Do Difficult Things

I am officially unemployed now. Today is my first day of slackerdom and so far so good. I went for a walk first thing in time to enjoy the beautiful colours of the sunrise. I had some tea and a biscuit - cookie to you but I need to get used to English English now eh! I went to the Forks and bought some shoes. And I started work on a new dress made from a sari I brought back from India in '08.

I have the entire month of March to myself. My father is driving out during the last week to help me pack and put my things into storage and we'll drive home to Thunder Bay on Thursday 31 March. That will give me a nice long visit with my parents before I fly to London on April 14.

I've been praying that I will not waste this month off work that I have. I do want to be productive and have a list of things to get done, many of which involve spending time with friends since I'm going to be gone for a while.

In church yesterday Pastor Todd preached on the topic of prayer. As Christians we can get complacent about our relationship with God and stop reaching for excellence and start thinking that we've gone as far as we can in the faith. Todd encouraged us to "do difficult things" because when we attempt things that are difficult we find that there is always more to know about Jesus and more excellence of character that can be had.

So this month I want to try something hard and that is memorization. I memorized a lot of scripture as a child but got out of it as an adult. But our minds cannot be renewed and our character shaped without God's word so it's important for us to "hide God's word in our heart." My goal for March is to memorize the book of Ephesians. I already have a good start on chapter one but there are six chapters in total so it will be hard. That's something you can pray about for me if you are so inclined!

Ok, time to get out of here - ta ta for now.

The Sweet Smell of Rejection

I have struggled in life with the idea of mattering. Has my life mattered? Has it had an impact? Has it contributed to God's kingdom in any meaningful way?

I have usually figured the answer was "no" or "not much". My idea of something that matters is something big like praying with a person to receive Christ. But what God has been teaching me is that He works mostly through little things. "A word in season, how good it is!" says the Proverb and that kind of thing - a word of encouragement, a small act of kindness - is what matters and is what God uses to build His kingdom.

I have toyed with the idea of becoming a college professor for a long time and last year things finally felt like they were in place and so I decided to apply to graduate school for a PhD in Theology. It felt right and I was confident that I would be accepted. I started calculating my financial assets and looking into scholarships and bursaries and preparing mentally for another big move.

When the letter came I was nervous to open it but I was not prepared for the word "unfortunately". I was not accepted? "How can this be? The timing is finally right. I'm ready to go. Wasn't this God's plan for me?"

It was a bit of a shock for me and I had a good cry. But God had been preparing me for that letdown. I had a time of worship later that day and instead of feeling devastated and confused when that door firmly shut in my face, I felt like a whole new world of possibilities was openingi up for me.

Shortly thereafter I went for lunch with one of my references, a professor of mine from seminary and I shared my reaction with him. At a function about a year later I saw him again and he said that he had told what I had shared to students as an example of the attitude to have when choosing a career. I was so enocuraged by that. I had figured my little episode was just something for me to grow from and here God intended to use it to help Christian young people in their journeys.

I need to stop underestimating God. He can use anything for His glory including things that hurt or don't make sense at the time. My job is to trust and obey and leave the rest to Him. It makes for a more interesting and peaceful journey.

The Upside of Sin

When Paul writes in Romans chapter seven about doing what he doesn't want to do and not doing what he does want to, I relate. That chapter isn't about some carnal Christian - Paul was writing about himself. He was writing about the tension of being "redeemed but not quite" - as Christians we stand before God the Father clothed in Christ's righteousness but while we are still in the body we are still subject to the weakness of the flesh.

Sometimes that tension is maddening to me. This week I found myself struggling with the burden of the sin nature but because I am fallen, my frustrations got twisted and turned around and I got angry with God. "What's the point? Why do You let this go on? Your ways are stupid!" etc. etc.

That's a big reason why God doesn't restore a sinless nature in us while we are here on planet Earth - to keep us humble. I carried on with my anger all this week but eventually I had to get down on my knees and confess it as sin and ask for forgiveness. In the end, sin keeps me from getting a big head from all the intimacy with God and knowledge of spiritual truths. No matter how far along the path to maturity I go, I don't have anything to brag about because I'm thisclose to falling headlong into some rebellious nonsense.

