Wednesday, November 27, 2019 – Advent One
“Gabriel appeared to her and said, “Greetings, favored woman! The Lord is with you!” (Luke 1: 28, New Living Translation) 

                My, how time flies! Where has the year gone? 

I can’t ignore the Christmas ads on TV any more. Christmas is looking at me straight in the face. This Sunday is the first Sunday of Advent. Thank goodness I have left our outdoor Christmas lights all year on the big fir tree growing on our front lawn. It’s grown quite some more; maybe I should add a few more lights too.

‘Tis the season – here it comes ready or not.

I get a lot less stressed out about this festive season than I used to, before retirement. But I still have some of my mother in me, it seems. Mom would start to worry about which of her three children were going to “have her for Christmas”, usually way too early for any of us really to be thinking about it – like in August. She always told us that she wanted to book her train ticket early. We loved having her at our home over Christmas but she was pretty persistent that each of us take turns and was pretty sure whose turn it was. But she liked to have that “invitation” firmly established in the hearts and minds of her children very early, long before the Christmas season was even a glint in Santa’s eye.

But I am discovering that I, too, like to know the details of our family Christmas plans, whatever they may be, just not quite so early as my mother. I am fairly comfortable as to what the family decides. Just tell me where I am driving to and when. I have no particular Christmas agenda about what, where and with whom but, in part, I want to make sure everybody is covered when it comes to our Christmas celebrations. With our growing families it is becoming harder to guarantee that we all will be able to get together on Christmas Day like before. But I don’t want anyone left behind or left out. I also know this worry is kind of stupid because that is not how our family rolls. Thanks, Mom!

But perhaps, Advent needs a little more of the unpredictable as much as we would like to tie it down to fit our calendars and schedules.  As we unpack the same Christmas tree decorations we have used for years, or bake the same favourite Christmas cookies or light the inevitable Advent candles at church and recall the familiar themes of hope, peace, joy and love, perhaps we could use a healthy dose of mystery, serendipity and surprising grace.

After all, Mary wasn’t just sitting around the house expecting an angel to come visit her and tell her she was to become the mother of the saviour of all humanity.  I am fairly sure that she was gob-smacked by the unlikely and sudden change in her life. Or better yet, God-smacked. There were more questions than answers at this point in the Advent Story. She couldn’t practice her part in this first Christmas pageant. She needed to take it as it unfolded. There were no trains to Bethlehem to buy tickets for.

A life of faith is not always predictable and therefore not always safe and sound as we might hope.  Having God’s favour was going to be a challenge for Mary. It would be demanding of her. It would take her on a totally different life-path than the one she was expecting – settling down with her husband Joseph, raising a family and living a quiet, anonymous life in Nazareth.

Advent is meant to shake us up, sometimes. Advent is meant to alert us to the incredible, the utterly new, the dynamic awesome sovereignty and love of God.  God’s love and grace take us by surprise. You can’t really make arrangements or make plans or book your rooms well ahead in Bethlehem.

Sometimes, God’s favour just leaves one God-smacked.  

Dale

Wednesday, November 20, 2019
“He who is the faithful witness to all these things says, “Yes, I am coming soon!” Amen! Come, Lord Jesus!” (Revelation 22:20, New Living Translation) 

                When I was about 10 or 11 years old, more or less, I scared my poor, slightly younger cousin nearly out of his wits by terrorizing him with the “details” of the end time, all fire and brimstone, chilling catastrophic end-of-the-world stuff. I had learned my Sunday School lessons all too well as our S.S. superintendent was big on this kind of Jesus-is-coming-soon timeline. I loved my S.S. superintendent, so I was just passing on the message. It was scary stuff for someone of my age; I guess that I wanted someone to be scared with me. It worked!

                I am no longer an apocalyptic enthusiast. Or to put it more succinctly I have a much different understanding and interpretation of the Biblical message about the coming Kingdom of God. Much of the Biblical imagery is indeed drastic in nature, quite vivid and dire. It is very illustrative in this way to get our attention so that we fully understand that God intends a radical, decisive and thorough cosmic re-creation which leads us into his rule of total shalom, justice, harmony, love and grace.  This the Ultimate Vision of God’s New Reality which is full of hope, peace, joy and love (the four traditional themes for Advent).

