” (Matthew 7:12).  We often leave out the little phrase “in everything”. There are no exceptions in doing good for other people. "Here is a simple, rule-of-thumb guide for behavior: Ask yourself what you want people to do for you, then grab the initiative and do it for them,” (The Message).

            Jesus talked more about what makes for good community than anything else. His concerns were for others every step of his Way. He gave us clear principles to put flesh to the Golden Rule: forgiveness, justice, equality, sharing, non-violence, making sacrifices, trust, kindness, and the list goes on.

            It shouldn’t take a disaster to call these qualities out of us.

Wednesday, May 18, 2016

            Mother Robin needs a bigger nest – something with an extension or a new wing (pun intended!).  She has built her tiny nest just outside our sunroom door, atop an outdoor speaker.

She has brought forth four of her kind into the world. Her current nest is bulging at the seams. It will be only a few more days before there will be not enough room for all of her four fledglings. Somebody is going to be pushed out before he or she is ready for the big world, before it knows how to fly. It probably will be the smallest, the weakest, the least assertive, the one who gets pushed aside by its brothers or sisters when Mom comes a-calling with worms and moths to eat. There are raccoons, crows, cats and other predators who find wayward, little, flightless birds a very easy target. “Like a bird that strays from its nest is one who strays from home,” (Proverbs 27:8)

But for now, she is highly protective of her babies. Baby robins are as ugly as they come; truly only a face that a mother could love. Regardless of my opinion, she cares for them indeed. Talk about “helicopter parenting”! If I go out into the backyard, she will sit in a nearby tree, and chirp away at me in an irritated tone. The grackles are more aggressive as they will swoop at me or one of the dogs if we get anywhere near one of their nests. But Mama Robin simply keeps a guarded, anxious bird’s eye on me to see whether I am a threat to her nest. I’m not, but how do you explain that to a fretting mother robin?

One of my favourite images for God’s Love for us comes from Deuteronomy:

            As an eagle stirs up its nest

                         And hovers over its young;
                         As it spreads its wings, takes them up,
                         And bears them aloft on its pinions,
                        The Lord alone guided [his people] …  (Deuteronomy 32: 11)

God’s Love hovers near-by as we take flight into the world. Sometimes, we are not ready to fly as we might like to. Some find no room for them in their corner of the world, or not enough space to develop and grow and thrive. Sometimes, the weakest get pushed out and left to fend for themselves as brothers and sisters get fed first.  The world can be a beautiful place in which to soar, but that doesn’t mean there are not predators who will take advantage or cause harm.

God’s Love has our well-being always on God’s heart.  Some think that God doesn’t love them if they fall out of the nest, so to speak, and get hurt.  All I can say is to compare it to a parent’s love for our children.  I would do just about anything and everything to keep my children safe, that’s how much I love them.  But despite my love they have experienced hurts, pain, suffering, loss, failure, and the like. Does that mean I don’t love them because I couldn’t always protect them from any and all harm? Of course not. All I could do was to love them unconditionally as they went through the challenges.

It is not a perfect analogy, perhaps, but this is how I see God’s Love encountering you and me and the ones who fall out of the nest. God hovers there, giving us support, strength and courage. “But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles…” (Isaiah 40:31).

Dale

Wednesday, May 11, 2016

 

So, who’s the donkey who tucked the lawnmower in the corner of the garage and then piled a winter’s worth of clutter on top of it? There were several, empty cardboard boxes. There were Christmas decorations. There were bits of lumber. An old mattress fell over on top of it. It took an archeological dig to get to the lawnmower and pull it out of its hiding place.  If I ever get hold of the person who did this… why are you looking at me?

I actually hate clutter. You wouldn’t necessarily know that about me if you had ever seen my office at work. But I really do hate clutter. But you would know it by the way I complain about it. I may never do anything about clutter, but I love to complain about it.

Sure, I resort to the lame excuse that even though my desk is messy, I know where everything is.  Hah! The number of times I have lost stuff, even important things, in the pile of papers are too numerous to count, not to mention the time I wasted in trying to find something. I was amazed at what I found when I cleared out my office after ten years – even money.

Spring is a traditional time for house cleaning. We clean windows, great rid of old stuff that has been lying around for the winter, put away winter gear, open the windows and let some fresh air inside the stale house, and tidy up the yard.

Jesus tells the story about a woman who lost a coin and cleaned house, tidied up, and swept out the corners until she found it, (Luke 15:8-10).

There are a lot of different ways we clutter up our lives. We keep the empty boxes of guilt, shame, anger, bitterness, disappointment, frustration, ignorance, prejudice, to name a few. We let the unnecessary clutter of grudges, judgementalism, intolerance pile up and get in the way.  We let the heavy feelings of grief, fear, hopelessness, despair topple upon us and we can’t get up. We let the broken and useless bits and pieces of living inconvenience us and get in the way.

We probably complain about it, but we don’t ever do much about it.

Maybe, it’s time we emulate the woman and do whatever it takes to find ourselves in life’s clutter; to find God in the messes and chaos or in the untidiness and muddles that may be in our hearts, minds and soul, “for God is a God not of disorder, but of peace,” (1 Corinthians 14:33). Paul was talking about worship, but I think the point is relevant here, too.

To find real value and total well-being (shalom) in our living we must get rid of the clutter and discover anew what really matters or makes a difference.

“Summing it all up, friends, I'd say you'll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious - the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse,” (Philippians 4: 8, The Message).

Now, if could just find my Bible; I know it was on my desk yesterday…

 

Wednesday, May 4, 2016

            Being the good, little Canadian that I am, I went on-line and completed and then submitted our census form yesterday. I was expecting something long and complicated but it was short and simple.  Click “submit” and off it went somewhere.  Trusting soul that I am, I even gave them permission to use our personal data in the year 2081. Let my great grandchildren deal with any embarrassment that our meager statistics might reveal. Although, if anything, all it will expose is how absolutely dull and ordinary we were.

            Even though Canadians must complete the census form by law, at least it didn’t come with the dire warning in an Exodus text: “When you take a census of the Israelites to count them, each one must pay the Lord a ransom for his life at the time he is counted. Then no plague will come on them when you number them,” (Exodus 30:12). They had to pay a shekel; 34 cents in today’s money market; maybe more back then.

            Now God was constantly ordering that Moses take a census of the people while they were on their way to the Promised Land. Maybe God didn’t want to lose anyone on the way. It’s like taking a Grade Two class on a field trip to the museum. The teacher has to count heads to make sure little Timmy doesn’t get left behind.  Timmy, get out of the dinosaur’s mouth. Counting heads is what a tour guide does when he or she is leading tour group. O.K., where’s Ethel? Ethel, we don’t have time for you to climb that pyramid.

            Jesus told a wonderful story about a shepherd who lost one of his sheep, (Luke 15: 1 – 7). He had a 100 sheep which he was guarding. He was making sure all were accounted for.  Ninety-seven, ninety-eight, ninety-nine… O.K. where’s Woolly-Sue?  Dang; not again!

            Incredibly, the shepherd leaves the ninety-nine and heads off into the nasty wilderness to find and rescue that one silly sheep. “When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices.” In fact, he is so happy that he throws a party and invites his neighbors. Wow, that man really loves his sheep!

            Jesus’ point is that God goes to any and great lengths to rescue you or me out of any wilderness in which we may get lost. God is overjoyed when even just one who has lost his or her way in life and is furthest away from God finds his or her way back into God’s loving care and grace: “Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.”

            So, just don’t stand there; bleat a little so he’ll know where you are!