Fear and Trembling

There she stood in obvious anticipation with that trusting stare. She was clipped, brushed and her pendulous ears meticulously cleaned and groomed. After her very thorough shower, she smelled of cheap shampoo. Marley, our seven year old English Springer Spaniel, was now ready for her annual visit to the vet. This is a yearly event I have come to dread. I approach it with much prayer, before, during and after the experience. Marley is inexplicably stressed by a visit to the vet even when she is perfectly healthy and only due for a couple of vaccination boosters that she doesn't even feel when they are administered. Regular readers may remember a blog about this annual event last year (Count It All Joy, August 18, 2009). It truly is a memorable day for Lozanne and I each year.

After lunch, leash in hand, ready for certain later use, and collar securely fastened, I ushered her into the back seat of the car. This year she was immediately suspicious. I have no idea how, but she sensed her destination. She began to shake...just a little, but shaking nevertheless. As I made the turn onto the highway that leads to her veterinarian of four years, a cowering Marley with begging eyes greeted me in the rear view mirror. The trembling increased with each passing kilometer.

Upon arrival in the parking lot, I had to block her escape through the open car door as I secured her leash in order to literally drag her into the clinic waiting room. Thankfully, this year there were no other dogs in the waiting room. Last year it was quite evident that her stressed behavior influenced the less than perfect deportment of other dogs who were blissfully unaware that they were in harms way, until Marley somehow communicated clearly with her demeanor of sheer terror that there was something sinister about this place and this afternoon. The whining, the begging to leave, the pulling toward the door, the standing up to look me in the eyes, the shaking, the trembling, the look of abject fear was enough to convey her clear message to all around her. This year there was no audience to influence. As usual, the actual visit with the vet with me holding her with much difficulty on the examination table was quite uneventful and painless for Marley. Unfortunately the vet and I didn't enjoy the visit nearly so much. I was brushing dog hair off my sweaty brow and clothes an hour after the visit. As I left the office, exhausted, I thought about her fear and trembling and indeed those very words came to me as a quote from the apostle Paul in Philippians 2: 10-12.

10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth,

11 and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

12 ¶ Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling;

Paul is speaking to the members of the church at Philippi. In this epistle, he is attempting to correct some of the bad habits that had sprung up in his absence. Apparently divisiveness and squabbling were diverting the Philippians from an effective walk with Jesus. Verses 10 and 11 present a beautiful and effective picture of the lordship of Jesus. Eventually all will bow to His kingship either voluntarily or otherwise. All will bow and confess that Jesus is Lord. Some scholars have argued that the salvation mentioned in verse 12 actually refers to the Philippians successfully dealing with their difficulties. Other scholars insist that Paul is indeed referring to their redemption through the finished work of Jesus on the cross. My interpretation, particularly based on the translation presented in the Amplified Bible, is that in verse 12, Paul is referring to our redemptive salvation. He is suggesting that those who have accepted Jesus as their Lord and Saviour and are, as a result, saved from their sin, should continue every moment they are alive on this earth to “cultivate” or “fully complete” their salvation. They should do this with fear and trembling that actually reflects “awe, reverence, watchfulness, caution and timidity for anything that might offend God”. We know with certainty that we can’t work our way to heaven, but we can indeed further our initial acceptance of the free gift of salvation by continuing daily as best we can toward the goal.

(Comments, corrections, suggestions or rebuttals are welcome. My email link is contained in “About me: view my complete profile” to the right of this page or use the comment section below which requires that you have a Google account.)

What Has Been

During my first year of teaching in 1969, I learned an important lesson in democracy. Unwanted jobs can often be apportioned to the most unsuspecting and vulnerable in the name of the will of the majority. As I sat in my first staff meeting ever, it was moved, seconded and resolved, before I could even think of objecting or declining, that I would serve on the Economic Policy Committee representing the two teaching unions in negotiations with the board of education. I observed at the table at my first meeting of the E.P.C. that it was not uncommon to combine several very experienced negotiators with a number of representatives with 2 weeks experience. Consensus was usually reached in a very short period of time that way. I attended monthly and sometimes bi-weekly meetings that year in the old Central Public School that was to be torn down in the summer of 1970. I never did observe negotiations with the board in progress that year. My memory of that old building is mostly confined to the basement which consisted of painted and unpainted brick and cement blocks as well as poured concrete.