                I don’t know about you but I am becoming very sick and tried of politics these days, be it global politics or Canadian and American politics or  church politics or the politics of human relationships in general. Not much of it is very pretty, as we have become so divided, hostile, angry, judgmental, confrontational in all spheres of politics. There seems so little respect. Nobody listens politely.  There is little grace in speeches and rhetoric. In this age of social media everybody has an opinion and sends it out in big, bold letters – shaming, bullying, castigating. There is little toleration for different opinions. There is decline in open-mindedness and fairness. Politics in its many forms seems like a battle ground. In all wars people get hurt and wounded.

                So, there is a piece of me who agrees broadly with my choice for today’s text: Come, Lord Jesus! The sooner, the better. We are in dire need of your power to lead us back into righteousness, grace, hope, love, well-being, harmony, positive relationships, justice, forgiveness and all the qualities to turn this world right-side up once again. We are in dreadful need to be find healing for all peoples and all nations. We are in terrible need to eradicate evil, sorrow, pain, shame, brokenness and hatred. We are in abysmal need for renewal, transformation, resurrection, and second birth.

I believe that only you can affect such re-creation. So come, Lord, Jesus, come.

In the meanwhile, I‘ll just wait here while you’re thinking about it. And I will work at getting my little corner of the world ready, doing the right and loving things which you’d expect me to do for you and for others.

I wouldn’t want to be left behind!

Dale

Wednesday, November 13, 2019
“May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.” (Psalm 19:14, New Living Translation) 

                You gotta love our country, Canada.

 No, not the recent early November snowstorm, but that the worst thing we can get our winter knickers all in a knot over is another ignorant thing that Don Cherry  has said which has gotten him fired from Sportsnet. You would have to be living in a bubble if you don’t know the controversial hubbub that his televised, divisive, prejudicial words about immigrants allegedly not wearing poppies has generated.

                I have never ever been a fan of Cherry. Neither his anachronistic social comments nor his outdated views on hockey appeal to me. But he loves the limelight and adulation that he gets from his die-hard fans. In recent interviews he seems to be almost claiming now that he is the victim in all this even though he threw immigrants, his colleagues, his employer, even his precious armed forces all under the bus, one way or the other.  I don’t think Don is that stupid and he knew exactly what he was going to say and when he was going to say it, at the very end of the TV segment when no one would have a chance at any rebuttal. But the world is passing poor Don by and believing in his own power and status he finally crossed the line and went too far.

                One of the arguments being made in his defence is, of course, his right to free speech. If he had not being working for Sportsnet at the time this might work as a defence. But he is accountable to his employer as any of us would be in our work places. But, for the sake of argument, let’s say that at its lowest common denominator, yours or my right to have an opinion is a part of free speech. We might disagree on an issue but each of us has a right to express our personal point of view. This blog is an example off free speech. I will cede the point.

                But I would like to elevate the concept of free speech beyond just being able to say any darn old thing we feel like.

                Grumpy, ornery, old, white males aside I (and I can be one of them), free speech at its very best comes with responsibility and accountability. Simply put, we should think before we speak and like our mothers taught us, if we haven’t got anything good to say keep it to yourself. We are responsible for our words and the effects our words have on others. I have said and written enough stupid things in my life that I know of what I write. Once those words get out there in public domain, we can’t take them back and our words may have the consequences of hurting, insulting, demeaning or simply being outright wrong. There is an old saying, “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt."

                Free speech does not entitle us to blind ignorance, abusive language, speaking blatant untruths or making sweeping generalizations and treating them as some sort of “honest”, personalized or patriotic gospel. “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.” (Ephesians 4:29, New International Version) In other words free speech, at its best, is honorable, trustworthy, has integrity and is, therefore, worth listening to.

                Exercising free speech is hard. It should be.  Our words matter.  Great freedoms come with great responsibilities. “The words you say will either acquit you or condemn you.” (Matthew 12:37, NLT)

                Mark my word! 

