Forever River

The student

2012-01-13T08:20:00.000-08:00

One day as Jesus walked in Jerusalem with his disciples, He saw a blind man who had been that way since birth. His disciples asked, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents?” according to the common belief that misfortunes such as these were the punishment of sin. “Neither”, Jesus replied, “but that the works of God should be revealed in him.” Jesus proceeded to spit on the ground and mix his saliva with the dust, and spread the mixture on the man’s eyes. “Go”, He said, “wash your eyes off in the Pool of Siloam”.

The man did so and became able to see for the first time in his life. He did not go directly back to Jesus; in fact he did not really seem to know who He was, because when his neighbours asked him how he had come to see, he could only tell them that “a man named Jesus” had put clay on his eyes. Not Jesus the Messiah, or Jesus the Wonder Rabbi, but Jesus the random passerby.

The people brought their formerly blind neighbour to the Pharisees, who apparently deduced who had healed him, because they seemed disturbed by the news. Perhaps they were thinking of what Jesus had said of Himself in the synagogue at Capernaum while reading from Isaiah:

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free….”

The man was the unwitting carrier of an unspoken message from Jesus to the teachers of the people. Here I am. I am the fulfilment of these words of the prophet. What will you do with Me? And that was the problem, the Pharisees didn’t know what to do with Jesus, because they had already ruled out the possibility of recognizing that He was from God. So they tried to reason their way out of the dilemma.

Some said, “This man is not from God because he did not observe the Sabbath in healing you”. But others saw a problem with that, because the same theology that saw disease or disability as the result of sin left no room for the idea that miraculous healing could come from a sinner.

The healed man shared nothing of this wrestling, for when the Pharisees asked him what he thought of Jesus, he said straightforwardly, “He is a prophet”.

Their next move was to probe the miracle. The Pharisees called the man’s parents to them. “Is this really your son? Was he indeed born blind? How is it that he now can see?” Perhaps the man only resembled the blind man; perhaps his blindness was a more recent condition that had cleared up on its own; or perhaps it had spontaneously begun to heal before Jesus came by.

The parents wanted nothing to do with this inquiry. They knew who Jesus was, they knew what the Pharisees thought of Him, and they knew what they were in the middle of. They confirmed that the man was their son, that he was indeed born blind, but for every other question they said, “He is an adult, let him speak for himself”.

The miracle could not be impeached for the time being, so the Pharisees brought back the man. “Give glory only to God! We know that this man is a sinner.”

One wonders why they were so concerned what this nobody, who just that morning had been a beggar, should think of Jesus. But the problem was that this nobody was a witness to the work of Jesus – a source of testimony which they were concerned to suppress.

But the man only brought the hard, awkward fact of his healing back up in their face. “I don’t whether or not he is a sinner, I only know that I was blind, but now I see.” This brought the Pharisees back to their earlier line of questioning: “What did he do? How did he open your eyes?” The man began to lose patience. “Why do you want me to tell you again? I’ve already told you once, and you didn’t listen. Do you also want to become his disciples?”

The Pharisees sneered and said, “You may be his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses. We know that God spoke to Moses, but we don’t know where this fellow is from.”

At that the man became very bold and replied, “Why, this is a strange thing that you, the teachers of Israel can’t work out where this man is from, even though he opened my eyes. We know that God doesn’t hear sinners , but He hears those who worship Him. If this man were not from God he could do nothing.”

The Pharisees lost all pretence of civility: “You are nothing but a sinner. How can you presume to teach us?” and they threw the man out.

Afterward, Jesus found him and asked, “Do you believe in the Son of God?” The man now saw Jesus for the first time, though he must have recognized his voice from earlier. “Who is he, Lord, that I should believe in Him?” Jesus said, “You are looking at Him and He is the one speaking to you.” The man said, “Lord, I believe!” and knelt to give homage to his King.

* * * * * * *

Here are some applications which I believe this event has for us as believers:

1) Even if you are a nobody, your witness is important. If you have received Jesus, then God has done a true work in your life. It may be opposed, or questioned, but it cannot be resisted because it is powerful.

Do you believe that your testimony is powerful? The world does, that’s why it wants to suppress it.

2) A lot of us struggle with timidity in sharing our faith. So it is worth asking, what was the source of the man’s boldness? I believe that it was his sure knowledge of God’s work in him in healing his blindness. What keeps me from being bold? It is the lack of that knowledge in me when I have not stayed current in my walk with Jesus. It weakens my confidence in the good news I have to share.

How can I authentically invite someone to have fellowship with God if I’m not consistently walking in that fellowship myself?

3) Why was it so hard for the Pharisees to accept Jesus when for the blind man it was so simple? For the Pharisees their starting point was their tradition, and they could find no place in it for Him. I don’t believe that their point of stumbling was so much Jesus' innovative teachings or that His coming didn't fit the prophetic specs as they understood them. It was more that they believed fervently and devoutly in the coming of the Messiah as a religious, other worldly event. It fell into a category outside of their daily life, and they couldn’t associate it with the flesh and blood man who stood before them in dusty feet. Nor did their conception of practical reality include his miracles.

Religious unbelief. This reminds me of Del Tackett’s question in his video series The Truth Project: “Do we really believe that what we believe is really real?”

The blind man, on the other hand, knew little of the Pharisees' theology, but that didn’t matter because his starting point was what Jesus had done. It was a foundation he could stand firmly upon while scholars paced around him. What he needed to know of God he would learn from the man who had done God’s work in him.

Update for Rachel

2011-12-08T08:18:00.000-08:00

Our daughter is working as a missionary in Costa Rica, carrying out a discipleship ministry to children and youth in partnership with her friend Anita. Here is her latest blog update:

http://clayinthemakershand.blogspot.com/2011/12/new-season.html

Why there is no peace in the Middle East

2011-09-15T09:14:00.000-07:00

The September 14 issue of the Globe and Mail runs an article by Michael Bell entitled Israel's New World. (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/opinion/israels-new-world/article2164867/) The central message of the piece is that it is in Israel's interest to show restraint and not always react to incidents with an iron fist. I don't disagree with that as a general policy, though I'm not sure how much difference it will make in Israel's specific situation.

The reason for my pessimism is expressed in a comment that Bell slips in as an aside but which I believe goes to the heart of the issue:

".........particularly in a region that finds it difficult to accept the legitimacy of any non-Muslim governing authority."

What this means is this (this is my personal understanding as an observer from outside of Islam and I stand subject to correction by others more knowledgeable): The territory of Israel (Palestine) is considered an integral part of dar al-Islam (roughly that's the Islamic counterpart to what we used to call Christendom). The establishment of a non-Muslim state on that territory is therefore experienced by Muslims as a violation. Its very existence is a permanent irritant. As a result, the only thing that Israel can do to make peace with its neighbours in anything other than a provisional and temporary sense is to either cease to exist as a political entity, or cease to have a non-Muslim majority.

Understand the above, and you will understand why there is a deep abiding hostility against Israel in other Middle East countries, even in ones that have cooperated with it such as Turkey, Jordan and Egypt, and in others that are separated from the Palestinians geographically and culturally, such as Iran. You will also understand why, as a condition of peace, the Palestinians insist on a full right of return into Israel proper even for those who have never set foot in the country.

As I understand its definition in Wikipedia, Israel should be able to be considered part of Dar al-Islam if Muslims are able to enjoy peace and security with and within the country. Given the history of conflict in the region however and Israel's sensitive location, I'm not sure it is possible in practice. In any case, as long as there is Israeli conflict with the Palestinians that condition of peace and security is not met. It is in Israel's interest therefore to avoid or defuse such conflicts but in the Palestinian interest to maintain a state of conflict. By doing so, they continue to enjoy the support of their fellow Muslims against the common enemy.

I believe that is why, whenever things seem to be in danger of settling into a peaceful status quo, someone initiates a new intifada or suicide bombing campaign or fires more rockets into Israel. From the Palestinian point of view, these actions, together with the responses they provoke from the Israelis, keep Israel in harbi status and prevent it from achieving acceptance in Islamic terms.

His purpose

2011-07-29T16:56:00.000-07:00

I was looking at Romans 8:28 the other day, which reads,

.......we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

I was thinking, what does it mean that all things work for our good? That's a very sweeping statement. As part of God's Word I'm bound to accept it as it stands, but I want to understand it right. What is "good"? Evidently not a painless, stress free, healthy, conflict free, prosperous life, because none of those things is available to us in all circumstances. In other words, the "good" that is worked for the believer in all things is not necessarily what we would naturally consider good, but it is based on some other criterion.

The key to what this good is I believe is found at the end of the verse:

who have been called according to his purpose

Perhaps this good is identified with God's purpose for us? And what is His purpose? Verse 29 continues,

For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. 30 And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.

The for at the beginning of verse 29 means that what follows is an explanation of what preceded it in verse 28. So if I read this back into verse 28 I can construct a fairly simple declarative statement:

.....in all things God works to conform those who love him to the image of His Son....

To someone who has never tasted the utter balance and peace and rock-solid stability of God's nature, God's idea of good might seem less than compelling, but for someone who has answered His call, there can be nothing better.

If you love the Lord,
you will love His will for you.....
- Keith Green

Anita's Blog

2011-07-29T16:43:00.000-07:00

Anita is a friend of our daughter Rachel in Costa Rica and her partner in ministry. For anyone who visits this site, I encourage you to take the time to read her blog. It contains a powerful story of how God has worked in her life to bring her to faith and purpose.

http://mightyawakenwithchrist.blogspot.com/2011/07/david-turkey-friend-of-mine-who-asks.html

Jacob I have loved.....

2010-08-18T06:38:00.000-07:00

The proverbs of the Bible are presented as a series of actions/consequences; i.e., do this and good things will happen; do that and bad things will happen. On the surface they are couched solely in terms of self-interest. Yet at their heart I believe that they are really signposts to the character that God wants to develop in us. The references to self-interest are inducements to someone who does not yet have wisdom. To someone who is pulled between doing the "right thing" and doing the "smart thing" its message is: the right thing to do is also the smart thing. Obeying God's direction is in your long term interest. Taking a short cut may seem to benefit you in the short term but in the long term it will lead to destruction.

This may seem like an unspiritual means of leading someone into God's ways but it is spiritual to the extent that accepting this direction requires faith that God is in control of one's destiny and will bring these consequences to pass. That is why it is written in the beginning of Proverbs that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Not the end of it by any means, but it is a necessary starting point.

It was the beginning of character development for Jacob. He did a lot of unsavoury things to obtain the inheritance and blessing that properly belonged to his older brother. He extorted the inheritance from Esau through taking advantage of his extreme hunger, lied and cheated to get his blessing from their father; yet he had this that Esau lacked: faith in God's promise to Abraham and Isaac. For that's essentially what the inheritance was - a promise from God to give the land of Canaan to Abraham's descendants. An IOU.

Jacob believed in God's promise enough to lie, cheat and steal for it. The belief in this promise alone qualified Jacob as the heir of these things even in the absence of any other virtue. It gave God a starting point to work in his life and begin the long wrestling that would transform Jacob.

Esau, other the other hand, believed so little in this promise that he was not willing to skip a single meal for it. The lack of this faith disqualified Esau spiritually to be the heir of God's promise even though he had every legal entitlement to it according to the standards of the time. This I believe is the interior justice of Jacob's success and reason behind God's statement in Malachi: "Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated." Jacob engaged God through faith in His promise; Esau did not.

Signposts to character

2010-08-06T10:16:00.000-07:00

Here are some fragments of a discussion I am having elsewhere on the significance of the book of Proverbs. At issue is the question as to whether the consequences described are to be taken as divine prescriptions or just as general observations which are usually but not always true. In other words, how normative are these sayings?

Ron August 6 at 3:41am

Hey Guys, it's 3 am, can't sleep so I'm reading proverbs. Here's a few examples of what I was talking about:

Prov 21:21 "An inheritance quickly gained at the beginning will not be blessed at the end". I would say this is true most of the time, but not always. (Depending on your def. of blessed.

Prov 15:22 "Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers they succeed". This is likely true, but I'm sure there are examples of the opposite.

Prov 23:20 "Do not join those who drink too much wine or gorge themselves on meat, for drunkards and gluttons become poor and drowsiness clothes them in rags." Again, I would say it's generally true, but there are (or seem to be) exceptions where people eat and drink for their whole lives and don't become poor. (Although this could be talking about the next life.)

Prov 19:15 "Laziness brings on deep sleep and the shiftless man goes hungry." I think it would be pretty hard to argue that this is 100 accurate all the time

Prov 12:11 "he who works his land will have abundant food"...
Even during drought?

Anyway, I concede that there are many Proverbs that are fairly concrete in their instruction, especially when they speak of the Lord and his faithfulness. Obviously these are written in such a way that you either believe it or not.

Any, getting tired - lol

Blessings

RB

Phil Garber August 6 at 11:03am

Hi Ron, I guess you're a little tired today.

Prov 12:11 "he who works his land will have abundant food"...
Even during drought?

Yes, because he will have food stored up from the previous year's crop. (ref. Egypt under Joseph). The point as I take it is not that the diligent will have a bumper crop in every year.( I doubt the writer of this proverb was ignorant of agricultural cycles.) It is that those who work their land diligently from year to year will have a surplus available for the lean times (at least compared to their more lazy, shiftless, gluttonous neighbours!).

The way I take these proverbs is that they describe principles of cause and effect as immutable as the law of gravity. To point to cases where the consequence was avoided through other factors does not invalidate the principle, anymore than the existence of an airplane invalidates the law of gravity. The downward pressure is always there.

Eg: The shiftless do not go hungry in our society, but that is only because we have welfare. But welfare is only possible in a society where the producers outnumber the consumers. A society which is shiftless as a whole will certainly have a declining standard of living.

Eg: Someone who gets an easy inheritance without learning to struggle may not die poor, but he will almost certainly die less wealthy than he began. The inheritance will not be blessed (ie will not increase) without qualities of self-control, prudence and diligence. Even if this person does not taste poverty in his lifetime, the principle will still be at work and the consequences generational. ("Shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations").

Phil Garber August 6 at 11:09am

The proverbs which mean most to me go beyond general principles and contain explicit or implied promises (especially those in Prov 3). "He will direct your paths" is one of them. These I choose to believe.

But the problem with Proverbs I believe is not that Christians take them too seriously or literally, but that they don't take them seriously enough. If they did we would see a lot more fruit in the Body. Spiritual growth cannot be separated from growth in character and all of these proverbs are signposts to character.