I was amazed to discover this summer that some of the brick that surrounded me as I tried to concentrate during those evening meetings has a new home. That new home is in our home. The former owner of our house visited us this summer and in response to my question as to the source of the antique brick in our kitchen hearth, I was surprised to learn that they had been purchased at the demolition site of Central Public School and then stored for years until they were used. As I approach the kitchen stove, oven or microwave, I can’t help but think of those meetings in 1969 and 1970. I am also intrigued by a tar print of the treads of a work boot that remains on one of the bricks. I can’t help but wonder the age and stage of the man or woman who left his or her footprint in time 40 years or perhaps much more ago.

The revelation revealed by the builder of our house has also caused me to consider the relevance of the words of Solomon in Ecclesiastes 1: 9-11.

9 ¶ That which has been is what will be, That which is done is what will be done, And there is nothing new under the sun.

10 Is there anything of which it may be said, "See, this is new"? It has already been in ancient times before us.

11 There is no remembrance of former things, Nor will there be any remembrance of things that are to come By those who will come after.

Solomon’s disillusionment is somewhat sobering unless you read Ecclesiastes to the last chapter. Even in our home, we have a classic example of how building materials can go in a circle to be reused again. They indeed are not new and have been before. It is though they bonded with me and followed me to this house that I would eventually purchase. Even more disturbing is the revelation that the remembrance of what was is very limited. Except for my recording of some of this information in my writings, I suspect that the legacy of the bricks in our kitchen hearth will be lost forever with my aging memory. The remembrance of the person who left the boot print is already a vapour I suspect. Generations come and generations go. We are remembered for a very short period of time simply because those who knew and loved us pass away with our memory and we are soon forgotten.

In Ecclesiastes 1: 4 we are reminded that although generations come and go, the earth remains forever. I like to take this one step further. God remains forever. Jesus Christ remains forever. Believers in Jesus get to live forever in Heaven. When I consider the magnitude of His free gift, I am no longer concerned with how long I will be remembered on this earth.

(Comments, corrections, suggestions or rebuttals are welcome. My email link is contained in “About me: view my complete profile” to the right of this page or use the comment section below which requires that you have a Google account.)

Wait on the LORD

During the summer of 1958, I spent twenty-one days waiting. Three long weeks of hopeful expectation day after day were spent awaiting the delivery of an archery set from the then popular Eaton’s catalogue. My mother had made the telephone order and told me that it was unlikely the much awaited bow and arrow set would arrive from the Toronto distribution centre that week. I still watched for the delivery truck each day, just in case. There were so many deliveries by Eaton’s in those days that I could observe the Eaton’s truck coming down our long street at the about the same time daily. Each and every day for that three week period I trusted that the truck would indeed pull into our driveway. My faith was renewed each night and I just knew the driver would make the delivery the next day. There was no notice or any forthcoming information from Eaton’s as to why the delivery was delayed. The reason for that is that they probably didn’t know it was delayed. I was the only party who held that opinion. As a child, I remember learning patience on a regular basis. Instant gratification was not a part of my generation’s childhood experience. We learned to wait and hope and then the next day to wait and to hope once again.