Dale

               

Wednesday, November 6, 2019
“But if we look forward to something we don’t yet have, we must wait patiently and confidently.” (Romans 8:25, New Living Translation) 

                I am not a patient person. I don’t generally like waiting for anything.

                If I had been a test subject in the Stanford University Marshmallow Test I can tell you what I would have done. This is test in which children were offered a small reward, one marshmallow, to eat immediately or wait a mere 15 minutes and get two such rewards. The study revealed that children who waited, i.e. delayed gratification, were more likely to have better long-term life outcomes.

                Not me, boy! I’m stuffing that marshmallow down ASAP. Who knows when the next one might show up, if it all? Don’t trust those sneaky researchers one bit!

                Patiently waiting is not my style.

                “Wait patiently for the Lord. Be brave and courageous. Yes, wait patiently for the Lord.” (Psalm 27:14, NLT) I just as soon that the Lord would hurry up. The suspense is killing me. One day may be ten thousand to the Lord, but I just don’t have that kind of time.

                So when I was told yesterday that I might have to wait up to two years for my shoulder surgery, I was not a happy camper. (Peterborough has one of the highest rates for waiting times for replacement surgeries in the province.)  But a lot of stuff can happen in two years. I am not getting any younger. That’s a lot of tubes of Voltaren cream and taking Tylenol-3 pills. I’ve got places to be, things to do; grandchildren to wrestle with and play catch with. Two years – yikes!

                We live in a time of instant gratification. Some  us get impatient if our coffee takes more than 30 seconds to brew or our micro-waved food is longer than a few minutes in the making. We expect our parcels to arrive the next day after we have ordered them. Our messages to each other come in a flash of a second or two. When I hit start on my computer it had better be ready to go as quickly as possible. Most of us want life’s better things to happen sooner than later; we want it now, without delay and with as little inconvenience as it possibly can. We want results and we want them today, maybe right  this minute, if possible.

                I am not sure that Life always really needs to be lived in the fast lane, but sometimes it is really hard to move over to the far right, slower lane and enjoy some of the scenery or, at least, not be so stressed.

                Mind you, Paul is not writing about anything so mundane as a marshmallow or an Amazon parcel. He is reflecting on a time - and this is God’s version of time, not ours - in which, once and for all, Creation is freed from all futility, brokenness and decay. It will be a time of healing, restoration, recreation.  It is a time for the success of salivation and a new order of peace and justice. The mere hope for this time has remedial affects upon us in the present, even as we wait.

                Good things, often, need time to work out is own processes at its own pace so as to develop properly and in a healthy way.

“Meanwhile, the moment we get tired in the waiting, God’s Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don’t know how or what to pray, it doesn’t matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans. He knows us far better than we know ourselves, knows our pregnant condition, and keeps us present before God. That’s why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good.” (Romans 8: 26-28 The Message)

                This attitude of waiting until it hurts is a part of faith, having the ultimate trust in the Love of God so that nothing can overwhelm us or pervert the good that will, one day, come our way.

                Life is good and we should live it to the fullness that God intends. But it also can be a waiting room, leading us on to another adventure of being and a new reality.

Wait for it!

Dale

Wednesday, October 30, 2019
“Make sure that the light you think you have is not actually darkness.” (Luke 11:35), New Living Translation) 

                Happy Samhain to you all!

                The ancient Celtic festival of Samhain preceded the celebration of Halloween but the latter maintained many of the properties and characteristics that we associate with our version. Early Christianity created its own version of this end of summer event in order to Christianize and eventually  replace Celtic beliefs and customs. They also added an All-saints Day on November 1.

                Samhain was seen as a very sacred, supernatural and dangerous time of the year, also falling on October 31.  As the darkness and accompanying death of summer wrought by winter began to invade the land, people believed that last day of October marked a time when the space between the spirit world and the living world became very thin. Malevolent or mischievous spirits would cross over and wreak their nastiness. Trick or treat anyone?