Fellowship, Freedom, and Stretch Marks

2010-07-21T14:09:00.000-07:00

That is the title of our youngest daughter Rachel's latest blog entry which may be found here:

http://www.clayinthemakershand.blogspot.com/

Tumbling Dice

2010-06-23T10:09:00.000-07:00

I have set down below an account and analysis of a motorcycle accident which my wife and I had last spring. It took place on Saturday, May 23, 2009 at 7:00 pm. Diane and I were heading home to Canmore, Alberta on my Vulcan 750 after spending the day in Calgary.

In the months after the accident I spent a great deal of time replaying the experience and analyzing it (some might say obsessively). I apologize if it seems a little long, but it seems that it takes a world of detail to describe something which took place in just under two seconds.

While it describes errors that I made, this account is neither a mea culpa nor an exercise in coulda/shoulda/woulda for its own sake. I just want to share an experience which I believe is inherently fascinating to most riders: what is it like when the worst happens? The story is based on my best recollection of speed, distance and a very rapid unfolding of events, but as we know memory can play tricks. I have tried however to be as objective as possible, both in my recollection and my analysis, for my own benefit and for those who wish to draw their own conclusions from it.

Background

I had purchased the motorcycle in March after Diane and I returned from a vacation in Maui. During our stay on the island a shortage of rental cars had forced us to rent a motorcycle as an alternative, and for 10 days we rode around together on 2 different Harleys, a Buell and a Vulcan 1500.

We were the proverbial irresponsible 50ish couple on a Harley, riding lidless in shorts and t-shirts, and it was a blast. Diane actually got to feel comfortable riding on the back and it was a sweet time for us.

We didn't get over the whole island - there is a surprising amount of it to cover - but we were able to circumnavigate Haleakala, riding through bamboo groves and the mist of waterfalls around the 600 curves to Hana, and then manoeuvring the Vulcan along the semi-paved road which continued around the backside of the mountain. I so much enjoyed this time, the feeling of Diane holding on to me behind and speaking together as we rode. The experience took me back and it felt as though Diane were my girlfriend again rather than my wife of 31 years.

As a result, it was not long after our return that I bought a 1986 VN750 in a private sale. It was a kid's project bike that he had done for a motorcycle mechanic course. He had made good work of it, boring it out to over 800cc and giving it a custom paint job. Prior to Maui I had not ridden for nearly 20 years, but in the 2 months after I bought the Vulcan I rode it enough to feel comfortable in bringing Diane along that day for our first two up run into the city.

The accident

It had been a nice day, the first really nice weekend this year. We came in to Calgary along the 1A highway past Exshaw and through the Stoney Reserve, following the road as it wound up, down and through the breaks above the Bow River. I set an easy pace, not pushing it. These were the local twisties, much favoured by Calgary riders. We passed at least 50 outbound bikers on the way in, many in gaggles and clusters, not always in good order. After a while I stopped returning waves and began to focus on staying well clear of the centre line. Neither of us was wearing motorcycle gear except for CSA approved half helmets and goggles. The main purpose of our trip into Calgary was in fact to begin acquiring more safety gear.

Before doing so, we made a few stops and it was not until later in the afternoon that we reached GW Cycle. After much fitting and vacillating Diane found a Cordura jacket that she could live with. By that time the store was closing and there was not enough time to buy anything else. Oh well, I thought. That can wait for another weekend.

We made our way back west across town and stopped at our daughter's for supper. We chatted for awhile.

Finally a little alarm went off in my mind.

"Let's go".

I didn't want to end up riding directly into the setting sun. On our way out of the house Sarah said "I love you!"

Funny, I thought, it's not like her to say that.

Heading west on the #1 Highway, we passed the Foothills Hospital on our left and swept at 50 mph down the long easy curve into Montgomery, where we slowed for a 30 mph zone. This is a five block neighbourhood which the highway bisects in 4 undivided lanes before it leaves the built up area and becomes an open road again. There is free access from streets and businesses on both sides, though east and westbound lanes are separated by a double yellow line between the intersections.

Traffic was fairly constant in both directions. I found the westbound curb lane a little congested for my taste so I shifted to the relatively open left lane and moved on up past the line of traffic on my right. The curb lane was moving at about 20 mph, I at 33 mph.

As I approached a camper traveling ahead of me in the right lane it slowed down and a gap opened ahead of it. I continued closing and as I came up a car slipped out past the front of the camper and stopped broadside about 2/3 of the way across my lane. He had pulled out of a parking lot on the right, evidently meaning to peel across our two westbound lanes and the double line in order to beat the oncoming eastbound traffic in a left turn onto the highway. The camper had screened us from each other so he saw us and stopped only after he began his move.

I had 60-70 feet to react when he first entered my field of vision and was stuck in a rapidly shrinking box. As the car's front bumper emerged, I had immediately gone for the brakes but I knew even then that we weren't going to make it. My front wheel promptly locked and slid out to the right. We fell to the pavement like a pair of tumbling dice.....

My memory is quite clear up to the point where I lost traction. Then we went down in a blur of motion and I retain the impression of taking a single bounce which twisted my body into a roll along its axis.

Everything snapped back into focus when I hit the car. I have a freeze frame picture of flying backwards, suspended just above the road's surface and looking back the way we came. In the same instant came the shock of something slamming very hard into my upper back. I felt my body arch like a bow and for a split second all my chest muscles tightened like bowstrings.

I rebounded about 6 feet and fell forward facing east, my body roughly in a line with the car's front bumper. As I fell I saw Diane tumble head over heels past me. I remember saying "Oh!". It was an "oh" as in "Oh, this can't be good!" or "Oh, I'm shot, am I dead?"

For the first few seconds I lay on my stomach and took stock of what I saw. My left arm was covered with blood up to my t-shirt sleeve and the forearm looked and felt broken. My right pinky finger was a bloody pulp. I looked back over my right shoulder. Diane lay groaning in a fetal position just across the centre line, clutching her leg. Her goggles were knocked askew on her face.

I turned my attention back to myself. I could feel and move my feet. My head was fine. My right shoulder and chest hurt, especially when I breathed. I desperately wanted to get up and get the pressure off my chest. I knew I shouldn't, but I felt that if I could only get up on my feet I would be okay. I just couldn't figure out how to do so without hurting myself more. I fumbled for the helmet strap with my right hand, careful not to move the shoulder. I couldn't quite undo the knot. I gave up and lay there, helpless.

And then the feet came. Dozens of them came into my field of view from every direction, crowding close around until someone ordered them back. No lonely death in a ditch for us. We had gone down in the most public way, closing 3 out of the 4 lanes of the TransCanada Highway at the height of a spring weekend.

Someone knelt by me. "Hello, I'm ______. I'm an off-duty firefighter and I am a first responder. What is your name? What happened? What day is it? Can you feel your hands? Can you feel your feet?...." I could hear someone else asking similar questions of Diane and heard her responding. That was a relief! She was relatively composed though I could hear the pain in her voice.

One pair of feet approached and addressed me:

"She waved me out, but I stopped as soon as I seen ya. I stopped as soon as I seen ya."

It was the driver of the car and he was referring to the woman driving the camper who he claimed had given him an all clear sign to pull out across both our lanes.

I didn't answer. I learned long ago not to waste my anger on others' driving errors. They are a natural phenomenon, like gravel on the road. Besides, we had more pressing concerns than the question of the man's relative responsibility. That was his problem, not ours.

Analysis

Even though the right of way violation we experienced was the closest thing to an ambush that I have ever seen, I operate from the premise that every accident short of a meteor strike is avoidable on some level. There is always something that you could have done differently in retrospect. Even after the accident has become inevitable the way one reacts can make a big difference in the outcome.

a) Setting myself up

After a close call early in my riding career, I've always been aware of the risk of a right side incursion and usually scan side streets, alleys and driveways as I approach them. I tend to be most vigilant when I am in the curb lane. In this case I saw no need to look for this specific threat because I was in the left lane with screening traffic in the lane beside me.

However, one thing that should have got my attention and didn't was when the camper slowed to a near stop. Any time there is a hitch in the traffic flow in an adjacent lane for a reason I can't see I usually slow down, cover the brakes and ride as wide as I can in my lane until I can see and assess the situation. I do this whether I'm driving or riding.

Doing so in this case would have

(i) left me about 15 feet further back and about 5 mph slower than I actually was when the car first appeared.
(ii) positioned me in the left track which would have allowed me to see him coming just a little bit sooner , and
(iii) put me on a line which would have passed just in front of where his car did stop.

All of these advantages put together would given me more time to process the situation and hence avoid resorting to a panic reflex. The additional distance coupled with the better lane placement would have allowed me to come to a stop or near stop or avoid the car altogether with a minor course correction within my lane.

b) Not being in the moment

So why didn't I do this? One reason was because in my mind I was already on the open highway. I had been hyper-alert and a little paranoid riding in Calgary traffic all day, but now that we were almost out of town, the controlled access portion of the highway was only 3 blocks away and I was looking forward to unwinding the throttle and getting clear of the congestion. This little five block strip was just a one last irritating bottleneck on the way to freedom. So I think I had started to let down a bit and was not paying enough attention to my immediate surroundings.

We hear about target fixation but I think there is also such a thing as destination fixation. This is when you're mentally focused on some place you're going to down the road rather than where you are right now. For example, you're reaching the end of a long ride, you're letting down a bit and as you near home you enter familiar territory and go into autopilot, looking forward to kicking back and relaxing. You're no longer in the moment and you start missing cues that you would normally pick up on.

c) Appropriate reaction

When the car emerged from behind the screening camper, I had only two basic choices: brake or swerve to the left. I chose to brake, even though I knew as I did that I would be unable to stop in time. This choice resulted in serious injury to my wife and I. If I had swerved we would have avoided the car.

So should I have swerved?

Strange as it may seem, I think I did the right thing in not attempting to do so. In swerving, I would have given up the option of braking which would have doubled up the risk of injury if I had hit the car. I began to react as soon as I saw the car's bumper emerge into view. I didn't know at that point that it would stop. If I had waited to confirm that it had stopped before acting, I would not only have given up precious braking distance, I might have sailed into the car still revolving the options in my mind.

I think that sort of analysis paralysis helps account for the fact that many motorcyclists roll straight into their collisions without attempting to either brake or swerve, even when they have time to do so. You almost have to decide in advance what you're going to do in order to save processing time.

If I had immediately committed to a swerve and the car had not stopped, we would have hit it at speed and been ejected over it into the oncoming traffic. Really bad odds for survival. Even if the car did stop and we got around its front end, we would have committed ourselves to a line which would have brought us well into the oncoming lane before we would have the time to swing back. I didn't know if that lane was clear right then; I didn't have time to check and my peripheral vision was gone at that point. All I could see was the car rapidly getting larger.

So yes, I still believe that braking was the appropriate response in the situation based on what I saw within the time available to react, even though it may have resulted in greater injury than the alternative would have.

d) Braking technique

While waiting for the weather to warm up enough to begin riding on a regular basis, I had bought a copy of Hough's More Proficient Motorcycling to bring myself back up to speed. I read his emphasis on progressively applied front wheel braking and took it to heart. I practiced it whenever I did get out and noted that front wheel braking was much sharper and more effective than I remembered it to be back in the day. I remember riding through town on the day of the accident, as a matter of fact, mentally rehearsing front brake good, rear brake bad. But one thing I had not yet done was to practice threshold braking using the front brake in a simulated emergency stop.

As a result, I did not develop the muscle memory to match the theory and when time came to make an emergency stop, everything I knew about progressive braking went out the window. I went straight for the death grip on the front lever.

That's one way of looking at it. But to be fair to myself, the extenuating circumstance would be that I instinctively knew that we would hit the car no matter what I did. Having logged about 200,000 miles behind the wheel of a taxi in a previous life, I'm well acquainted with stopping distances. My instinctive estimate of the car's proximity at the instant I saw it was that it was just within the effective stopping range of a 1978 Chev Caprice with good brakes if they were already applied.

But let's say that I reacted in 0.5 seconds, which is much quicker than average. During that time we would have covered half the distance to the car. Added to that, the half second required to effect the weight transfer to the front wheel would have brought us almost to the point of impact. I was not mentally prepared to accept that delay. That knowledge placed me in full alarm mode and I became physiologically incapable of the fine motor skills which controlled braking requires.

It is for this reason that police officers who spend hundreds of hours on the firing range perfecting their Weaver stance consistently abandon it when they find themselves in a real firefight. (A good explanation of the panic state and its physiological effects may be found at http://www.lwcbooks.com/articles/anatomy.html.)

I believe the value of threshold braking skill therefore lies not so much in its usefulness in true panic mode (nil) as in the fact that the greater sense of control it gives the rider who possesses it makes it less likely for him to descend into such a state in threat situations. It is important however to remember that if the threat is truly imminent no one is immune to panic. The conclusion I draw is that the prudent rider will use a braking technology which will continue to work effectively even when his responses don't. I'm referring of course to ABS.

Failure to use progressive braking, check. What about failure to apply the rear brake?

If I had practiced hard stopping, I would have found that on a cruiser the rear brake does still have a significant role to play, especially in the initial application before weight is transferred to the front. I was not well served to ignore the rear brake in this case. Even in a panic stop scenario, if I had applied it as well as the front, both wheels would have been just a bit slower to lock and its possible that our fall to the pavement would have been little more forgiving. Firm or even aggressive application of both brakes together could only have helped us.

Having said all of the above, I'm not sure how much difference it would have made if I had managed a textbook braking attempt. We would have still hit the car, albeit at lesser speed and with shiny side up. Injury from the collision itself would likely have been confined to our lower bodies; however we would have then been ejected over the hood of the car. Depending on how we landed, we may or may not have had head or neck injuries. Who knows if our injuries would have been better or worse than those we did incur? (From a purely selfish point of view, that would depend on how my gonads fared in their passage over the instrument cluster!)

No matter how you go down in an accident, the extent of your personal injuries is still a crap shoot. It's fair to assume though that effective braking would have given us a better roll of the dice.

e) Gear and injuries

Visibility

At the time of the accident we were not wearing high visibility clothing. In this case visibility was not an issue as the driver was pulling out blind due to the restriction the camper imposed on his field of vision. We could have been a semi and he still wouldn't have seen us.

Diane

Gear: Diane was wearing a CSA approved half helmet, riding goggles, riding jacket with joint armour, jeans, no gloves.

Injuries: All of Diane's injuries were from contact with the road as she flipped end over end. (She tumbled past the front of the car.) These contacts caused multiple facial fractures. Specifically, the orbital ridge over her left eye was fractured and her cheek bone was broken and a chip pushed down through her sinus cavities. Her upper tibia was badly shattered with a fracture running through the tibial plateau. She had no road rash or soft tissue damage anywhere except for a cut over the left eyebrow.