Come with me to the summer of 2010. We ordered for Lozanne an Apple iPad directly from the Apple Store Website. It was unavailable in local stores. We were informed clearly at the time of ordering that there would be a ten day wait before shipping probably because the computer had not been built yet. On the tenth day, I received an email informing me that the iPad had been shipped. I was given a tracking website address with the promise that we could follow the progress of the shipment. As a matter of interest, I followed the breathtaking progress of that package from the surprise, to me at least, manufacturing site of Shenzhen, China to Hong Kong, to Memphis, Tennessee, to Toronto and finally to North Bay, Ontario in four days less a few hours. The irony was that it then took three days to move the order the last few hundred kilometres up the highway. All the while, however, I was informed where the package was for the Friday, and the weekend. I knew it would arrive on the Monday. The whole process reminded me of how the wait for expected orders had changed since 1958. There was no wondering and little expectation of gratification daily because I was aware exactly of the location of the prized package. There was no looking for the truck. There was no reacting to the noise of a vehicle in the driveway. The excitement of expectation had been removed from the wait!

The phrase “wait on the LORD” appears three times in the Psalms and twice in the Book of Isaiah. The meaning in each instance is virtually the same. As I was contemplating the differences in waiting between the experiences as described above, I could not help but realize that waiting on the LORD is much more like my 1958 experience than the summer of 2010. In Psalm 27: 14 we read the following encouraging words.

14 Wait on the LORD; Be of good courage, And He shall strengthen your heart; Wait, I say, on the LORD!

Waiting for the LORD involves the same skill set and emotions of my boyhood waiting. In faith, we are to hope for the LORD daily. We are to look for the LORD daily. We are to expect the LORD daily. Finally we are to trust in the LORD daily. Those of us who have had the opportunity to enjoy this hopeful expectation and to have our wait rewarded by joyful communion or answered prayer have no desire for any changes to this ancient and God designed process.

(Comments, corrections, suggestions or rebuttals are welcome. My email link is contained in “About me: view my complete profile” to the right of this page or use the comment section below which requires that you have a Google account.)

Of the Ending

On a recent summer afternoon my ten year old grandson Liam was using my desktop computer. Since Liam is autistic, I always make sure to look over his shoulder to see what he is up to on my computer. I have no fear that he will go where he should not on the internet, but rather I am always entertained both by his amazing computer skills and curious about just what he is creating. There is also the minor concern of having a forty page document printed in living colour at any given moment. He has no concept of the word “frugal”. On this day I came downstairs in time to see a one page document of three cartoon characters coming out of the printer. I did not recognize the modern day characters, so I asked him to name them. As he did so, I read the title that he had typed in bold letters at the bottom of the sheet. I was frankly very surprised to read the following words:

“All the world of the ending June 2011.”

It took me a moment to realize that he has become aware of the so much discussed “end of the world” theory that suggests that the earth is doomed on Dec. 21, 2012. As I so often do before or during my writing, I did some research and discovered, to my amazement, no less than twenty-nine theories that claim the world will be consumed by an apocalyptic event on Dec. 21, 2012. These vary from the predictions of Roman oracles, the Mayan calendar, the writings of Nostradamus, ancient Egyptian prophecy and even predictions supposedly based on the Book of Revelation in the Bible. I was dumbfounded. It is no wonder that it is easy to overhear young people discussing what a recent movie portrayed may come true. I have even heard reports of otherwise responsible adults who are actually running up excessive debts that they are sure they won’t have to repay after the Winter Solstice of 2012.

My research trip to “end of the world” websites left me exhausted and dizzied by the nonsense I read. The Bible makes it crystal clear what comes next in God’s plan. We are also clearly informed that we cannot and will not know when that event will happen. For the record, references to the end of the earth and the skies above it as we know them are mentioned in Matthew 24: 35, 2Peter 3: 10 -13 and Revelation 20:11. There is absolutely no indication in these verses as to when this dissolution will happen. I share the opinion of most scholars that the dissolution of the heavens and earth will come long after Jesus comes to reign on earth. We find the words that inform us what is to happen next in Matthew 24: 36-42.

36 "But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only.

37 "But as the days of Noah were, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be.

38 "For as in the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark,

39 "and did not know until the flood came and took them all away, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be.

40 "Then two men will be in the field: one will be taken and the other left.