The Britannica describes Samhain as “a time fraught with danger, charged with fear, and full of supernatural episodes. Sacrifices and propitiations of very kind were thought to be vital for without them the Celtics believed they could not prevail over the perils of the season or counteract the activities of the deities.” (Britannica Website)

I am not a superstitious person. I enjoy fantasy stories of magic, wizardry, dragons, and the like but it is not called “fantasy” for nothing. I do like to think that  there are mysteries and wonders and amazing events that can leave us agog and awed at how all of Creation works. Science still hasn’t it all figured out either. I doubt that it ever will. In fact, I hope not. I like a little mystery and even the thrill of the unknown or not-yet. It keeps us humble!

But we should be very  attuned to these times which are fraught with danger, not so much by goblins and ghouls but by the darkness of the evil which humankind can engender all by ourselves, often without much prompting from the Evil One, although  I am sure that Satan enjoys our proclivities for causing the sinful damage we bring into the world. The Devil may have made us do it, but it didn’t take much encouragement. The space between good and evil is very thin at times.

 It is easy to allow the monsters of formed by our actions, words,  even thoughts leak into the real world and cause it bedlam.

Perhaps, this is why, in Galatians, Paul included “sorcery” or “witchcraft” as in some versions in a whole host of all too human traits such as “sexual immorality, impurity, lustful pleasures,  idolatry, sorcery, hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, dissension, division, envy, drunkenness, wild parties, and other sins like these. Let me tell you again, as I have before, that anyone living that sort of life will not inherit the Kingdom of God.” (Galatians 5: 19 -21)

                Now that’s scary – to live a life that is so full of fear, anger, pain and hatred that it possesses i.e. takes over, your whole life and dictates how you live. And we miss out on a truly blissful sort of living.  It is demonic in spirit to see others as only strangers, alien and as enemies.  It is eerie how some people can lead such hurtful and selfish lives in a world which, especially right now, needs the potent powers of love, forgiveness, hope, reconciliation and justice.

                Better to be a saint on November first and beyond than just a phantom of what God intends  us to be. 


Dale

Wednesday, October 23, 2019

O Lord, what a variety of things you have made! In wisdom you have made them all. The earth is full of your creatures.” (Psalm 104:24, New Living Translation) 

                All things bright and beautiful,
                All creatures great and small,
                All things wise and wonderful,
                The Lord God made them all. (C.F. Alexander)

                When I was a teenager, I wanted to be a veterinary. I even worked for a few weeks for the local vet in Belleville under an internship grant. It was fascinating. In just a couple of weeks I experienced many facets of veterinary medicine. And I have several quite memorable stories that came out of even such a short time.

Once we went to a farm to castrate some pigs.  Usually, this is done when they are quite small, just a few days old or so.  When we got to the farm, we discovered that we were dealing with much older porkers, each weighing maybe around a 100 pounds or more, making the task extremely difficult. Our solution, crude but effective, was to rope them around the back legs, throw the rope over a barn ceiling beam and hoist them up, leaving their back side exposed to do the deed.  There is nothing quite so ear-splitting as a squealing pig. And we had about a dozen we had to nip and tuck.

Susan and I have become addicted to several of the reality vet shows on TV: The Incredible Dr. Pol, Dr. Oakley the Yukon Vet and Dr. K’s Animal ER. I now know more about the insides of cows, pigs, horses, sheep, goats, dogs, cats, rabbits, even lizards and tortoises than you could imagine and you might not want to. Some of it is quite graphic. They don’t save every animal. Dr. Pol is a 76-year-old doctor in Michigan, but as strong as some of the big animals he tends to.  He’s old-school when it comes to practicing veterinary medicine and a lot of things he can tell simply by touch and feel and by just looking at something.

Our pets are very precious to us. It is amazing to go into a pet food store and see aisles full of various sorts of just dog food alone. One pet food company in the United States generated 18 billion dollars in sales in 2018. And we pet owners know that a vet bill can easily soar into the hundreds of dollars. Yet, generally speaking, we will go to such lengths if there is even a small chance we can save our pets. Non-pet owners may think we’re crazy in the way we pamper our pets.  There is hardly a client on the vet shows who doesn’t say something to the effect that their pet is like their  child or is part of the family or a best friend or some other sentimental notion. Even some of the farmers have some warmth for their cows.