Analysis: Knee armour would have prevented or minimized Diane's tibial fractures. Here is an anomaly: she had no road rash on her knees; in fact when I later examined the legs of her jeans which were cut off from the front, the cut sides fit together perfectly without any sign of abrasion. I can't account for it. My knees, which had only glancing contact with the pavement both had road rash; Diane's right knee, which hit the surface hard enough to shatter it, had none. There were several such freakish and seemingly unaccountable things about our injuries.

Helmet: a full face helmet would have certainly have prevented or minimized Diane's facial injury. However, the helmet she did wear seemed to have played no significant role. Even though she had multiple facial fractures, it showed no signs of significant impact. There were a few superficial scratches at the back, but the front was unmarked.

And here is another anomaly. Diane landed on her face. But then why did she receive no facial lacerations? The impact seems to have been confined solely to her goggles. Diane's head injuries were evidently caused by the goggles' frame being forcefully pushed against her orbital. The impact must have been quite strong to cause such damage since the frame had a foam rubber lining. But the goggles as she wore them were well under the 1 inch overhang of her helmet. How could they have hit the road so hard without the front of the helmet also being involved? And if the helmet had escaped contact because Diane hit the road with her head slightly face forward, when then did she not have any lower face/jaw injuries?

However it happened, though Diane's goggles caused her injury they also protected her from much worse. The left lens shows a pronounced vertical scratch and the right is scuffed. Without them, I believe that she would have suffered serious eye injury and facial laceration, and possibly blunt force trauma to the brain. It is extremely odd that a flimsy piece of gear not normally considered as protection from anything more than a flying insect should have had such an effect in a collision with the road.

Phil

Gear: I was wearing a CSA approved half helmet, riding goggles, jeans, quilted vest and t-shirt, no gloves.

Injuries: My left radius was shattered at the point where it joins the wrist (the surgeon said into 25 pieces). I also had a compound fracture to my right shoulder blade.

Seven ribs were broken in my right chest, three of them in two places in what is known as a flail chest injury. In spite of the ten rib fractures (at least five of them were displaced), my lungs did not suffer puncture, collapse, or contusion. In fact, when I remember that I was able to speak as I fell to the road, I marvel that I did not even have the breath knocked out of me. Anomaly number three. Nor did I have any back or neck injuries (not even soreness). This is anomaly number four.

My right pinky finger was degloved down to the first joint and I had moderate road rash covering most of the outside skin area of my left arm, a smaller patch on my right forearm and small areas on my knees.

Analysis: Though I don't remember the fall itself, from the pattern of my injuries it appears that I dropped off the bike in a hands and knees posture and made initial contact with the road on all fours. This caused the four point road rash and the degloved pinky. Since I came off the bike to the left, most of the impact came on my left arm, breaking the radius and causing the asphalt surface to grab that arm and pull it under me, causing the extensive road rash to that limb. This forced my body into a classic Hollywood tuck n roll (a much more damaging one though than what I've seen on TV).

I rolled over my left shoulder and, since my lower body was still traveling left, the deceleration of my upper body had the effect of swinging my whole body into a lateral roll. I think it may have made one complete revolution in the air in that orientation. I was still in the air in mid-roll when my back hit the left front of the car, presumably over my right shoulderblade, shattering it and breaking my ribs.

A ballistic jacket such as Diane was wearing would have spared me the upper body road rash, though that was the least of my worries. I'm not aware of any gear which would spared my forearm. Gloves might have saved my pinky. Back armour might have softened the impact to my shoulderblade and ribs but I think not significantly since it is designed more to protect the spine. An airbag jacket, as unproven as it is I think would have made a difference here.

Helmet: At first I assumed that my helmet had not played a role because I had felt no impact with my head. However, when I examined it I saw the following: two pronounced scratches on the left front, several circular concentric scratches on the left rear, and an area of many fine parallel scratches about two inches in diameter on the right back.

The first two sets of marks I assume pertain to the tuck 'n' roll: the front scratches from the initial contact of my head with the pavement, and the left rear ones marking a pivot point as my body rotated on the way over my left shoulder.

The third set puzzled me, as I thought the scratches were too fine to arise from contact with the pavement. I believe it came from contact with the car.

I have revolved various possible scenarios in my mind to explain the fact that I had no whiplash or noticeable blow to the head. That would be the minimum expected effect from an impact strong enough to cause flail chest.

Here is what I think happened: My shoulder blade hit the leading edge of the car's left front tire right where the tread meets the sidewall. (It would have been turned out slightly to make the its turn.) My torso arched around the point of impact and my head snapped back, but before it traveled far enough to strain my neck, the back of my helmet hit the sidewall at the tire's trailing edge, scraping the wheel well as it did so. This would have caused my head to bounce back in tandem with my upper body as I fell forward. That would explain the fine scratches on my helmet. It would also account for the unusually lively bounce my body took as a result of the impact.

If my reconstruction is correct, then my helmet did protect my head from laceration and likely also concussion.

Summary

This accident was primarily a failure in defensive driving and secondarily a failure in effective braking. (Effective braking would possibly have mitigated injury but not prevented the accident).

What I did do right was to react immediately (if not entirely effectively) in a way that reduced the effect of the collision. A low side at 20-25 mph and then an impact by one of us with the car at 15-20 mph gave us better odds than for both us to hit the car and be ejected at 33 mph.

Wearing a helmet saved me from at least some head injury. It appeared not to have made a difference in Diane's case. All the gear; that is, full face helmet + full ballistic coverage with armour + gloves would have probably eliminated Diane's injuries but would likely have prevented only the more superficial of my own ie, the relatively mild road rash and pulped finger.

However, as badly as we thought we were injured at the time, it became apparent to me as I analyzed the damage in detail that we got off far more lightly than we had a right to expect (see anomalies two through four). Diane could easily have lost sight in at an eye and received permanently disfiguring injuries to her face. If I had hit the car flying backward in any other than the precise way that I did, there is little doubt in my mind that I would have incurred a catastrophic spinal and/or chest injury.

This consideration is very sobering when you consider the relatively low speed of our impact. As they say, there is no such thing as a fender bender on a motorcycle.

Lessons learned

1) This accident has reinforced my commitment to defensive driving and also teaches me that it is never safe to think that you've arrived at a point where you enjoy absolute safety while riding. In this case, the accident likely could have been avoided if I had followed defensive driving techniques which I already knew. Yet there is no absolute defense against the irrational actions of others. No matter how prudent you think you are, there is always an accident scenario which may slip through your defenses. The only answer is to avoid complacency and to continuously work on improving these skills.

2) The motorcycle I now have has ABS.

3) I will practice threshold braking (up to the limits of the ABS of course). I've never lost braking control so completely as I did in this accident and I need to restore my injured pride.

4) I have gotten full coverage gear (full face helmet, airbag jacket, riding boots and gloves, Draggin' jeans, and Thor Force knee armour. I wear all of it on the highway though I usually omit the knee armour and wear regular jeans for short local errands.

5) If my wife decides to ride with me again, I will make sure that she wears all the gear. If I want to be cavalier about my own safety, at least our kids are grown and I am if anything over-insured. But one thing this accident impressed on me was the knowledge that as the rider I have absolute responsibility for the wellbeing of my passenger. I don't have the right to compromise Diane's safety, even if she were willing to do so herself. It was very hard to watch Diane suffer through her ordeal in the hospital from injuries which would likely have been avoided if she had worn full gear.

Aftermath

The first ambulance arrived within a few minutes and the second a little later. We were taken to the Foothills Hospital, a short ride by motorcycle, but a very long trip when you're riding on a hard board with broken ribs and scapula. It occurred to me for the first time that an ambulance is really just a truck with medical fittings. I think I would have been almost as comfortable in the back of a pickup.

The EMTs cinched me so tight to the board I could hardly breathe, and kept it that way until we arrived. This is protocol of course: in your first few hours in the emergency medical system everything seems to revolve around protection of the spinal column, whether it appears to be injured or not. They had to put me on oxygen before we got too far.

We were both slated for surgery the next day, but by then Diane's leg had started to swell, so they had to postpone hers. She had a very rough go of it. For ten days she lay with her shattered leg packed in ice before the swelling subsided enough for surgery.

Diane endured all of this with unflagging spirits, having a smile for every visitor (she had a constant stream of them) and ready to chat amiably about anything other than her current circumstances. She had the air of a gracious hostess rather than that of a victim. Even after 31 years of marriage, I learned something new about my wife's inner toughness.

During this time they were able to reconstruct Diane's orbital bone with the aid of a titanium plate. Today there is no sign of her facial injury except for a few missing wrinkles around her left eye. (She tells me now that she'll have to get a lift for her right eye to make them even.)

When the time came, they put Diane's leg right as well. It now has enough heavy metal in it to guarantee her special handling at airport security for the rest of her life. Diane can walk straight, though her distance is still limited and she reverts to a limp when tired. She walks every day to build her leg's strength and function

On the day following the accident (Sunday) my own break was given open reduction with internal fixation and also an external fixator which I was to wear for the next 11 weeks. I was given no treatment for my ribs or shoulder blade, none being required. My breathing was a little constricted but not too bad, except for a few bad moments after surgery, from which I awoke feeling as if I were suffocating.

I found that my first instinct at the accident scene was correct: I was reasonably comfortable and could breathe almost normally as long as I was upright. On Monday I came off the morphine and was able to inhale up to 3700 ml of air at a time. My ribs seemed to have set themselves.

The following morning they took me off oxygen and I discharged myself later that day. I felt that I would heal better if I just got up and moving. I gather there was some debate about that behind the scenes (the doctor said yes but my nurse told me that she had vetoed him). However, she ultimately agreed and I left, moving very carefully and with my back as straight as a drill sergeant's. I was back at work the following Monday.

The motorcycle was fixable, but not for the amount the insurance company was willing to spend. I took the writeoff.

The car's driver was cited for crossing a double solid line. That was a bogus charge, of course. He clearly intended to cross it, but never made it that far. I was not surprised to hear that the charge was dropped September 18. Fortunately, his insurance company has not chosen to contest his liability in the accident. It helps to have 50 witnesses.

Finally:

I want to acknowledge God's protection over us. He allowed the accident to happen, but we were both spared injuries which easily could have been much worse. Even during our lowest point, we never felt that He had left us or didn't care.

We appear to be healing now without any significant permanent loss of function. We are grateful for what we have now more than we ever were before.

Some would call our escape luck. If it is, then at least in my case it's screaming, run-out-and-buy-a-lottery-ticket luck. But I prefer to call it Providence. There is a verse in Proverbs which I think sums up well this tension between chance and divine will:

"The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is of the Lord."

The Zen of motorcycling

2010-04-30T00:54:00.000-07:00

Here is my understanding of the essence of riding, for whatever it's worth.

The main thing to understand about riding is that it is not simply a more dangerous variation of driving. Driving gets you from point "A" to point "B", but riding brings you into an altered state of consciousness which yields pleasures and sensations unknown to most of the world.

Having said that, riding is less forgiving because any loss of traction or control usually results in an "accident" (ie a get off). It also raises the stakes dramatically for any type of mishap because you are so vulnerable. Having the right gear helps but it is designed mostly to protect against impact with the road/ground. Against stationary objects, not so much.

So if you ride, accept the possibility that you're going to go down at some point. Don't obsess about it, but be realistic. If you're not willing to accept that possibility, don't ride. If you do accept that, the risk becomes part of the appeal and managing it becomes your central challenge. 99% of the risk in motorcycling can be controlled at some level.

The challenge enters in because the risk management is so open ended - there is always something more to learn but you know that whatever you do you can never completely nail that last 1%. There's always the proverbial golden B.B. out there which can bypass your defenses, no matter how advanced they are. But even that golden B.B. could be avoided if you only knew how.

But the essential ingredient is focus, because once you get to the stage of technical competence, riding safety becomes mostly a mind game.

So dress for the occasion, and always be focused.

Don't ride if you're not focused.

Back in the saddle

2010-04-09T14:33:00.000-07:00

This is an update on our status now that it's been almost 11 months since our accident. Almost one year gone. Diane's leg is almost healed. She can walk normally when she remembers but when she forgets or is tired she limps again out of habit. No visible sign of facial surgery. She triggers the alarm every time we go through airport security and has to get the pat down.

I have almost regained the strength in my left arm except for permanently limited mobility in the wrist (only 45 degreee flexion but almost full extension) and some pain when I do reverse curls. No lasting effect from my chest injuries.

Monday I picked up the motorcycle I purchased last fall as a replacement for the VN750. It is a Honda Varadero (the bigger one) and it had been sitting in storage over the winter.

The timing wasn't the best. I had booked a pick up time of 2:00 pm with Rocky Mtn Honda but what with one delay and another I didn't get out on MacLeod Trail with it until after 4:30. Those of you familiar with Calgary traffic will know that's not a good time and place for a first ride.

I was a nervous and a bit rough on the controls for the first few miles. Fortunately I had planned a route that took me on to the 22x westbound to Bragg Creek within a mile and I settled down for what should have been a more relaxing ride. The only problem was that I was paranoid of each vehicle that I passed waiting to turn out from a side road. As I approached each I would visualize it pulling out across my lane and would involuntarily slow down. But no matter how slow you go there is a point of no return beyond which you have no sure recourse should the other driver decide to pull out. I eventually decided that was part of the irreducible risk I had to accept if I wanted to continue riding.

First day jitters. I took the 1A west from Cochrane and by the time I reached Exshaw I felt a lot more in control and had gained enough confidence to do the curves at 15 km/h over the advisory limit. The bike handled them very well. The next day I took the bike into Calgary for a meeting and this time was able to deal with traffic without having to think too much consciously about its handling.

The bike: it's upright, tall, heavy and powerful. I like the seat height, which gives a commanding view of traffic. Shifting is smooth. It's not exactly flickable but it responds instantly to steering inputs from the wide handle bars and holds its line very well. The suspension handled everything the rather ripply 1A highway could throw at it without getting unsettled in the curves. Acceleration is miles ahead of any cruiser I've ridden (including the VN750) though I do miss the VN750's howl and surge in the high rpms. I don't think I've taken the Varadero over 6000 rpm yet, and that got me up to 130 km/h.

The riding position is very slightly forward, which puts relatively more weight on my arms when I brake. This is something I'll have to get used to due to the arm injury. However a winter of push ups is now paying off. The brakes are insanely good. I haven't used the ABS yet (plan to test it in the parking lot first), but the bike hauls down very fast with two fingers. I tend to end up against the gas tank when I do that so I have to train myself to use a knee grip when braking.

