Unspeakable

I'm a terrible gift-giver. I'm not proud of it but I have honesty and introspection in sufficient quantity to admit it. I won't bore you with excuses, suffice it to say that it's to the point where my wife will buy presents for herself now.

My wife is not like me, she knows exactly what people want and she will buy precisely the right gift at the right time so she will get a good deal as well.

God isn't like either of us, He gave us the ultimate gift at precisely the right time but paid the ultimate price. Some accept His gift, some choose to buy their own.

Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift. - 2 Corinthians 9:15

House construction

Unless the LORD builds the house,
They labor in vain who build it;
Unless the LORD guards the city,
The watchman stays awake in vain.
- Psalm 127:1

We're building a house right now and it's exciting and scary. Our last house was perfect for us but now with 3 kids in one bedroom and one of them a 13yr old, it was getting a bit tight.

Some of us were more sentimental about leaving our old house than others... I'll tell you what I mean.

One of the doors in our family room had a broken glass pane. So to help make the house more attractive to buyers, I replaced it and took the old door to the dump.

When I got home one of my sons looked like his dog had been run over, "I never got a chance to say goodbye to the old door", he said.

When I was packing some things for the move, I looked in his treasure box. Neatly folded inside was a drawing of the old door. He even drew the cracks in the broken pane.


Sometimes we want to hold onto the broken and ugly things in our hearts because we're used to them. But if we hang onto sin or place our treasures above Christ, I believe He will cleanse our hearts with the same zeal He had for the temple in Jerusalem . That thought is exciting and scary.


When I read Psalm 127 I think about how I want Jesus to rule my heart and guard my mind just like He built and maintained the Temple in Israel and protected Jerusalem. And when the Temple became filled with greed and deceit He drove the moneychangers out with a whip.


The good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth what is good; and the evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth what is evil; for his mouth speaks from that which fills his heart.

Why do you call Me, 'Lord, Lord,' and do not do what I say?
Everyone who comes to Me and hears My words and acts on them, I will show you whom he is like:

he is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid a foundation on the rock; and when a flood occurred, the torrent burst against that house and could not shake it, because it had been well built.

But the one who has heard and has not acted accordingly, is like a man who built a house on the ground without any foundation; and the torrent burst against it and immediately it collapsed, and the ruin of that house was great.
- Luke 6:45-49

White feathers

Every Remembrance Day I feel sadness for the horrible cost that our soldiers paid and I also feel pride. The sadness never lasts as long as it should before I go back to my comfortable life of relative bliss.

They called the first world war the "great war" or "the war to end all wars" and when the war began many people thought that it would be glamorous and filled with derring-do. Young men signed up in droves and those that didn't were given a white feather. A little souvenir of shame handed out by the young women of the day.

Who wouldn't want to join the war? It sounded like a great adventure and you got a free cruise to Europe.

Unfortunately, the Great War introduced the world to something never seen before. A brutal war of mud, gas, disease and death on an unheard of scale. Aristocratic officers lined their men up like pawns and charged machine gun nests with bayonets. A terrible sum of lives were lost this way.

After the machine gun came chlorine and phosgene gas. And when the enemy first let the yellowish-grey gas drift over the trenches at Ypres, our allies wisely fled. But the Canadian Army did the unthinkable, with cloths soaked in urine to try and protect their lungs they braved the gas to fill the gap and reform the line.

My grandfather escaped the war with his life but wouldn't talk about the two souvenirs he brought home with him. A Military Cross and a gas wound on his calf that never stopped weeping.

Almost a century later, our eyes are dry and no one hands out feathers anymore. There is no way to fully comprehend the cost, all we can do is say "thank you".

Jesus replied, "The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. - John 12:23 - 24

God Is There

A few posts ago I wrote about how I had gone from feeling "six foot tall and bulletproof" to a nervous target for down-sizing.

I prayed hard for my results at work to improve but they didn't, instead they went from bad to worse. To my credit I prayed not only for good results but more than that I prayed for God's will to be done. It wasn't His will to pick me up and carry me over this valley, instead He walked me through it. It feels a bit melodramatic to worry about my microscopic problems but I am trying to remember this lesson for at time when I'm faced with a larger trial.