Maybe we are just a little bit crazy.

Then God said, “Let the earth produce every sort of animal, each producing offspring of the same kind—livestock, small animals that scurry along the ground, and wild animals.” And that is what happened. God made all sorts of wild animals, livestock, and small animals, each able to produce offspring of the same kind. And God saw that it was good. (Genesis 1: 24 – 25)

God then made humanity to become good stewards of all  these  creatures, both domestic and wild, as well as the  birds of the air and fish of the sea. Creation is good and we should do a far better job of maintaining it and grooming it and providing for all of its welfare.  A farmer who doesn’t look after his cattle, keep them well-fed and cared for, tending to them if sick, keeping their shelter clean  and pest  free will eventually lose  his  or her very livelihood.

So too, all of us need to care about what is happening to our planet. We have slowly been killing our earthly home. If you don’t believe that climate change is real, you should. When God gave us dominion over this world and its creatures he didn’t mean for us to run it into the ground but to nurture and tend to its well-being. As one bumper sticker has it: There is no Plan(et) B.

He gave us eyes to see them,

And lips that we might tell,

How great is God Almighty,

Who has done all things well.

Dale

Wednesday, October 16, 2019
“I will lead the blind by a road they do not know, by paths they have not known I will guide them. I will turn the darkness before them into light, the rough places into level ground. These are the things I will do, and I will not forsake them.” (Isaiah 42:16, New Living Translation)


                It is a rainy, gloomy, almost bleak, day here in Peterborough. The day began in the near-dark when I got up. Now that Thanksgiving is over, the days seem to get shorter even faster. Today’s weather seems a precursor to the dull days of November when even the colourful leaves are gone. I have put on my SAD light as I write. Even the dogs are curled up and listless. This is definitely not my favourite time of year.

                Have I brought you down now, too? Misery loves company, so they say.

                It seems too early in the season to be so thirsty for light. There is, of course, always the optimism that it will return. Tomorrow may be sunny and bright, I hope. In a few months (!) the days will get longer once again. New life blossoms out of the cold and snow – eventually. But right now, in the moment, let me just say it – bleah!

                Isaiah was speaking to a people who were walking in their own brand of darkness called Exile, forced to live as immigrants in another country, far from home and familiar customs. One might argue that they brought this misery upon themselves by their idolatry and faithlessness. Be it as that may, it was a bleah existence as expressed by Psalm 137: “How could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?” (Psalm 137:1, NLT)

                Yet, as often is the case, God shines a new light on the situation.  It will not continue to be so dark. New hope is on the horizon.  Fresh possibilities are just around the corner.  Brighter days are coming. God speaks through his prophet to paint a picture of encouragement and inspiration. God has seen the situation that they are in and now wants to lead them out of these dark times and re-establish his light within their community and fellowship. As much as God is irritated and provoked by the people’s worship of other gods, he can’t and won’t forsake them and leave them in the dark. “I will not forsake them.”

                This a substantial commitment from God; not just wild-eyed optimism nor wishful thinking. It is a promise full of grace and confidence. It has the assurances of a loving God who, after discipline, throws his arms around his prodigal people to guide them and lead them home once again. “Even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you.” (Psalm 139:12, NLT)

                I expect that there were Jewish people of that time in that foreign space who scoffed and scorned such words. Who could blame them, really?  In general, life wasn’t very sunny at all and getting back home seemed highly unlikely.

                But to some degree, that very darkness makes the words that much more powerful and dynamic. Such words seem incredible and wondrous and daring and bold and audacious. It’s like waiting in the pitch darkness in a wilderness, lost and all alone, desperate and helpless, and then seeing a beam from a flashlight, heading your way, finding you. Someone is coming with a light to show the way out of those dire circumstances. The wielder of that light has come to save you. That light washes away your despair, fears and the darkness. What a feeling!

                So, I am reminded and  I am reminding you to trust in the Light when the roads are bumpy and there are nothing but blind corners and nothing looks too bright. God has not forsaken you or me. God has not given up in finding us. God has not  left us in the dark.  “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.” (Psalm 119: 105, NLT)


Dale