Gear: Full face helmet (Airoh S4), which is enduro style and therefore has a large field of vision and allows plenty of air flow. I've removed the beak for highway use. Darth Vader gloves, motocross knee guards with articulated joints that strap on above and below the knee. Protects the front of my legs from mid-thigh most of the way down my shins. Draggin jeans are back ordered. Riding boots. Hit-air jacket - remember to hook up when mounting, or you'll ride away trailing the connector cord behind you.

So I'm back in the saddle and it feels very good. Looking forward to a productive summer of riding. Diane has said she will ride with me again, but first wants me to get to the point where the bike is an extension of my body.

I'm working on that.......

The old man must die

2010-03-03T07:49:00.000-08:00

David Porter over at boomerinthepew.com discusses the seeming harshness of God in preventing Moses from entering the Promised Land because he struck a rock to bring water from it rather than speaking to it as God had instructed him.

David writes: "I found my fingers unwilling to type as I was trying to understand this scene. The Israelites have driving this man crazy for decades, and now, because he responded out of clear disrespect to Yahweh, he is banned from the Promised Land."

In a way, Moses is like John the Baptist, playing a key role in bringing in the new order but not able to partake of it himself. Of John Jesus said,

among those born of women there has not risen one greater than John the Baptist; but he who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.

By Jesus' own account John was greater than Moses, yet even he was not fit for the kingdom as he was. What I understand Jesus saying from this is that the very best of natural men can't enter the kingdom: you must be born again.

This is a message that all of us need to take seriously. None of us can be greater than John or Moses, no matter what we do. If they couldn't make it to heaven on their own, neither can I. It is what I allow God to do in me through faith in Jesus that saves me and makes me fit for heaven.

So back to Moses - if we look at Israel's journey to the Promised Land as containing a figure of our journey to salvation, then the message of his death is clear: the old man must die.

That is the picture-lesson of Moses' death, but we don't need to spare any tears for him. The next time we see him, he is speaking with Jesus on the mount of transfiguration. God gave him a far greater privilege in that than in what He withheld from him.

And all these, having gained approval through their faith, did not receive what was promised, because God had provided something better for us, so that apart from us they would not be made perfect. Heb. 11:39,40

Travel Travails

2010-03-03T02:29:00.000-08:00

Washington....and our luggage has already gone astray. I had expected this to happen, if it was going to happen, with Ethiopia Airlines somewhere between Addis Ababa and Nairobi, but apparently it's too much to expect United to carry it between two North American hubs without losing it.

We're getting conflicting stories here..... the call centre gal in Mumbai assures me that the missing bags have been located in the Dulles terminal and will be delivered to our room in the morning. She goes on to tell me to use the online tracker to get further updates - but then the website tells me that they are nowhere to be found. So which is it - is the call centre telling me what I want to hear in the Asian manner or are they just not updating the tracker website? Not reasssuring either way.

On the upside, we got upgraded from a compact car rental to a Caddy for $20 extra, and due to our late check in, a complimentary upgrade to a suite at our hotel because they've "run out of smaller units".

So, it's not an auspicious start to our trip in the old Roman augury sense of using the behaviour of winged beings to divine the future, but again it's a mixed message. Are we supposed to, like, not go on this trip but just stay in Washington? That would be a drag. With a gray sky leaking rain at 34F in DC, the weather's better in Canmore.

Update on the fly/Rachel's blog

2010-03-02T05:27:00.000-08:00

Diane and I are sitting in the Calgary airport, having cleared US customs and with 2 hours to kill before our flight. We're on our way to East Africa for 2 1/2 weeks on a tour with my mother and my aunt Lois. We're really looking forward to it - our first time "over" seas if you discount Hawaii which doesn't really count in my book as it's not foreign enough.

We'll be spending 2 weeks in Ethiopia and 4 days on a short safari in Kenya. Returning March 20 to Washington and then touring around Virginia for a few days before flying home Mar 23. By then it should be spring (or close enough) and time to bring my motorcycle out of storage. My long deferred return to riding - I can hardly wait!

......we have seen, and bear witness, and declare to you that eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested to us— that which we have seen and heard we declare to you, that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. And these things we write to you that your joy may be full.

1 John 1:2-4

Rachel has finally got a blog of her own at http://www.clayinthemakershand.blogspot.com./

In her first post she discusses her evolving vision of ministry:

This last week I was translating for a medical team and had the privelage of working with doctor Kit who works in Cambodia. I was so amazed by the openness of all the people who came to see him. We were able to share the gospel with some of the patients and have some meaningful discussions and prayer times. This really opened my eyes to how much people really are searching. I honestly was expecting more rejection but instead all I saw were people who were hungry for God. What an encouragement that was!

It was also neat because one of the things that I have been praying about is doing more relational and discipleship ministries. It’s like God was telling me to feed them. They were coming with different health concerns but there was this intense spiritual hunger that I saw. God really used this time to encourage me and helped me to focus more on the reality of the spiritual struggles that people are going through. Perhaps the biggest lie is the assumption that people don’t want to hear.

I feel blessed that God is leading Rachel in this direction. I have long felt that as important as it is to minister to peoples' material and social needs, social ministry without a spiritual component is ultimately empty. By spiritual I mean a ministry that shares the gospel of salvation and spiritual wholeness through Jesus Christ with aim of bringing others into that fellowship with us which transforms them from subjects of ministry into brothers and sisters in Christ. So the proper end of mission work is to birth (or midwive?) new life in others which will allow them to minister to us and each other as we have ministered to them.

I'm not sure that adequately explains what I mean but I'm too tired to improve on it so I'll stop now. In any case I encourage anyone interested in Rachel's ministry to check it regularly. It is really worth a read!

Rachel's newsletter

2009-10-28T10:56:00.000-07:00

First of all, what a wonderful blessing the last month has been! It went by so fast that I finally remembered that it was probably about that time to send out an update. Most of you know that Kelsey (my sister-in-law) was here visiting me. That time with her was so precious to me! This was the first time in years that I really had some one- on -one time with her.

It was great just to see her and share with her my life here in Costa Rica. There’s just something so wonderful about having someone come here to see the people and ministries I talk about. She was such an encouragement to me and it was so hard to see her go….but….my work continues and God continues to bless me both on the good days and on the tougher ones.

Goodbyes are always difficult for me and this month not only did I have to say goodbye to Kelsey but also to a couple little twin girls at the Children’s Home (one pictured above). It’s always such a risk to love the kids there because sometimes it seems that right when I get attached, they get taken away. I constantly have to remind myself that this is what I want. I want these kids to have a forever home. Most of the kids there have very little hope of being adopted, so there is always a need for love at this place and always all the other kids to get attached to. I also have the privelage of reaching out to the “tias” ( house mothers) when times get stressful and to just hold them when they cry when a child moves on. I can’t imagine what it is like to take care of a child and love them 24/7 for an extended period of time and then see them leave. These are just some of the challenges of working at the Children’s Home.

My ministry in Los Guizaros has been tough, but I am learning so much through it. To be honest, this ministry has been a huge struggle for me. I was actually trying to pass it off to someone else but soon realized that there was really no one else to do it. Then I realized that it’s not just because I am busy but because in fact I am afraid to. With the chaos of such a small building packed with kids, packed with my inexperience, soft voice, and lack of resources, I felt that I just couldn’t do it. Then I came to the realization that it is just time to face my fears. The truth is that I CAN teach these kids and I CAN learn to use the things that I have. I CAN do all things through Christ who gives me strength. I have been sitting down and brainstorming how I can make this children’s program better.

One project I have decided to move forward with is building a little puppet theatre and starting to do puppet shows with the kids. God is helping me to get my creative juices flowing, now I just need to continue in prayer and give this feat to the Lord! I believe that he will provide the funds needed to complete this.

I’m slowly learning to step out in faith and do what is needed to be affective. God provides. I’m sitting in my apartment right now and I’m looking around…..God provided everything here! All my furniture and most of my dishes were donated by some wonderful people here! I stepped out in faith and bought a car and God has already provided the support to pay back half of it! I am a daughter of Christ walking in his will and he will provide always! What a lesson to learn and continue to learn. I am so human sometimes and just worry but then I’m reminded that I need to put my human logic away sometimes and just continue to step out.

This month has also brought on a lot of change. Keith Britton, the missionary I work with has headed back to The States for a 4 month medical leave. He will be getting a major surgery which involves taking his ankle out and replacing it with a titanium one. While he is away, I will be in charge of making sure the Rehab centre is taken care of financially, as well as buying monthly groceries for the centre, the children’s soup kitchen, as well as running errands as needed. Please pray for me as I try to manage these things while he is away.

Anyways, thanks so much for your prayers, they are so important to me and to my ministry here. We are a team and without you, I am unable to be here. I have been so blessed by all of you and look forward to seeing you all when I come to visit in December! I will be in Calgary from December 10th to January 4th and hope to touch base with all of you if possible!

Blessings in Christ,

Rachel Garber
God in Action Ministries
Apdo 428-1011
La y Griega
San Jose, Costa Rica

Note: Rachel has since sent the following note:

Hey Everybody!!!!!!!!!!

I am very excited to announce that the website for the sponsorship program I am working on is up and running!!!!!! It is a very interesting website and explains the areas we work in and the needs of these communities. Feel free to check it out and learn more about it!

Just remember that to help a child who lives in poverty get an education this year, it costs less than a family outing to the theatre. This sponsorship program is also unique because it is a one time donation and its completely your choice to intentionally continue in the future.

The website is www.sponsorcostaricakids.com

Anyways, God bless you all and thank you for all your prayers!

Rachel Garber
God in Action Ministries
San Jose, Costa Rica

Freedom Day

2009-08-11T09:40:00.001-07:00

Diane and I went in for orthopedic follow up yesterday and now have clearance to start using our limbs. They removed the external fixator which I have been wearing on my arm for the past 11 weeks.

The removal was a unique experience to say the least. First the attendant unscrewed the connecting rods leaving the 2 couplings projecting from my skin, each supported by 2 pins. Then he loosened off each coupling and slid it off its pins.

This was not as easy as it sounds as I had conscientiously kept the bolts fairly tight and the attendant was using a sloppy adjustable wrench which kept slipping off the bolt heads. This is not a fun experience when you are working with something which is anchored in bone and I gently suggested that he use an open-ended wrench in future. I'm going to bring one for him next visit.

The pins in my 2nd metacarpal had stripped loose, as I had suspected from the escalating pain in my hand over the last 12 days, and as soon as the connecting rods were removed the coupling in my hand waggled around freely in the bone. I had to hold it tight with my right hand so the attendant could loosen off the bolts without damaging the metacarpal more than it already was.

After that it was time to remove the pins themselves. Again it was out with the adjustable wrench and the attendant first unscrewed the larger pins in my radius. He warned me in advance that it would be a strange sensation but I would say it was more of a "funny" sensation - as in funnybone. I noticed that the pins had self-tapping threads. Boy am I glad they put me out for the insertion!

The distal pins were much simpler since they were stripped and the attendant was able to unscrew them with his fingers.

The whole removal procedure was done without anaesthetic but except for the unfortunate matter of the metacarpal I would say it was well within my personal pain tolerance. Not a pleasant experience but nothing to be feared either and well worth it to be free of that device.

Still, there was something amateurish and tentative about the whole process which gave me the impression that they don't deal with external fixators that often. I would suggest that a proper set of tools would be a good start:

1) 10 mm open ended wrench for the bolts
2) larger adjustable wrench to grip the coupling while loosening off the bolt so it doesn't twist the pins against the bone.
3) T handle wrench for the pins so they can be loosened without torquing them from the side.

And now it's on to physio for both of us. The surgeon was well pleased with our x-rays so I trust that we will get the full use of our limbs again.

Afterward, Diane and I wandered around shopping and at one point kind of accidently turned into the parking lot of a Honda dealership. Since we were there anyway we spent some time looking at the bikes, specifically a CBF1000, a Varadero and the Wings. Do you offer demo rides? Great, but not today, thanks. Maybe in a month

It only takes a spark

2009-08-03T19:13:00.000-07:00

I've gotten into the habit recently of following Dan Edelen's blog over at ceruleansanctum.com. In a recent post he poses for discussion the (to me) doubtful statistic that it takes 15-25 encounters with God before a person is born again.

I don't think that quantitative analysis lends itself to matters of the Spirit. Souls are not widgets, and the second birth is not a statistically predictable outcome which you can relate to a certain number of inputs.

There is only one kind of encounter which can make a difference in a person's life, and that is an encounter with the Holy Spirit. This can take place through any means which God chooses - through the printed word, through persons Christian and non-Christian, or Christians worthy and unworthy. A good description of how diverse influences can bring a person to put his faith in Jesus Christ may be found in C.S. Lewis's Surprised by Joy. In it Lewis ascribes a role to, among other things, Norse mythology which aroused in him a sense of the Sublime which he later found to be realized in its fulness in the Christian faith.

One of Edelen's concerns is the negative effect of a seeker's encounter with the graceless Christian. How many "good" God encounters does it take to overcome the effect of a single professing hypocrite? But the spirituality of the message bearer is not always important. The input which precipitated my decision for Christ was a sermon by a radio evangelist who descended from a gospel presentation straight into a cheesy money pitch. But it didn't matter to me whether his motives were pure or crass; his message resonated within me in such a way that I experienced it as God's invitation, not his.

At some point the good news must be heard to be responded to, but sometimes the critical influence is nonverbal. The clearest feedback I have ever received that something I did or said has had a lasting spiritual effect came 12 years ago when I received a call out of the blue from BC.

"Hello, this is Gurdev, do you remember me?"

Yes, I did. We had worked together 8 years before, but I didn't know him well and hadn't seen him since. He had had a nervous breakdown and checked himself into the psychiatric ward of the local hospital. I had visited him once on the ward, didn't talk about God, just asked how he was. And I prayed for him, not in his presence but later in private. A week later Gurdev was discharged, returned to work very briefly, then quit or was let go and dropped out of sight.

"You're a Christian, aren't you?"

"Yes, how did you know?"

"When I was in the psych ward, none of the guys I partied with came to see me. You were the only one who came. I just want you to know that I am doing well now. I'm married with two kids and have a good job."

We chatted a bit and said goodbye, and afterwards I marvelled. Somehow my brief visit had affected Gurdev over the years to the extent that he had traced me down just to say thank me. Not only that, but he had evidently seen enough of Christian grace since that time that he was able to look back 8 years in memory and recognise its savour in that act. I felt deeply blessed that God had seen fit to let me know in this way that He was using me.