Now a few months later I see the wisdom of His choice. If He had fixed all my problems I would be the same person I was four months ago. Instead I learned so much more about the biology and equations that drive the results (good and bad) of my business. Armed with this knowledge we implemented equipment and strategies that made significant improvements for this year and the future.

One of God's names is YHWH-SHAMMAH which is translated "The LORD is There". As Christians, this name should give us peace in the face of danger. Look around at the world and you can't help but feel sorry for people as they react in panic to a crumbling economy in 2008 and the H1N1 virus this year.

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me. - Psalm 23:4

Pushin' broom

Pushin' Broom
Fall has come again
Bringing the leaves to the ground
Another year's gone away,
Nothing's changed in this town

Far may it be from you to live someone else's dream
Though your aspirations soar just thank the Lord once more

So many times we believe that our lives will go to waste
Unless we strive to achieve so many things out of haste

Sometimes we run too fast when God is asking us to crawl

He who is faithful minding less shall be given to rule over all

Does it feel like every time you're alone

A voice begins to speak "There's so much more to life"

You'll hear, but you know you're where God wants you to be

Do you dream your name in lights way up high

For all to see, could it be that faithful to

What you've got is what you first must be

Fall has come again

Bringing the leaves to the ground

Another year's gone away

You plan to leave that boring town

Far may it be from you to leave your dreams because of fear

At least you're not afraid to push a broom another year

Romans 4:17b - God, who gives life to the dead and calls those things which do not exist as though they did

In the fall of 1995 fourteen years ago I was sweeping the feed shed at a salmon farm and listening to music. I was a bored, unmotivated farm tech and I was considering quitting my job and going to work at the mill. As I worked that fall afternoon, I became aware of the lyrics of the song that you see written above, I heard the words "he who is faithful minding less shall be given to rule over all" and it seemed as if the singer was speaking to me. My ears perked up and I listened carefully to every word from that point on and the last verse really hammered the message home as the voice sang "at least you're not afraid to push a broom another year"

I looked down at the broom that I was pushing and just thought "wow! that's weird".

Now you have to understand at this time I was no one out on the farm I was a tech who was not considered for any promotion, probably barely holding on to my job. However, I really believed that God was speaking to me through this song.

A couple months later I transferred to another farm and I really motivated and applied myself. A few months later I was promoted to assistant manager. Wow! Even more amazing, six months later in the fall of 1996 one year after I swept the feed shed listening to that song, I returned to the first farm and was promoted to site manager. Fall had come again, I pushed a broom, so to speak, for a year and now I was given to rule over all at that farm.

Four years after that I was promoted to Area Manager and responsible for the three farms in the area. Four years and a merger later three more farms were added to my area. Then another five. Then another merger and three more farms. Now thirteen years later I truly have been given to rule over all.

God has taught me so many lessons through all this and really expanded my faith. The Bible talks about Abraham's faith being accounted to him and us for righteousness in Romans 4. He was told he would be the father of many nations, he didn't consider his own body already dead (he was 100yrs old) and the deadness of Sarah's womb but gave glory to God. If you told me that I would go from being a site tech that fall to area manager in five years I would've found that extremely hard to believe but I hope I would've replied "with God all things are possible" and "I can do all things through Christ Jesus who strengthens me"

Roll with it

Two years ago I went on a business trip to Norway to look at some catamaran work boats they build there. Below is an excerpt from a frustrated diary/email I sent to my wife.

"...this trip has been the best and worst of times, it's actually comical how many things have gone wrong I can't wait to get home to my less stressful job! Let's recap so far and I'll bring you up to date with the latest news:

Day 1 - Vancouver/Minneapolis/somewhere over the Atlantic
The worst food I've ever had on an airplane or anywhere. I eat the edible bits and leave the rest.