41 "Two women will be grinding at the mill: one will be taken and the other left.

42 "Watch therefore, for you do not know what hour your Lord is coming.

Jesus is referring not to the cataclysmic end of the earth, but to his return to earth in order to take His church (those who believe), both living and dead to Heaven. This is often referred to as The Rapture or The Second Coming. The horrendous descriptions of apocalyptic events in The Book of Revelation take place in the seven years following the return of Jesus. This is referred to as The Tribulation which is indeed not the "end of the world".

I thank God for the grounding that His holy Word provides. As I hold up the nonsense of “end of the world” thinking against the stable template that is the Bible, I can clearly discern the truth. We should indeed prepare for the return of our Lord and Saviour and we can never know when that much awaited event is going to be. The rest of the man made misinformation and hysteria we can ignore, as I am sure that is exactly what my grandson, in his quiet, isolated and non-communicated wisdom, is doing.

(Comments, corrections, suggestions or rebuttals are welcome. My email link is contained in “About me: view my complete profile” to the right of this page or use the comment section below which requires that you have a Google account.)

All Things Work

I read with interest a few weeks ago a newspaper article outlining the plans for a local high school reunion that would span a weekend. Indeed, a very full weekend of catching up with old friends was anticipated. Tours, a dinner and socials were about to unfold for alumni arriving from around the world. What really caught my eye was the enthusiasm expressed in a couple of quotations from local graduates and organizers. One of them told the reporter, “I loved high school, the hockey and the football days, the tightness of a small school and the camaraderie”. Another went so far as to say, “If I could go back, I would do it all over again. I loved high school.”

I cannot personally relate to those sentiments. I know many who would absolutely agree with me. The very thought of having to return to my secondary school and enter those doors as a student is enough to make me shudder. When I look back I wonder how I ever made it though the experience. Indeed I did drop out one year to work in a paper mill and had to return for an additional year, teeth clenched and determination etched on my face, to complete my senior matriculation so that I could attend university. The moment I entered university, I realized that learning was something to be enjoyed. I found creative thinking was prized and pursued the opportunity to learn and succeed with enthusiasm. In the pursuit of three degrees and other qualifications my marks improved with each passing year.

Indeed, I left secondary school with less than impressive grades. I have vivid memories of the fall convocation I attended after I had attended university for several weeks. It was such a relief to be assured that when I exited from that gymnasium, I would never return. I had studied Latin for four gruelling years from a man, who, despite his good intentions and competent approach, was prone to racial slurs and inappropriate exhortations, examples of which I have wisely decided to omit from my discourse this morning due to their objectionable and offensive nature. Within the confines of the sixties, his comments were not at all that unusual or perceived as offensive. The world has indeed changed for the positive in at least some areas. In the end, I achieved the stellar grade of fifty-one percent in my provincial examination for Latin Authors. I must admit that I memorized, with great difficulty (I am not now, nor was I ever very good at memory work), pages of English translation of Latin and simply wrote them down after trying to identify the first line of the selection. In short, I translated very little. The shocking event of my convocation evening was the earnest congratulations of my Latin teacher. When he commented on my fifty- one percent, I was surprised to hear him kindly say, “Fifty-one percent is all you need to get out of here”. Indeed, how correct and perceptive he was. I have never forgotten his congratulatory words. I must concede today that the study of Latin has shaped and defined my English reading and writing skills.

I have also realized in recent years the truth of the words of Paul in Romans 8:28.

28 And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.

We are not shaped by destiny, fate or even luck. We are conformed to the image we will become from the beginning by the hand of God. When we are going through difficult times, we may find it hard to recognize that indeed all circumstances are part of God’s specific plan for us. He is at work in us long before we have the wisdom to accept His free gift of redemption or in Paul’s wording we “are called according to His purpose”. All things, including a young person’s distaste for high school, work together in the shaping of an individual and I thank God daily for that reassurance.