I don't know if Gurdev was yet a believer when he called, but if not, I can't help believing that someday he will be. Once one has felt the living water, one gets a thirst for it and wants it for himself.

Do I want to be more effective in my God appointments? Yes I do, and I try to achieve that by cultivating a habit of praying for the people I run into during the day and by listening for the direction of the Spirit in relating to them. But I don't do it with the idea that my little contribution will mechanically add together with others' to produce a new life in Christ after an average of 20 God appointments, with a standard deviation of 5.

The spark of love that God can shed through me or any believer in a single encounter may be the one that ignites a blaze which will burn in that person's life for eternity.

Rachel update

2009-07-24T10:46:00.000-07:00

Hello Everyone!

Well, it has been about a year since I visited Costa Rica to pray about coming here as a missionary. I remember the things that God spoke to me on this trip and the people he placed in my path to confirm his calling for me to work here. God really used every moment of that time to show me this, including my flight home. He used strangers to inspire me and to calm my fears and let me know that he had my back. One promise kept being shown to me from that time, which was that there was alot of work to be done in Costa Rica. This has been nothing but true for me, and I am truly blown away by everything that has happened in the last months. This month in itself has been a huge adventure and I´m hoping that you will take the time to see what God is doing here.

I know that some of you may be confused about the work I am doing here in Costa Rica, since I am involved in so many different things. To summarize a bunch of roles in one, my job is to reach the poor in a variety of ways from building relationships, teaching, translating to administrative roles working in partnership with Keith Britton ( a missionary who has been working here for 6 years)

God has been opening up doors for me to work in areas very close to my heart. I have always had the desire to work with the poor and in a more specific light, in the slums. Since my last newsletter, I have started going to a church located in the heart of the slum of Los Guido. I´m looking forward to helping with the youth group at this church and in this way start forming relationships in this community.

Not only has this happened in the last month but another exciting opportunity! Me and Keith (the missionary I work with) will be starting a sponsorship program for the kids in the slum. The focus of this program will be to provide the uniforms and supplies needed in order for a child to attend school. Education is a major key to breaking the cycle of poverty so this is a great place to start. This way individuals can be matched to a specific child and be personally involved in our ministry in this slum. I will be responsable for organizing this feat by going house to house to gather information as well as post write-ups online, purchase supplies etc. God is doing some amazing things here, and I am excited and passionate to be a part of this ministry.

This month, I also had the opportunity to go to the small town of Guapiles with Keith to translate. Keith was invited to share his testimony in front of 3 church services, so my job was to essentially be his voice and deliver his message. This was my first experience translating in front of a crowd of people and it was scary. But God was so faithful and gave me the words I needed. What a stretch this was for me! I am constantly reminded that I am the clay and God the potter. He is forming me and growing me in certain areas all for his kingdom.

So as you can see, I have been really really busy. I am still working at the children´s home teaching English as well as teaching bible lessons on Saturdays at Los Guizaros so my time is pretty much filled. Needless to say....I will not be taking on anything else! Please pray for me and these ministries. I NEED your prayer!

Prayer Requests:

1) Pray that God will continue to give me the confidence needed in my ministries. God has been so good to me but I still struggle with certain insecurities in this area especially in regards to public speaking.

2) Continue to pray for my application process with CTEN (missions organization) that it will go through soon. This would help me raise much needed financial support.

3) Continue to pray for me regarding the stresses of working with those who live in extreme poverty. Its hard to see people live in extreme need, knowing that you can´t help everyone.

Anyways, thanks for your prayers, encouragement and support. All of which are crucial for me to continue in ministry here.

God Bless,

Rachel Garber
God In Action Ministries

On Calvinists, Mennonites and diversity in Christian belief

2009-07-17T09:31:00.000-07:00

Not being a Calvinist, I usually refrain from commenting on Calvinism. I follow several blogs published by fellow believers which have a Reformed focus and appreciate their faith and insights. This being the occasion of Calvin's 500th birthday, there has been introspection on the part of some as to whether present-day Calvinism is guilty of being too Calvin-centred at the expense of a focus on Christ.

I will admit that I have issues with the Reform movement as it has manifested itself historically, because it persecuted Mennonites for many years, especially in Switzerland, putting some to death (including a possible ancestor), selling others into slavery and dispossessing and exiling many more (almost all my ancestors).

I don't take this history as a reflection on Calvinist theology, except to say that some aspects of it lend themselves to abuse by the flesh. Specifically, if someone doesn't believe that God loves everyone, then he won't feel much obligated to love everyone else either, especially those he identifies as reprobate. Ideas have consequences, and the fruit of that way of thinking has shown itself in the mistreatment by Calvinists of Anabaptists in Switzerland, Catholics in Ireland and natives in Pennsylvania.

But one might say the same thing about the Christian division of mankind into the saved and the unsaved. The abuse of a doctrine does not invalidate it; it is more a testimony to the ability of fallen human nature to twist divine truth to its own ends. In the hands of the unregenerate even the gospel can become a terrible thing.

As far as Calvinism being a basis of fellowship, and sometimes being more about Calvin than Christ, I can't hold that against Calvinists because it is a mirror image of the attitudes I grew up with. Among all Christian groups, we were the ones who had it right. Menno Simons or Sattler or Grebel were our touchstones. We allowed that there were saved individuals in other denominations, but they were hampered in their Christian life by defective theology. Sound familiar?

Even today, when the mainstream Mennonite movement is influenced more than ever before by the liberal or postmodern ideas of the culture around it, it has not escaped its Mennocentrism. How Menno would spin in his grave if he were to hear how some today refer to the "Mennonite faith"!

While I still self-identify as Mennonite and largely agree with classic Mennonite theology, that is not the focus of my faith. It is Christ alone who counts, Christ the living Lord, and the fellowship between those who know Him transcends the variations in theology which exist within Christian orthodoxy.

All Christian theology arises from the application of human reason to divine revelation, none of it is a substitute for the living water itself; it is at best a signpost to show where that water is. Any tendency to base fellowship upon a man-devised theological system rather than on our common life is really a form of religious humanism, no matter how much that system professes to exalt God.

May God save save us all from that and draw us together in His Spirit, especially as the time grows short!

Rachel in her own words

2009-06-11T10:29:00.000-07:00

Hi Everyone,

First off, I would just like to thank you all for your prayers and support as I am settling here in Costa Rica. God has been doing some really amazing things and he has been opening so many doors for me here. I would have never imagined that I would have so many doors open that I would have to pray about which ones to walk through!

Through my ministries, God has really been teaching me to be more of a leader and to step out from the sidelines and take on more responsibility. I am working WAY out of my comfort zone but it is teaching me to not only learn new skills, but to depend on God. I´m also realizing that I am better at some things that I never would have tried. So what exactly am I doing here?

For the last month I have been working in a Children´s home as a English teacher 3 days a week. The director originally told me that I would just be an assistant to him in class to help with pronunciation. Well, I arrived only to be told that I was the teacher and thrown into a class of very energetic kids with only a few minutes to improvise a lesson! This has been a real challenge for me as not only am I learning how to teach but I´m learning how to work with kids that come with so many issues. The majority of these kids were abused and abandoned by their parents. Most of them were old enough to remember it. They crave any type of attention whether positive or negative. So you can imagine what its like trying to not only teach, but teach in a second language. God has truly been good to me though and has given me the strength and patience to teach.

I am also working at a children´s feeding centre in a nearby neighborhood helping with the kids during the bible lessons, washing dishes and handing out food. Two people are leaving soon and it appears that I will be doing yet more teaching to the younger kids. With a bit of extra support last month, I was able to contribute to the cost to install electricity in this building. Thanks to everyone who contributed! The feeding centre is also used for bible studies in the evenings for men and women in this community. This is what I do on Saturdays.

Although I only have 4 set days per week of work, I am finding that God is filling those other days every week. I have been doing a bit of everything from helping with construction to translating for missionaries and missions teams. This week I will be helping with a missions team in Orosi with some translating and other odd jobs.

One door that has opened and that I am praying about, is the opportunity to work in the slums with a local church. I will be meeting with the pastor next week to see his ministries there. I am really excited for this because my heart and vision has always been to work with the poor and to just serve. This pastor´s church is right in the slums so its exciting to think that pretty soon I might be a part of this amazing ministry.

I will end off by asking for prayer in different areas and believe me, it is very much needed:

1. Please pray for the childrens home. They are currently running 4000.00 dollars short every month and have been operating on loans. This has been very stressful for the director there. Also pray for me as I learn how to teach and pray that I would be patient and loving.

2. Please pray for me. As I am surrounded by so much need, sometimes it is so hard to not be able to help in a financial way. Pray that God will give me discernment on which ministries to help with my time and also that God will move the hearts of people who can help in the areas that I can´t.

3. I have applied to a missions organization. Please pray that I will be accepted quickly. The process can take months before and if I am accepted. I know that this would open doors to much needed support financially and it would give me the ability to give tax deductible receipts.

Anyway, I hope everyone is doing well, and I would love to hear what is going on in your lives as well. Thanks for being such a blessing to me and to my ministries.

God Bless,

Rachel Garber

Rachel's ministry update

2009-06-10T21:41:00.000-07:00

Back in April (it seems like so long ago now) I shared our daughter's move to Costa Rica to carry out independent ministry. Now, after two months in country, Rachel reports that ministry opportunities are multiplying to the point that she has to pray about which to accept. One of the reasons for this is that a surprising number of North American missionaries in Costa Rica don't speak Spanish and therefore welcome her help in their ministries.

At this time Rachel is scheduled for 4 days a week working in a feeding centre and teaching children in an orphanage. In addition to that she will be interpreting for a short term mission tour group which is being hosted by one of her missionary contacts.

An established missionary, Keith Britton, has this to say about Rachel on his blog at http://keithbritton.blogspot.com/ (the caps are his):

THIS PAST MONTH I WELCOMED A NEW MEMBER TO GOD IN ACTION MINISTRY, “RACHEL GARBER“.SHE COMES TO US FROM “HIGHLAND MENNONITE BRETHREN CHURCH” IN CALGERY ALBERTO, CANADA. TO SAY SHE IS JUST A BLESSING WOULD BE AN UNDERESTIMATE. SHE IS A WONDERFUL BLESSING THAT GOD INSPIRED TO COME HERE TO BE ON MISSION WITH HIM IN COSTA RICA TO HELP HELP THE CHILDREN AND FAMILIES THAT LIVE IN POVERTY OR WITHOUT PARENTS TO BETTER UNDERSTAND HIS LOVE AND MERCY AND GRACE THROUGH CHRIST JESUS.

WHAT IS REALLY COOL, IS THAT SHE ALREADY SPEAKS SPANISH AND HAS ALREADY BEEN TRANSLATING FOR ME. (I CAN SPEAK OK, BUT HAVE A HARD TIME UNDERSTANDING SPANISH). AS OF NOW, SHE WILL BE HELPING AT LOS QUIZAROS (WERE WE FEED THE CHILDREN) EVERY SATURDAY AND TEACHING ENGLISH AT AN ORPHANAGE UP THE ROAD FROM MY CENTER IN CORONADO ON MONDAY AND TUESDAYS. SHE CAN ALSO HELP ME ADMINISTRATIVELY, RACHEL HAS OPENED HER HEART TO SERVE GOD WHEREVER HE IS.

SHE IS AN INDEPENDENT MISSIONARY LIKE MY SELF, …PLEASE WELCOME HER TO GOD IN ACTION MINISTRY ON MISSIONS IN COSTA RICA.

......and strikes back!

2009-05-28T21:56:00.000-07:00

I am typing this with 3 fingers of my right hand, primarily to occupy my mind during T3 withdrawal (a decision I am beginning to reconsider). The good news is that I no longer have nausea, the bad news - well let’s just say that I have good minutes and then I have bad minutes. But since I am writing this anyway, I’ll share it to let those who are interested know exactly what happened. By the way, thank you very much to all who have left their prayers and wishes for us. I really desire your continued prayers, especially for Diane.

Diane and I were involved in an accident on our motorcycle at about 6:00 pm Saturday. The situation really blindsided me. We were going 55 kmh west bound in the the left lane of 16th Ave NW a few blocks before Home Rd when a car travelling ahead of me in the right lane slowed down and waved out a guy who was waiting to pull out from a driveway on the right. He peeled out across the westbound lanes to make a left on 16th, saw me and stopped dead across my lane.

I had 50 ft to react. Couldn't go right, there was that car stopped in the right lane, couldn't go left, there was oncoming traffic. All I could do was hammer both brakes and wait. My front wheel locked and we went down and just had enough time to bounce and tumble once before I slammed into the car. Diane missed the car and rolled to a stop beside me. We were both conscious but groaning.

Diane had multiple fractures in her right tibia, just below the knee. I understand the joint is uninvolved. She will need surgery for that once the swelling subsides, as well as to replace a chip out of her cheekbone. The small mercy in her case is that I had bought a Kevlar jacket for her just before the accident, so she was spared from road rash.

I hit the car facing backward as I rolled along the pavement, contacted its front tire around my right shoulder blade, broke that as well as 5 ribs both front and back. The tumble itself blew out my left wrist, tore the flesh of my right pinkie finger clear away from the bone and gave me road rash on both arms and knees.

I’ve rerun the accident in my mind and wondered if there was any way I could’ve/ should’ve avoided it. But I don’t know. I usually watch for those scenarios when I drive and try to make eye contact when I see someone waiting to pull out, If not, I will slow down. But in this case, we were in the second lane out from the curb with traffic in the lane between us. The vehicle of the “considerate” driver who waved out the other guy was also screening him from my vision and me from his. The other guy of course was wrong to trust her wave and not look for himself, but the ironic thing is that the person who is most at fault for this will never be charged. Does she even know what she did wrong?

As I was lying on the operating table, the surgeon leaned over and said, "What were you riding?"

"A Vulcan 750"

"So are your riding days over?"

"No."

"Well if you are to continue riding, I suggest you get a newer and larger bike. That model is a little small to be riding two up."

I kid you not, those were the doctor's orders. But I'm taking that under advisement for now.

The Midlife strikes

2009-04-26T09:28:00.001-07:00

In February when Diane and I were in Maui a shortage of rental cars on the island forced us to rent a motorcycle as an alternative for the duration of our stay there. For 10 days we rode around together on 2 different Harleys, a Buell and a Vulcan. It was a blast, Diane actually got to feel comfortable riding on the back and for me it brought back memories of an earlier time when for 2 1/2 years I went almost everywhere astraddle a 1969 Honda CB450.