Day 2 - Amsterdam/Bergen
(The two gentlemen I travelled with) are given the John Candy and Steve Martin cuddle suite. This is a tiny room with two small beds pushed together with barely enough room to walk on either side. I complain to the concierge he looks at the room and makes a motion with his hands that we can separate the two beds. I get them a real suite with separate beds.

Day 4 - Bergen
I booked a taxi for the morning for 715 am to take us to the bus depot but it is mysteriously cancelled. Maybe someone else took it, we walk quickly to the bus depot.

The rest of the day goes fantastic and I should've known that there would be a catch, which there was... I arrived back at our hotel to find my key doesn't work in my door and we've been evicted! Apparently we didn't book 3 nights, which I did. [The reader should know I am borderline OCD, I wrote down the dates we needed and read them to the guy at the front desk when we checked in. This neurotic compulsion with checking and accuracy doesn't always help but it proves useful to focus righteous indignation in the appropriate direction] Thankfully, [Our Norwegian contact] has booked us two rooms in two other hotels and the hotel gives me a $320 discount for our troubles.

I get back after dinner but when I open my email [to check for confirmation of our flights to Trondheim] I find three airline confirmations that all say "CANCELLED"!... Nice. I send an email to my wife and go to bed hoping that when I wake up 5hrs later that God will help us get a taxi on time to the airport and that we in fact do have reservations at the airport.Mike and Fabian are sure I've done something wrong to have all this tribulation but they don't understand why they're being dragged into it.

Day 5 - Bergen
I realise that I cannot control even the simplest aspects of this trip. My pride is trampled and my wisdom perplexed. I decide to stop worrying and trust God. I get a good night's sleep. The taxi actually arrives and picks me up in the morning. "

It should come as no surprise but once I made the decision to relax and let go of control the rest of the trip went smoothly. Our flights weren't cancelled, we didn't get kicked out of any more hotel rooms and all our devices functioned as advertised. We did spend one night in Hell, not the place reserved for the eternal punishment of the Devil and his angels, but a Norwegian town that shares the same name. Maybe "hell" means something else in Norske...

But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us. We are hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed— always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. - 2 Corinthians 4:7-10

I've learned trials and tribulation build character just like pressure and carbon build diamonds, best thing to do is to roll with it.

Tsavo lions

I just watched one of my favourite movies "The ghost and the darkness". Based on a true story it takes place in the late 1800's when the British empire was competing with other countries to project their power and influence into the dark continent. Along with the spread of the Empire they were ending slavery and spreading Christianity into Africa.

The movie tells the story of a railway bridge that is being constructed over the river Tsavo in East Africa. It's a pretty straightforward project until two male lions began killing the men who worked on the bridge.

The lions behaved in ways so unusual that the workers believed they were evil spirits. These maneless lions would come at night and seemingly at random, grab some poor soul and drag him screaming out of his tent and off into the darkness.

Under normal circumstances male lions don't usually hunt, they fight and eat while the female lions hunt. But these male lions were hunting and not just for food, they seemed to be doing it for sport. The movie offers no explanation for their unlikely behaviour but it's possible that the belief that there was a spiritual explanation might not be entirely ridiculous.

What if they were being used to try and prevent the bridge from being built and the spread of Christianity? We know that there are regional spiritual powers. Daniel 10:13 And they could possess two lions as easily as a herd of swine. I wouldn't put it past them.

The amount of effort and loss that was required to deal with these two lions and build the bridge all makes me wonder... when we run into obstacles how do we know if we're supposed to persevere or go and do something somewhere else.

They went to Phrygia, and then on through the region of Galatia. Their plan was to turn west into Asia province, but the Holy Spirit blocked that route. So they went to Mysia and tried to go north to Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus wouldn't let them go there either. Proceeding on through Mysia, they went down to the seaport Troas. - Acts 16:6-8

And now I'm going to tell you who you are, really are. You are Peter, a rock. This is the rock on which I will put together my church, a church so expansive with energy that not even the gates of hell will be able to keep it out. - Matthew 16:18

How do I know if I'm up against a door that God has closed or a door that Satan is trying to bar that we're supposed to break down?