I Wondered as I Wandered

I've done a lot of thinking about my adult life in the last few weeks. Many is the time I have despaired, feeling that my life has meandered with no rhyme or reason. I have had numerous interests that I have dabbled in to one extent or another but then my involvement dropped off. I have a number of talents and abilities but none have ever come to the forefront as a passion. My jobs have mostly been underwhelming in terms of satisfaction.

This all used to bother me greatly. "Why am I here? Why am I still on this earth?" I just felt like I was putting in time waiting to die. I wasn't suicidal, I just felt like I wasn't acheiving anything.

That is very hard in western culture. If you are not achieving or producing you are worthless. This thinking is even found in church. If I had a nickel for every appeal for volunteers I have heard, every admonition to "find your gift and use it", I would be rich.

Most of my adult life has felt like sitting in a chair. I have had chances to serve and do good with the talents and opportunities God has given me but I have never felt like I found a passion that has stuck with me. I yearn to find a ministry for God that uses the abilities I have, something I can get excited about.

But over the last 15 years I feel like doors have been resolutely shut on me. I have had some incidents of service but nothing along the lines of a significant ministry. This has bothered me because I have this deep sense that I am pleasing to God only when I am working for Him.

I think the "hemming in" that I have experienced over the years has actually been God's design. My belief that He saved me to get work out of me is wrong and is something that He wants to purge me of. So He has shut doors on me. Not because He thinks I'm incapable but because He has something better for me. Serving God is good but knowing God is best.

I have certainly had time to get to know God. This past year has been one where I've been literally shut up with Him. I moved into an apartment by myself last spring and stopped the ballroom dancing which had taken up so much of my time. I have had wonderful times of worship and painful times of discipline. It has not been a picnic. He has exposed garbage in my soul and exercised me again and again in the act of self-mortification. Submission to God is the hardest thing about being a Christian. The rebelliousness in me runs so deep - it's a constant struggle to master it.

As I look back over the years, what seemed to be fruitless wandering has actually turned out to be carefully orchestrated progress. I don't know what God has for me next but I know now, finally, that what has passed has not been in vain. I am sure that, as He has guided me in the past, so He will guide me in the future.

Evolution? The Fossils Say Something Else

Comedian Lewis Black does a bit where he mocks creationists by saying that when they talk about the earth being created he says “Fossils, fossils, fossils, fossils – I win!”

Really? The fossil evidence is that clear? What do expert in evolutionary theory have to say?

“That’s still one of the great mysteries and problems to be solved in vertebrate evolution, the origins and interrelationships of these early jawed fishes.”
~ Dr. John Long, palaeontologist and Head of Science at the Museum Victoria, Melbourne, Australia

“We have no fossil records of bats during the Cretaceous period. This means that we are only depending on speculation, when it [ bat evolution] started and what happened in that time.”
~ Dr. Joerg Haberstetzer of the Senckenberg Museum of Natural History in Frankfurt Germany, specializes in bat evolution

“We don’t have such material...There is not a time when we can find the missing link.”
~ Dr. Irina Koretsky, Palaeontologist and Research Associate, Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, specializes in seal and sea lion evolution

“We know only little about the evolution of pterosaurs. The ancestors are not known...When the pterosaurs first appear in the geological records, there were completely perfect.”
~ Dr Gunter Viohl, Curator of Jura Museum in Germany

“Wherever we try to put Tyrannosaurs in the phylogeny of the breaching history of the therapod dinosaurs, they have a long missing records. And we are going to find that record one of these days.”
~ Dr. Paul Sereno, Paleontologist and Professor at the University of Chicago

“We are certainly lacking information that ties together meat-eating dinosaurs and all the rest of the dinosaurs...We’ve got nothing there yet. There is a huge gap.”
~ Dr. Angela Milner, Palaeontologist and Head of Vertebrate Palaeontology, Natural History Museum of London

According to the experts, we don’t have evidence for the evolution of fish, bats, sea lions, seals, Pterosaurs and Tyrannosaurs. Uh, sorry Lewis.

*all quotations taken from “Evolution: The Grand Experiment” by Dr. Carl Werner