The 450 was a sweet machine. An engine size of 450cc may not seem like much today, but at the time it came out it was the largest Japanese bike available. It had a top end of 104 mph (109 with the wind blowing just right) and cruised quite easily at 80 mph. Its only drawback at such speeds was the engine vibration which travelled up through the handlebars and rendered my hands numb after an hour or so. (This was before the days of counter-balanced, rubber mounted engines.)

Some have criticised the CB450 as topheavy, but I found it to be not only agile but very well balanced and stable on the highway as well. I once had a catastrophic blowout of the rear tire at 60 mph on the 401 near Windsor, Ontario. The flapping tire caused the bike to yaw uncontrollably up to 45 degrees from the direction of travel, first to the left, then to the right and then to the left again before I slowed down enough to pull off and stop. Each time the rear end threw itself from one side to the other, the motorcycle amazingly seemed to self-correct its steering without any conscious input on my part. (Or was it the hand of God? I guess I'll find out when I get to heaven!)

Such hair raising moments aside, I enjoyed every mile I rode the 450 - all 14,000 of them. I finally sold the bike in 1978 when Diane and I moved out west, and aside from a six month period in the 90's I have been off two wheels ever since. Until Maui, that is.

All this is a roundabout way of saying that I got the motorcycle bug back, and started shopping for a bike after we returned from Hawaii.

I decided that I was too old for this:

and that I was not yet old and fat enough for this:

Besides, the price tag on both models was a little rich for my budget. So I settled for something a little more age-appropriate:

This is a 1986 Kawasaki 750 Vulcan. It is a light cruiser now out of production which was a standard for about 20 years and is now considered somewhat of a classic. It's a good way to go for a used bike - proven reliability and parts are easy to get. It cost me all of $1,900.

Like me, it was in its prime 20 years ago but has been reasonably well maintained. When it was rebuilt 8000 km back it was bored out to more like 850cc, so it may have improved on its designed top speed of 124 mph. It is unlikely however that I will ever find out if that is so. (I will make that concession to age - or to the wisdom which comes with age!)

The motorcycle handles well though with Diane on pillion I find it wallows a bit on the bumps and wanders slightly on a tight curve. I'll try tightening the suspension which should fix the first problem. I not sure what I can do about the latter however. On the cruiser frame the centre of gravity is a little further back than what I am used to, and at 483 lbs I'm guessing that the bike is not quite heavy enough to offset the effect of Diane sitting over the rear wheel. As a result, the front wheel is just a little light, hence the wandering.

The carburetor flattens out somewhat at 7000 rpm, which is not surprising since it has sat for 3 years. Taking it apart and otherwise servicing the bike will be a weekend project once tax season is over.

Then I'll be able to try its legs.

One flew away.....

2009-04-16T22:08:00.001-07:00

Ten days ago I returned from a week in Costa Rica, having flown down to accompany our youngest daughter Rachel in her move to that country. Rachel will be serving there with one or more local missions in outreach to the poorer people in the slums around San Jose. She doesn’t plan to return in the foreseeable future.

This move has been a long time coming. When she was a child, Rachel gravitated to the missionary stories in the church library; she had no notion of becoming one herself, but such books drew her in a way she couldn’t explain. It was not until she went with her church youth group to inner-city L.A. on a short term mission trip that Rachel began to get the idea that such service might be for her.

In her high school junior year Rachel asked us for permission to go to Latin America on a student exchange. We put her off until graduation, but when she finished school she hadn’t forgotten. Rachel worked a year, and then with her savings and a newly arranged line of credit she launched out and went to Costa Rica to study Spanish in a home stay program for nine months.

Upon her return from Costa Rica, Rachel worked for another year and then enrolled in the Calvary Chapel Bible College in Lima, Peru. During this time Rachel felt a growing, newly definite sense that God was calling her into missions. It was not so much an aspiration or an ambition so much as an imperative, an undeniable sense that this is something that she must do in obedience to God’s Spirit.

In reponse to this, Rachel began working singlemindedly to pay off her debts upon her return from Peru last April. Her goal was to become free to go back to serve in Costa Rica on a full time, permanent basis. She largely succeeded in reaching her goal and now she has followed through.

In doing so she is going against the grain of conventional thinking. Rachel has no training other than the year in bible school, no sending mission (she is being supported directly by family and friends) and no firm arrangements at the other end. She also has had to come to terms with the knowledge that any marriage hopes she might have (and she is a normal young woman in this respect) must take second place to God’s call for her.

Rachel also has been discouraged at times by the voices of our comfortable Christian culture: “What are your qualifications?”; “Why do you need to go away? There is so much to do here”; “What about a career? You need to think about your future” and perhaps most insidiously, “The era of Western missions is over; don't go, just send money”. (Rachel says that when she first encountered this thesis in K.P. Yohannan’s Revolution in World Missions she became so angry that she threw the book across the room.)

But what Rachel does have is our wholehearted support. We are very proud of her decision to put God first in her life, we trust her ability to discern His call and we know that whether or not she is specifically supposed to serve in San Jose, she is walking God’s way and He will steer her right.

Still, it’s not easy to see Rachel go. As our youngest she is the one we feel most protective toward even at the age of 23. And she is a young 23, dewy-eyed and innocent looking. No one would know to look at her that at 19 she traveled alone in a dodgy part of Nicaragua, or that she made her way at age 21 through bandit-infested jungle to visit the Peruvian headwaters of the Amazon.

As the time approached for her departure, I became more and more aware that in the busyness of our arrangements we would have very little quality time together. I therefore asked Rachel if she would mind if I flew down with her. “Since this is to be your future”, I said, “I want to be the one who walks you down the aisle into your new life.” And she agreed.

We flew out on a red-eye flight March 30, arriving in San Jose about noon. We rented a small third world style SUV called a Terios and spent the next four days at Manuel Antonio beach on the Pacific coast and driving around the interior before ending up in the Orosí valley near Cartago Thursday. During these days Rachel and I walked and explored and prayed together. We talked perhaps more than we ever had- about her dreams and her feelings and how God had brought her to this point. It was a precious time and passed all too quickly.

On Friday we spent an hour wandering around Desamparados looking for the place where Rachel would be staying. Our job was made especially difficult by the fact that Costa Rica has very few street signs or numeric addresses. All we had to go on was the vague description “700 metres south of the playing field close to Dos Cercas.” We spent all of our time looking without success for these two landmarks, until in our random driving we stumbled on the condo complex itself. Only then could we backtrack on the directions to find the playing field and fix its location so that we could find the home again the next day.

That night I treated Rachel to a fairly sumptuous meal at the Outback steak house in Escazú. We were both aware of the irony that the price of this feast was a quarter of what would be her monthly budget for living expenses (Rachel is adamant that she will live according to local standards). Say farewell to North American affluence!

The next morning I brought Rachel back to her new home at which we met the woman whose apartment she would be sharing. Yahaira (sounds like Elvira) is quite friendly and invited us in to chat for a little while. When she asked Rachel in Spanish if our family was Christian I found myself giving her an impromptu testimony of faith.

Our introduction stretched to include the serving of a crepa and coffee and the review of Yahaira’s family pictures (one can’t decently rush these things in Latin America, even with a plane to catch), but the moment came when I could delay no longer. I gave Rachel a hug and a kiss and that was that. Our little girl was on her own.

Primeval Sin

2009-04-07T08:33:00.000-07:00

On my flight back to Calgary early Sunday morning I sat beside a businessman who was flying in to to see his sales rep in the city. As we landed he said "My salesman will be here to pick me up".

Since it was 1:30 am and there were plenty of taxis at the curb, I thought that was a little over the top on the salesman's part and commented "Wow, that's dedication".

"Well, he knows what to do to keep his job in a recession."

My neighbour must have read my mind, because after a pause he continued in an attempt to justify himself: "In these economic times things get a little more primeval."

I'm not sure what the man meant by "primeval" but in the context I gathered he was describing a Darwinian order of relationships based on raw power: dog eat dog, survival of the fittest, etc. In other words, he was pulling his employee out of bed at an ungodly hour rather than pay a $25 cab fare - just because he could do so.

I could only shake my head at how foolish and shortsighted this fellow was. Did he really think that his employee could not make him pay for this in some other, more significant way? Many employers really do not understand how often their people go the second mile for them unasked, and how poorly the business can operate when they stop doing so. And they forget that grinding the peons will only make the good ones flee at the first opportunity. But sin is like that. It's not only wrong in itself, but it's self-defeating as well.

I retrieved my luggage and walked outside to catch a taxi. I was going to stay at my son and daughter-in-law's for the night, but since I could get my own ride I didn't wish to disturb their sleep.

Jesus believes in you

2009-03-20T14:33:00.000-07:00

The lyrics below were written by our son a few years ago. The title may raise a few doctrinal eyebrows, but if you read it through you will see how it makes perfect sense. The song encourages us not to have faith in ourselves, but to have faith in God's purpose for us and in the sufficiency of His Son's life in us.

Jesus Believes in You

He kneels down to wash their feet,
They know not what he sees
The night before He dies,
The next day to be crucified
And they wonder why
As He looks up at these men,
They are broken, imperfect reflections
But He doesn’t just see them as they are
He looks on past the scars
Sees who they can be,
When He dies and sets them free

Jesus believes in you,
Jesus can see right through,
He sees past the pain
Past the guilt and shame
Jesus believes in you

After the deed is done,
After Satan thinks he’s won
The disciples run away,
Hide in fear and shame
Peter was one of them
Back to the nets he went.
What kind of man was he?
Denying his Lord times three

Jesus believed in him
Called him to feed his sheep
He looked beyond his pain
Past his guilt and shame

Jesus believed in him
Saw who he could be
That in His name
Peter could set men free
Jesus believed in him

So what are you going to do?
When you screw up, without a clue?
Will you turn your back and run?
Or will you stop and face the Son?
Will you dwell on your shame?
Or will you find hope in Jesus’ name?
Look and see the truth
Jesus sees life and Him in you
Jesus believes in you

- Carl Garber, 2006

Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think of anything as being from ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God, who also made us sufficient as ministers of the new covenant...

II Cor. 3:5,6

The Innocents and the timeshare (I)

2009-03-16T19:40:00.000-07:00

Two years ago we went down to Puerta Vallarta on one of those all-inclusive packages which allow you to fly in and stay for a week at a three star hotel for about the normal cost of the airfare. When we landed we somehow got signed up for a timeshare presentation in exchange for a handful of free activities. It seemed like a no-brainer. Three hundred dollars worth in excursions in return for a few hours of our time. What could we lose?

As it happened, we almost lost the price of a timeshare. Until I experienced it, I never would have given that much credit to the ability of an accomplished sales team to finesse me into buying something I didn't really want. In the end, my wife saved me. She usually defers to my judgment in matters financial, but as we moved through the steps of the purchase, I noticed that she looked more and more uneasy.

If I have learned nothing else in our married life, it is to respect Diane's gut instinct, so I woke up and dug in my heels. It took a hour and several sessions of the rack and thumbscrews to get the staff to unwind a deal which we had already signed, but in the end we left free and unencumbered by both a property we didn't need and a debt we couldn't really afford.

Later in the week, we were approached in downtown Puerta Vallarta by a hawker who offered us $300 cash to go to yet another timeshare presentation. When I respectfully declined, he asked why.

"I've already done that. Too much pressure."
"Where did you go, Señor?"
"To Grand Mayan."
"Oh, Señor, they are the hardest sales team. They have a saying: 'Make the prospect buy or cry.' If you can resist them, you can handle my timeshare people, no problem."

So we moved on, having learned two valuable lessons. One, that if we ever ended up broke and stranded there, we could survive by taking money off Mexican timeshare hawkers; and secondly, that we were now well and truly immune to such sales tactics....

.....until we went to Hawaii last month, that is. And then somehow we did it again!

It started the same way as in Mexico. When we went to book the standard activities - the luau, the snorkelling, the trip up the volcano, we found that cost was much cheaper if we would only agree to attend a timeshare presentation up in Kahana. Diane was reluctant but I was confident that we would be in and out in 90 minutes, no problem. After all, we had survived the Grand Mayan!

As it happened, the affair lasted 4 hours, and once again we signed on the dotted line. I won't go into our mental processes, but I'm sure it would the subject of a fascinating psychological study. If scientists can figure out why we purchased a timeshare after walking in determined not to buy anything, then perhaps we would be able to understand why Adam and Eve bought the serpent's bill of goods.

The one thing I will say in our favour is that we signed knowing that under Hawaiian law we had seven days to rescind the deal without penalty. That was almost precisely the time we had left in Maui, so we had time to think things over before leaving the island.

The deal had two basic elements: the use of the timeshare and membership in a timeshare exchange program. Each element had an attractive aspect as we understood the sales presentation: (1) should we wish not to use it, we could rent out the studio unit we had bought into without restrictions for upwards of $200 per night, allowing us to net $700 after maintenance fees for our annual week; and (2) the property would be rated as a 5-star one bedroom suite in the exchange program, allowing us to change out our week in Maui for a week in a high-end resort anywhere else in the world. As a bonus, we would able to book additional weeks in similar properties elsewhere for only $400.

However, before finalizing the deal we had to check those understandings against reality, so on Day 5 I sat down with my laptop in the Maui Lu lobby and did some online research. I was unable to assess the quality of the exchange program because we had not yet received a user id for their website, so I looked at timeshare itself. As I did, I found that our understanding was false in two respects:

1) The unit we had bought into rented on VRBO for only $130-140 per night in high season. Since our maintenance fee was $656 per week, that meant that the incremental benefit of ownership over renting was only $300 per week. This little bit of information fundamentally changed our perception of the deal.

On these terms payback on the purchase price of USD 13,500 would take 45 years - without taking into account the time value of money (please forgive me if I turn a little geeky here; this sort of thing is what I do). If I assumed a fairly modest annual discount rate of 5%, the value of the cash flow in perpetuity was still only $6,000. (This was confirmed by further research after we returned to Canada; the identical unit was listed online for as low as USD 6,500.)

2) So maybe the timeshare itself wasn't a great deal, but perhaps the exchange program would make up for it? However, the same vacation rental sites we referred to also described the property that our unit was in as a 3-star.

This planted doubts in our mind as to the validity of the benefits promised in the program. If we could change out out our 3-star studio for a 5-star one bedroom elsewhere, someone was getting scammed. Or would we be receiving tarted up 3-star accommodations in exchange ourselves? Regardless of the answer to that last question, the trust factor was gone, and without trust there is no transaction. We decided to revoke our purchase.