(Comments, corrections, suggestions or rebuttals are welcome. My email link is contained in “About me: view my complete profile” to the right of this page or use the comment section below which requires that you have a Google account.)

The Church

I enjoy very much the historical column in our local Saturday paper which is entitled "Time Capsule". The column written in late July caught my rapt attention as I opened the paper. It was not the text, although that was interesting, that seized my attention. It was the large photograph of the Eglise St. Antoine prior to its destruction by fire in 1936. Inset is the smaller photo of Father Theriault, who is a well known historical figure in the City of Timmins. To the right of the church, which was rebuilt immediately, was the object of my immediate interest. Obviously the parish rectory survived the fire that destroyed the large landmark that, as a matter of interest, was built by Lozanne's paternal grandfather. The large Victorian style manse evoked my sincere interest because Lozanne and I spent a couple of difficult hours in that house, which was torn down many years ago, preparing for our upcoming marriage. I remember a warm July evening in 1968. Father Morin, a very kindly man, had a tough job to do that night.

When Lozanne and I became engaged a few cultural, language and religious barriers were crossed. Our situation was not unheard of in those days, but it was unique. To the horror of our parents and the religious institutions of the day, protestant and catholic alike, an English Protestant groom and a French Roman Catholic bride were applying to be married, and I do mean applying. We could not be married in the Roman Catholic Church without the express permission of the bishop who was sequestered in a distant community. Father Anicet Morin, the incumbent vicar in 1968, was to interview us and make a recommendation to the bishop who had the final say in allowing us to marry…or not. Since a marriage in any other church or venue was unthinkable to Lozanne's family, we were under considerable pressure to perform. A long interview progressed through the evening. I have forgotten most of the questions with the exception that we were asked whether we intended to have children. Would those children be raised as Roman Catholics? I was not asked to convert, but further assurances regarding the religious raising of our as yet unborn children were sought in an interview with me alone. After several difficult hours, we were informed that a letter of recommendation would be mailed to the bishop for his consideration.

Obviously, the bishop consented to what was then referred to as a "mixed marriage"...a marriage that has happily lasted 42 years so far. Indeed, I kept my promise to raise the children in the Roman Catholic Church. Ironically, not one of them attends the Roman Catholic Church today. I want it remembered for posterity that I did indeed keep my promise and even participated actively in their religious training.

Most of us go through life regarding buildings or institutions as churches. I was in this category until I was forty-eight years of age. Today, as I remember so vividly the church building we were married in, the words of Colossians 1:18 are ringing in my ears.

18 And He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may have the preeminence.

The church is not a place. It is not a rich and powerful institution. It certainly is not a building, nor is it a hierarchy of well educated men or women. The body of Christ is a very simple concept. Believers in Jesus and His redemptive powers are the church. Jesus is head of the church. Indeed, in all things He is to have the outstanding superiority. Speakers in the pulpit at our local chapel are greeted by an expansive large lettered message that stretches across most of the back wall of the auditorium. The words "that in all things He may have preeminence" are a very valued reminder of the standing of Jesus in a building that is not a church.

(Comments, corrections, suggestions or rebuttals are welcome. My email link is contained in “About me: view my complete profile” to the right of this page or use the comment section below which requires that you have a Google account.)

Summer Vacation

I have decided to take a summer vacation. I will, Lord willing, return with my two day writing cycle in September. I look forward to some physical work, recreation, relaxation and more study and prayer time in the next few months. Hopefully, with God’s help, I will return refreshed and ready to write. Have a great and blessed summer.

1 ¶ To the Chief Musician. To the tune of "Death of the Son." A Psalm of David.

I will praise You, O LORD, with my whole heart; I will tell of all Your marvelous works.

2 I will be glad and rejoice in You; I will sing praise to Your name, O Most High. (Psalm 9: 1-2)

(Comments, corrections, suggestions or rebuttals are welcome. My email link is contained in “About me: view my complete profile” to the right of this page or use the comment section below which requires that you have a Google account.)