At first I was annoyed at the salesman's bald misrepresentations, but as I reflected I realized that I was the victim of something much more subtle. The salesman's sin was one of omission, not misrepresentation. The information he had given us was in fact correct - for the property in which the initial sales presentation took place. But somewhere along the line we had been moved over to an adjoining building where the unit we eventually bought was located, without being advised of the difference between the 2 locations. It was a variation of the old bait and switch.

On Day 7 we returned to the timeshare sales office with the completed rescission form in hand....

To be continued.....

The Innocents Abroad

2009-03-01T21:46:00.000-08:00

We are back from 2 weeks in Maui and Oahu.

Our stay there was a very good time, undisturbed by the distractions of daily life. My business partner called once to get my input regarding a situation in the office, but then he stopped himself, apologized, saying "Never mind, it's your holidays, it can wait till you get back."

Not that our trip was without its hitches. There were no unreserved rental cars available on the island, so we rented a motorcycle for the duration of our stay on Maui. Since it was Hawaii, I tried riding in shorts and promptly got a nasty burn on my calf which kept me out of the water for the duration of our stay. As a result we spent 10 days bombing around Maui variously riding a Harley Dynaglide, a Buell and finally a Vulcan.

It was a lot of fun and brought me back to an earlier time when I pretty much lived on a bike for several years. We rode helmetless...I just because I could and Diane because no helmet could be found small enough to fit her head properly (and a loose helmet is worse than none at all). Diane learned to be comfortable on the back once she acquired the skills of a motorcycle passenger (don't try to lean, just be the bike).

There is a surprising amount of island to cover on Maui and we didn't get through it all, but we were able to circumnavigate Haleakala. It's a nice run. The road runs more or less straight to Paia and then winds the remaining 30 miles to Hana around 600+ curves, passing through groves of bamboo and under the mist of waterfalls.

Coming around the backside of the volcano, we passed through miles of range land before coming out in the uplands on its western slope. If I ignored the ocean I might almost have thought myself in Alberta.

In between the riding we found the time to bicycle down Haleakala, do the luau thing, go on a sunset cruise and almost buy a timeshare (more on that later).

We hopped around beween accommodations but enjoyed most of all the 3 days during which we shared a tourist bungalow with a 60ish missionary couple on their honeymoon and a doctor. We would all go out separately during the day and then end up hanging around together in the late evening sharing food, wine and stories. Lots of stories - we had almost 3 centuries of combined life experience including travel and cross-cultural involvement.

The doctor is not a believer, but I got a chance to share our faith with him when on our final evening there he leaned across the table and asked "Tell me, what would you say is Christianity's greatest contribution to the world?"

"Love", I said.
"What do you mean?
"Love, not as an ethical system, but as something you receive from God so that it overflows in a natural way to others...."

And so it went for 2 hours. It was a blessing to know that God was using us, that even in the pursuit of pleasure we and the other couple were able to keep a divine appointment for the sake of God's grace in this man's life.

The last 3 days of our holiday we hopped over to Oahu and stayed in Waikiki. I had learned from my experience and reserved a mid-sized car, which the agency upgraded to a Cadillac for no extra charge. We explored the island, did some hiking, sailed on a catamaran off Waikiki beach and sampled the island's cuisine. Not much food though that was identifiably Hawaiian. There were sushi bars and Chinese restaurants everywhere, and even in the small towns it seems Korean fare is offered at every lunch counter.

Oahu has a very different feel from Maui. The Pearl City/Honolulu/Waikiki conurbation dominates the island making it more urban vs. Maui's rural. The city especially is very Asian, or should I say Eurasian; Waikiki is full of Japanese and many of the inhabitants seem an indeterminate mixture of Japanese, Chinese, Hawaiian, white and Filipino. The process of racial fusion seems far advanced here - much more than at home, which is still pretty much a mosaic of cultures. I wondered if we were looking at Canada's future.

The holiday was a sweet time for us. I so much enjoyed riding around together, feeling Diane holding on to me behind and speaking together as we rode. The experience took me back and it felt as though Diane were my girlfriend again rather than my wife of 31 years. And through it all like a thread was the pain and care of my wound which drained steadily and later required treatment for infection (it is still not healed). But somehow that only added to the piquancy of the experience in a way I can't explain.

On February 24 we flew out on a red eye flight, arriving in Calgary at noon the next day thoroughly exhausted but content. This holiday was easily the most expensive one we have ever taken, but it it was well worth it.

I'll fly away

2009-02-08T11:47:00.000-08:00

I am invoicing to the music of Danilo Montero: Te Alabaré Mi Buen Jesús. It is the Lord's Day, but I know that God will forgive me because I am about to take a two week sabbath, which is why I'm in the office on Sunday morning trying to get through a slug of paperwork. On Monday evening Diane and I will fly away to Maui, returning from Honolulu on February 25.

I will bring my laptop, but due to the nature of our vacations I expect to post only irregularly, if at all. On our agenda is a bike ride down down Haleakala, parasailing and perhaps for myself (I'm toying with this one, thinking how to get Diane comfortable with the idea) getting started on my "A" License in skydiving. We each jumped tandem in Mexico a few years ago, so I know I can get out of the plane; it's just getting down on my own that I would like to learn now.

I wish anyone who drops in here God's blessing in the meantime.

The Shack and the passion of God

2009-02-04T08:45:00.000-08:00

We've just gotten through the chapter entitled A Piece of Pi in our study group and I am realizing more and more how much the book owes to the gospel of John. In fact, this chapter is more or less a fictional exposition of the relations within the Trinity as revealed to us in John.

Overlooking the elements in the book which I personally find irritating - like the anti-authoritarianism and disdain for the organized church - overlooking all that, Paul Young is on to something very important here in his emphasis on God's relational, empathic nature.

We see this first of all when Mack meets the Father and sees the nail holes in His (sorry, I just can't say Her) hand. Elousia goes on to explain that this was because He was with Jesus on the cross, that He had never actually abandoned His Son even though Jesus felt like it at the time.

Paul Young has been accused by some on account of this of the ancient heresy of Patripassianism, which I (and I suspect Young as well) had never heard of before this, but I don't think the charge will stick. The image of the Father bearing the stigmata of His Son's sufferings seems to me a very fair representation of the intimate nature of their relationship as described throughout John:

"For the Father loves the Son, and shows Him all things that He Himself does..." "Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father in Me." "...the Father abiding in Me does His works."

Jesus' suffering on the cross was pre-eminently a work of the Father ("God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself"); are we not to believe that His Father was abiding in Him at that time as well?

The significance of the stigmata in the book is that because of the closeness of their union within the Trinity, the Father felt through His Son the suffering of the penalties of sin just as much as Jesus did. This may be theologically unprovable but it is emotionally authentic to the description Jesus gives of His Father, and for a work of fiction, that's good enough.

So kudos to Paul Young for bringing out this neglected truth of God's love. And it is neglected. Why do we go on about the great love that God showed in sending His Son and yet at the same time believe in our hearts that the God Who is Love somehow loves less deeply than we do ourselves? We so often make of His love a hieratic, dispassionate thing rather than something that is tender, empathic and passionate. No wonder many Christians are emotionally starved and burned out.

In the group we looked at Jesus' encounter with Mary and Martha at Lazarus' tomb for an example of this empathy. Why did Jesus weep? Not for Lazarus - He was about to raise him. Not for the sisters - He was about to fill them with joy. Rather, He wept for the pain they were feeling then and there; because He loved them, He felt their pain as they did, just as we do ourselves when someone we love is suffering.

We discussed how this knowledge applies to our daily walk. We accept that God brings us through hard experiences to perfect His nature in us. But he is not just the surgeon, steady and detached, who is bringing us through sufferings that He Himself has no sense of. Because He is in us, He is in a way on the table with us and suffers along with us. Just knowing that can help us trust in His grace that much more in our trials.

In other words, because of the nature of love, "Abide in Me, and I in you" must be a two way street experientially. It is not just me partaking of Jesus' life and grace, but it is Him receiving and experiencing something through me as well. The implications of this are very deep and I'm not sure I've got to the bottom of it.

And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him. (I John 4:16)

The idol of Tactic

2009-01-30T09:34:00.000-08:00

I think I've finally put my finger on one of the subtly off-putting aspects of The Shack’s depiction of God. It lies not so much in how He is depicted, but that He is depicted at all. Jesus I have no problem with, nor the Holy Spirit (though a dove would suit me better), but the Father has never appeared as Himself in bodily form and to show Him as such, even imaginatively, seems a little…..transgressive.

Young has been criticized by some for setting up an image of God and thus breaking the second commandment. Technically that is not true because a verbal description of God as in the book is not a “graven image” of Him by any stretch. In spirit I think it’s probably also okay because Young is not seriously putting forward an image of what God actually looks like but only describing how He chooses to present himself in the context of the story (this is fiction, after all). So I’m prepared to cut him some slack as an artist. After all, it’s hard to write a dialogue with God where the protagonist is talking to an empty space.

However, it’s worth thinking a little about the ancient prohibition against images. Is it still relevant today?

I've done business for years with an order of nuns and recognize their faith as a genuine belief in Christ as their Saviour. In their residences they have crucifixes and artistic representations of Jesus and Mary. Though I don’t make use of such images myself, I know they don't worship them and I personally have no issue with that. However a statue that is just a statue to me might be a stumbling block to someone else

As an example of that, I remember a Catholic church I visited in Tactic, Guatemala which in its sanctuary has a large, somewhat gruesome crucifix. The people venerate it and call it "el Señor de Xi-Ixim" (the Lord of Xi-Ixim, Xi-Ixim being the name of the place) and pray to it for miracles. A little room off the sanctuary is filled with testimonial plaques from people who have been healed or had their prayers answered.

Most of the plaques are addressed to el Señor de Xi-Ixim, but one of them gives the game away. It thanks "Señor Xi-Ixim" (Lord Xi-Ixim), which also happens to be the name of the local Mayan pre-Columbian deity. To clinch the identification, outside the church, directly in front of the main entrance, stands an altar covered with the remains of burnt offerings to Xi-Ixim.

Are the crucifixes of the gentle sisters idols? Not at all. Is this crucifix in Tactic one? I would say yes. It is a full-on idol in the old school Canaanite sense - its worship not just the mental error of uneducated peasants, it is an instrument of deception through which dark powers work to enslave the worshippers.

I don't blame the church entirely for this. I don't think it intentionally set out to create an idol in the crucifix. But its use of the crucifix as visual imagery has put a stumbling block in the way of the people which allows them to perpetuate their idolatry under the guise of a worship of Christ.

The upshot of all this is that though the old commandment given to Israel applies as a law only to them in the context of the Mosaic covenant, it does contain an important spiritual principle which God means for us to apply to our lives today. As Paul wrote:

Now all these things happened to them as examples, and they were written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages have come. (I Cor. 10:11)

True love does leave traces

2009-01-23T08:58:00.000-08:00

I once came across a reference to a Leonard Cohen song, True Love Leaves No Traces, and became curious as to its lyrics. I obtained a recording of the song and found it disappointing, which didn't surprise me since I am not a Cohen fan.

However the song got me thinking about the truth of its statement and I realized that Cohen got it only half right. He was referring to that rare kind of love between a man and a woman which needs no physical consummation and therefore leaves no traces in the beloved. But the deeper truth is that true love does indeed leave traces - in the lover.

These marks endure. They are not replaced by other loves, because each love that is truly love is tied uniquely to its beloved.

So it is for a mother who loses a baby. She may go on to have other children whom she loves deeply, but a piece of her heart will always and only belong to the child she lost. Her love for it will not be displaced by the others because those are different loves, also dear, also loved uniquely but none in any way a substitute for each other.

So it is also with God's love. Have you ever thought about how God loves you really, personally, uniquely? That Jesus' hands were pierced and He died specifically for you?

In the same way, God's grand plan is not just one of general benevolence, but He intends His kingdom to come in your life in a way which is unique and irreplaceable. It consists first and foremost in an intimate relationship with you through Jesus Christ which at the deepest level will not be shared with anyone else.

I caught a glimpse of this in Jesus' word to the church in Ephesus:

To him who overcomes I will give some of the hidden manna to eat. And I will give him a white stone, and on the stone a new name written which no one knows except him... (Rev. 2:17)

God's whole purpose in your life begins in this relationship with Jesus when you receive Him, and unfolds from it like a flower. He wants to bring it about in its fulness - not just in eternity, but as much as you allow Him to here and now.

If you have put your faith in in Jesus Christ, please know that the whole sum of your spiritual growth is measured by how you grow in this communion with Him.

If you are not yet a believer, this is the inheritance which is waiting for you today. Please don't let it pass you by!

Can a woman forget her nursing child, And not have compassion on the son of her womb? Surely they may forget, Yet I will not forget you. See, I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands.
Isaiah 49:16

The God of sloppy kisses

2009-01-22T15:21:00.000-08:00

It doesn't really bother me that Paul Young portrays God the Father as a woman per se. George Macdonald did so with profound effect over a century ago. But.....Aunt Jemima?? Macdonald's Wise Woman, whether kind or severe, was always gracious, but never to be trifled with and certainly not a dispenser of sloppy kisses. Young's though is not merely an African-American woman; she's a stereotyped African-American woman, and as such comes across to me as cartoonish and silly.

To see God rendered this way is like coming across one of the earlier attempts to animate the Lord of the Rings; it falls so far short that one wants to cry out "Noooo! Don't even try!"

This I believe is symptomatic of a wider problem with Paul Young's view of God. And that is, how shall I say it, the trivialization of God and of the impact He has on those who encounter Him.

What I mean is this: that when men encounter God in Scripture - or better to say, He encounters them - they are never unmoved. They fall on their faces, they repent in dust and ashes, they cry woe to themselves - in short, they are undone. Job, for example, after 30 chapters of nonstop kvetching, is silenced when God finally appears to him. The man who couldn't wait to confront his God suddenly has no more questions.

In The Shack, both the order of questioning and the role of questioner seem to be reversed from Job's experience. Mack has always brooded about the absence of God, until God appears to him in order to cajole him out of his sulks and entertain any and all questions he may have. With the opening of a door, we go from the Silent God to the God Who Can't Stop Talking. While Mack is taken aback by the idea of actually speaking to God, the God he faces has all the gravitas of a talk show host and we are not surprised that Mack is not moved in any deep way by God's very presence.

It seems to me that this portrayal is a deeply unworthy view of God. I understand what Young is trying to do. He wants to give us a picture of a God who will stoop to woo us - and in a certain sense that is correct. God spoke to Elijah in a still, small voice, Jesus humbled himself by "taking the form of a bondservant" and Augustine heard God's voice as that of a child chanting "take and read".

But the ingredient of awe is completely absent in Young's picture of God as a jolly, smoochy aunt. It lacks....verismilitude (to use a literary term). God is simply not like that, not in Scripture nor in my own experience.

God explains this approach to Mack as a device to disarm his resentment against God as an imagined cold and distant father and to engage him in dialogue. However, since we all know that any boy over the age of 10 would recoil from such embraces, it is hard to imagine them having much disarming effect on a grown man.

As a result, it is hard for me to enter imaginatively into the ensuing dialogue as a conversation with God. As I read it, in my mind's eye I keep seeing this scrolling disclaimer as if across a television screen: "literary vehicle for author's views".

And the whole notion of God needing to dialogue with Mack to bring him around also seems counterintuitive. This idea is encapsulated in God's statement "I often find that getting head issues out of the way first makes the heart stuff easier to work on later". Again, this seems to be the wrong way around from how God really works.

In my observation, it's not the head issues which typically keep people from God. More often, it is precisely the heart issues which do - and the head issues are thrown up as a defensive screen. When the Holy Spirit is working, a single word will find the chink in the armour and the proud tower of intellectual opposition comes down.

I believe that the reason it works this way is this: when God reveals Himself to anyone, He gives them a direct (though limited) perception of His nature. If I have misperceived Him as a cold indifferent father, the misperception falls away before the direct sense of Him as someone who loves me and knows me by name. No words are needed, God does not need to cajole me or draw me into dialogue.

Nor did He need to do so with Job. That is why Job, unlike Mack, fell down and fell silent before God. He was not just awed or intimidated into ending his questioning of Him but as he said: "I had heard of You second hand, but now I have met You."

And that was enough.

The Shack: God and gender

2009-01-22T08:22:00.000-08:00

In The Shack Paul Young does a great job of trying to address the heart issues which many hurting people have with God.

I disagree with many of the answers, though I applaud the attempt. Paul Young obviously knows the Bible well, but his weakness is that he tends to provide his own answers when those he finds there are unpalatable to him.

All the same, The Shack is a great discussion starter, and even the parts where it is off base provide a good opportunity to go back to Scripture for the real answers, which is why we are covering it in our home group.

We discussed the gender issue last night, and the conclusion was that we should allow God to speak for Himself. If he presents Himself as a male, then it is His intent for us to relate to Him as such. If one wants to be politically correct in referring to God, the essence of political correctness after all is that you refer to a person as they wish to be named.

As to why, one might observe that the first attribute God reveals to us in Scripture is that of sovereignty or authority as Creator, that He invested authority in the first man and continued to do so in his male descendants throughout Scripture, and that an instinctive desire to exert authority and leadership exists in the male personality to this day.

In speaking to us as a male then, maybe God is speaking to all of us as our proper authority, or head, in a way which would not be communicated if he presented Himself as female.

But that is speculation.

Aside from that, I personally feel that gender goes beyond biology, that there is a spiritual aspect to it as well which is reflected in our personalities as men and women. In the resurrection we will not marry, but that does not mean that we will be without gender, any more than we will be without personality.

In other words, if we are raised with glorified versions of our bodies then we will be raised up as completed men and women, not as sexless Teletubbies. And if this is so, it is reasonable to assume that after death we will remain in some sense male and female in whatever ethereal state we exist in the interim. So I question the book's statement that God should be regarded as being without gender simply because He does not have a body as we do.

The above is just a personal objection which I can neither prove nor disprove from Scripture. However, I have a more serious issue with how God is portrayed in the book which I will deal with in the next post.

Questioning God

2009-01-19T10:13:00.000-08:00

David Porter at boomerinthepew.com questions:

"The word just, or justice seems to fail me as well. Can I presume that somehow God is unjust? Somehow, using that word makes me shudder.

All this comes about, by the way, in considering God's condemnation of a fictional Masai warrior, who lives is the depths of Africa, has never heard the gospel, has not therefore been born again, dies, and subsequently spends eternity in hell."

Any believer who has any sensitivity has or does ponder about that question from time to time. If a professing Christian did not, I would really wonder if he had any inward workings of grace.

David wonders if it is not insolence to ask such a question of God, but I don't believe that it is, if it's asked sincerely and not as an invitation to doubt God. The Bible shows that God works in very different ways with those of His people who question Him, depending on their motives. Those who murmured against God fell in the wilderness (Numbers 14:27), while Jeremiah complained bitterly to God's face, even going so far as to day, "Lord, You have deceived me, and I was fooled!" and was not punished (Jer. 20:7). Instead of being consumed on the spot, he received such grace that he was able to later say, "They [Your mercies] are new every morning: great is Your faithfulness."

The difference between the two I believe is that the Israelite directed their complaints against God to justify their disobedience and wilful alienation, while Jeremiah complained to God within the context of his faith-relationship.

Not only are such questions not "punishable", but I believe that there is a spiritual value in the questioning. We need to be honest to God about our doubts and "unworthy" thoughts to keep a free and open relationship with Him. If we do, we bring them within the realm of His grace. If we try to suppress them, they will not go away; they will just stay there under the surface and poison the relationship.

And if we find it hard to understand why God can show grace to such "affronts" to His dignity, I think it is because we really lack a conception of the humility of God. But that is a fit subject for a whole 'nother post.

In the case of the "Masai" question, I don't know the answer....and perhaps it's better that I don't. If I did - if I found some explanation to justify the lost which perfectly satisfied my reason, would not my fleshly nature use it as a rationalization to close my heart off from their fate? And if I did, how could I be said to have the mind of Christ toward them?

It may be the working of God's grace which leads the believer to care enough about a total stranger's destiny to want to know God's heart on the lost. But the believer who wants to know the answer must also be willing to become the answer.

One can debate the fate of the Masai warrior....or one can go speak to him. The link below is the fascinating story of a man who did just that.

http://www.ijfm.org/PDFs_IJFM/01_3_PDFs/1_3%20Christianity%20Rediscovered%20Buswell%20fixed.pdf

Thanks to this believer's obedience, we'll have to find another hypothetical hopelessly benighted person for the purposes of David's question, because such no longer exist among the Masai. As a replacement, may I suggest the present generation of Western youth? Many have heard the name of Jesus only as a swear word and have no idea what the gospel is.

It is idle for us to wonder about God's fairness when people are living in darkness within our reach. Now that is unfair. I'm convicted that we believers really need to seek the Lord more about this.

I know from my all too inconsistent experience that I tend to stop wondering about God's purposes when I know I am living in His purpose. Somehow being the answer makes it less necessary to know the answer.

Back to the Shack

2009-01-11T21:19:00.000-08:00

We are covering William P Young's book The Shack in our church fellowship group. As we go along I will post excerpts from our discussions if I think there is anything worth sharing. However first I will give my initial take on the book:

Eugene Peterson has ranked The Shack with Pilgrim's Progress in its impact; however I think such a judgment premature in spite of the book's popularity. I would compare it instead to C.W. Sheldon's In His Steps: theologically incomplete but presenting an important truth; very popular for a season but destined to fall into obscurity until perhaps a later generation rediscovers it for a time. Move over, Prayer of Jabez.

More important than the book itself is what believers' reaction to it says about the state of the Body. It has obviously touched a nerve; the the novel has gone through our Christian community like wildfire and Mack's struggles speak to many people I know. The message to me is this: that there are many wounded believers out there and the church as a whole is not ministering to them. Many are alienated as Mack is in the book and are no longer attending fellowship; many others are still attending and doing the right churchy things, but they are inwardly alienated and their heart is no longer in it.

I have felt increasingly burdened by this state of affairs locally for some time. Just as Jesus sent His disciples to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, I wonder who will He send to the lost sheep of the house of Canmore? Or Calgary? Or Medicine Hat?

There are some sweeping statements made by the Godhead characters in The Shack which are inconsistent with Scripture as I understand it. I will touch on them but not major in them; there are much keener doctrinal eagles than I on the internet already picking at the novel's entrails. Exploring The Shack in our group I think will really mean exploring the heart issues I see in the Body and that this book addresses.

One thing I will add: I have been to Paul Young's website and by the long queues of adulatory comments there it appears that The Shack is well on its way to gathering a cult of its own. It appears that to many Paul is a surrogate pastor - almost a guru of sorts. He will need much grace not to lose his spiritual equilibrium.

Destiny's Children (II)

2009-01-09T08:38:00.000-08:00

A resort town has 4 concentric circles of community.

The outer circle is composed of tourists and seasonal visitors who come and go in a constant flux according to the seasons.

The next circle in comprises the transient staff who man the restaurant kitchens and serve tables, the hotel front desk and housekeeping. Most are young, kids on school break or exploring the world, and they come and go almost as much as the tourists. Few stay beyond a single season.

Those who do, if they stick around for say 5 years, enter the next circle in - that of long term residents ("long term" being a relative concept in a resort town). They tend to occupy more senior positions in the tourist industry and make up a fairly cosy self-regarding community in which everyone knows who each other is.

And then there's the aristocracy. These are the true locals, born and raised there, or the lifers who have settled and raised families there. Many are business owners, though it's not necessary to be one to qualify.

Abram and Sara came to Canaan as transient shepherds. The land was already theirs by God's promise, though the local aristocracy didn't know it. To them the couple were drifters and riffraff, not anyone they would invest a lot of time in getting to know. Not unlike resort staff. But God said to Abram, "I give to you and your descendants after you the land in which you are a stranger".

Diane and I drifted into Calgary 30 years ago. We had been married a year and were almost penniless, our only asset being a 1964 Rambler. We were just passing through and we stayed largely because we were too broke to travel on. One job led to another, Diane got pregnant and before we knew it we had raised a family there.

We have made a place for ourselves here in the intervening years. We have been blessed financially, though not without a lot of struggle. I suppose that by now some would call us established and perhaps even repectable. Yet when I see the movers coming through, the young people starting out or the not-so-young starting over, my mind goes back to our early days and I remember the words of God to Moses:

Also you shall not oppress a stranger, for you know the heart of a stranger, because you were strangers...

Like Abram and Sara, we were strangers and God gave us a destiny. We were unknown, but we were already famous in God's eyes because like Abram, we had heard God's call in our lives and answered it by receiving Jesus as our Lord and Saviour.

I'm not saying we were special. Every nameless wanderer has a name and a destiny from God, if he or she is willing to receive it. Then he too will be famous - where it counts!

To Him who loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood, and has made us kings and priests to His God and Father, to Him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.
Rev. 1:5,6

Destiny's Children

2009-01-08T20:06:00.000-08:00

To Diane:

We’re a famous couple, you and I:
I can’t say how, to whom, or why;
But know that Sarai and Abram, hand in hand,
Came nameless to their promised land,
Scarce noticed by its settled tribes,
Though the ground lay reverent beneath their feet.

- 40 on Tunnel Mountain

2009-01-08T17:51:00.001-08:00

The world holds its breath
As ice crystals fall
And the sun pours out its mute blessings.

Israel and Gaza

2009-01-07T08:59:00.000-08:00

I am a Zionist.

I am not a Jew, but as a Christian who takes the Hebrew scriptures seriously, I accept that just as God once took away the land of Canaan from Israel, He will once again restore it - fully, securely and finally. This ultimate restoration will not come by means of Merkava tanks or earthly means, but by God's sovereign action.

This is bad news for the national aspirations of the Palestinian people, but not necessarily for the people themselves. The prophet Zechariah writes this of them: "The king shall perish from Gaza......But he who remains, even he shall be for our God, and shall be like a leader in Judah."

Imagine, if you can, that some who are presently among the most extreme followers of Islam, dedicated to the genocide of the Israeli Jews, might have a future as yeshiva students and rabbis? Or that a Dahlan might become a Sharon? Stranger things have happened through the power of God.

Beginnings

2009-01-06T20:11:00.000-08:00

1962

A throbbing rumble marks the time:
the midnight freight for Winnipeg
and points beyond.
Past swamp and lake and rock it comes
along Sir John A's gift to us:
seven hundred miles of blueberry scrub
pushed in a line.

There is nothing here;
one hundred souls,
twelve cabins and a small prefab,
a log store and abandoned halftrack
long stripped of rubber by little boys.

The horn sounds, and they are here:
four bellowing diesels swaggering arm in arm,
they fill the clearing with a stammering roar
which fades to the rhythmic clatter
of steel boxes behind
which speak their names:
CN, Soo Line, Great Northern and Santa Fe.

It moves on by, past one-armed Charlie's:
half a sawyer, contemplating his walls,
a past when he was whole
and what is left him now: a life
of cigarettes, canned milk in coffee
and bundled copies of the Star;

And past the school where thirty kids
sit in six rows for six grades;
their elders packed off to the Sault to learn
that they are Indian and unloved;

The place for first friendships
with Earnest and Levius and Luke,
the boys affecting manhood
with train-flattened nails as knives,
trading wordless taunts of effeminacy
by tilted head;

The place where sin first showed itself within,
to one whose push caused a hurting fall
and death revealed itself
through a missing face each spring;

And beyond that, the lake where fish once thrived
for a short lived industry
that caught and gutted trout and jack
and sent them down the line on ice;
the ice house stands, but the fish are gone
and the jobs with them,
and it's a good mile walk
to where fish still bite;

On past the store, where flour, traps, guns and knives,
the goods of the world
move over the counter in fall
and skins move back in reciprocal tide
each spring.

The train moves on past all these things,
reminder of a coming leaving;
past one hundred huddled souls
all folded by the woods' embrace:
from the train a fleeting break
in the flowing spruce,
but to these souls a world;
and to this soul a happy world,
a home to which its heart will hold
through many worlds to come,

One hundred souls: some turn in the night
from the crowing of a far off land
and a click-clack fading down the tracks
away from here.

What this blog is about

2009-01-06T19:59:00.000-08:00

I have an ocean of thoughts from a lifetime of listening and not much speaking; now I feel it is time to get some on paper. So I will drop a hook into that sea from time to time, and see what comes up.

The Forever River referred to in the title of this blog is the eternal reality upon which the world with all its ages floats like a short piece of yarn, and which also permeates this world; its presence is the immanence of a transcendent God, or Immanuel, "God with us". In John's vision it is the river which flows from the throne of God and the Lamb, bringing life and healing to all in its path. The vision of this invisible River informs my understanding of life, meaning and reality and I hope will come through in whatever I write here.

I wish for all who alight here God's blessing and a portion in the world to come through Jesus Christ, God's Messiah and our coming King.