Category: Uncategorized

Pioneer: When you can’t stay here

On By Charis PsalloIn Fields, Mountains, Photography, Uncategorized2 Comments

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There’s a wilderness pathway, and it’s calling you…

Pioneer, Pioneer
Keep pressing onward beyond your fear
Only the Father goes before you to your own frontier
Youʼre a Pioneer

Uncharted wilderness stretches before you
And you thrive on going where no one has gone
Still it gets lonely when darkness deepens
So sing by the fire until the dawn

Pioneer, Pioneer
Keep pressing onward beyond your fear
Only the Father goes before you to your own frontier
Youʼre a Pioneer

You travel light, and you travel alone
And when you arrive nobody knows
But the Father in heaven, He is glad you can go,
For those who come after you will need the road

Pioneer, Pioneer
Keep pressing onward beyond your fear
Only the Father goes before you to your own frontier
Youʼre a Pioneer

And what you have done, others will do
Bigger and better and faster than you
But you canʼt look back; no, you gotta keep pressing through
Thereʼs a wilderness pathway and itʼs calling you

Calling you, calling you clear
Keep pressing onward, you can’t stay here…
Only the Father goes before you to your own frontier
Youʼre a Pioneer

Only the Father goes before you to your own frontier
Youʼre a Pioneer

-Nancy Honeytree

Mixed Message

On By Charis PsalloIn Uncategorized2 Comments

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“You have an odd concept of freedom,” my friend said.

Odd? It was the definition I grew up with –freedom is the ability to choose to obey.

“Can you disobey?” he asked.

“Not without suffering rejection and other dire consequences,” I answered.

“You have an odd concept of freedom,” he said.

Freedom, like grace, was a concept I struggled with during my much-delayed adolescence (that took me well into my forties). It took me a while to figure out that I had accepted mixed messages without question.

Mixed messages are crazy-making.

I just read a recipe that defines mixed message for me. It calls for a bowl full of lovely, fresh, healthy vegetables, sunflower seeds and green grapes. To this collection of organic goodness you add 1/2 a pound of diced fried bacon, eight ounces of grated cheese, and a salad dressing that crams the maximum number of calories possible in the form of fats and sugar into a measuring cup. Healthy with a death wish.

Some people who talk about grace will welcome you into their church and tell you that you cannot earn God’s love and that salvation is a free gift, that Jesus paid it all. They will point out the verses that say the purpose of the law was to demonstrate, like an impossible-to-please teacher who never gave out perfect marks, that you were never quite good enough. You could never obey all the rules perfectly, no matter how hard you tried. But now you are free; you are saved by grace through faith.

That’s it. They welcome you to the fold.

Then they remind you to pick up a copy of the new rules on the way out.

The new rules are book length and some of the pages written in ink so faint you need special secret decoder ring and spy glasses to read them. And guess who has the decoder ring and spy glasses?

Mixed messages are crazy-making. They’re like a green salad that will give you a myocardial infarction before you get to the gluten-free zucchini muffins.

Grace is not sin-consciousness; Grace is Saviour-consciousness. Grace is not about your failure; it’s about Jesus Christ’s success. Grace is not about who you were; it’s about who God sees you as.

And freedom? Freedom is permission to run toward that destiny – person you are becoming in Christ, unencumbered by fear of making mistakes, and being secure in the knowledge that you are cherished by the One who holds his arms open wide.

You are precious in his sight. He absolutely adores you, you know.

Like and share only if you want to.

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High River -Stronger

On By Charis PsalloIn Uncategorized2 Comments

 

It’s been a year.

 

IMG_0566 High River tent balloons

It’s been a year since the rains came down and the floods came up. Our son and his family are back in their house in High River, but it’s still a construction zone.

The kids are back playing soccer and baseball, but I see some of them watching the approaching rain clouds as much as they watch the ball.

 

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The middle school band plays at an outdoor concert for an audience of proud parents, grandparents and siblings who step around puddles in the gravelled yard.

The temporary business structures beside the Saturday artisan’s tents have become the new downtown.

 

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When I ask my granddaughter how her friends are doing she says everything is different , but different is kind of normal now.

Then she asks, “Do you think it’s going to rain like that again?”

There’s a greater maturity, but also something akin to a lost innocence in High River. I suppose that is what happens after any disaster, or after any change in the definition of normal. Whether it’s a flood, a tornado, a serious illness – or a betrayal, wherever we experience unexpected loss we can no longer say, “That would never happen.”

Now we know it can.

And now that we know we are left standing in the playing field on a Saturday morning in June checking the sky for signs of rain, wondering if it will happen again.

“Folks are a bit twitchy when the forecast is for heavy rain in the mountains,” a merchant/artist told me. “It’s understandable -especially for the kids.”

 

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The thing about lost innocence is that it is one thing that can never be restored. You cannot un-see things. When I’m with my family it seems like half a dozen times a day I hear the phrase, “We had one of those, but it was lost in the flood.” My grandchildren don’t have bikes or outdoor toys because even though we offered to replace them, they don’t have anywhere to store them yet. The shed containing their old bikes and toys was also lost in the flood, and that image is still with them.

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Innocence may not be restored but many other things can be. Bikes and sheds and houses can be restored. Purity can be restored. Faith can be restored. Respect, hope,  joy, peace, confidence can all be rebuilt, but they require new firmer foundations than the absence of the experience of suffering.

I asked an older gentleman how he saw the town now, 365 days after the rushing water that poured down from the mountains changed everything.

“It’s the best thing that ever happened to this community, ” he said.

“Why do you say that?”

“We discovered what it means to be a community,” he answered. “We discovered what it means to have real  friends, and who our real friends are. We discovered what it is to work together for more than our own comforts. We discovered the generosity of strangers. We discovered what it is to need help and give help. We discovered faith.”

 

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He smiled sincerely when he said this. He had genuine joy.

“Not everyone is back in their homes yet and a lot of businesses are still in temporary quarters or not even up and running at all. We hope it doesn’t rain like that again, but you know, we also hope it does so we will know if the steps toward flood mitigation are working. We hope another disaster doesn’t happen anywhere in Canada, but we also hope the things we have learned here can be put to use if there is one – when there is one.”

Loss of innocence is being reconciled to the reality of sin in people around us and in ourselves. Loss of innocence is acknowledging that all is not right in the world. The Bible says all creation groans until things are put right again. For some who have survived disaster there lingers an increased fear and greater sensitivity to pain which results in anxiety that hums in the background like the drone of a machine that never shuts off . For some there grows a greater faith that seems to free them from fear of the future. I watched this gentleman in a crowd after church, smiling and greeting folks, shaking hands and giving hugs when he met someone he hadn’t seen for a while. After I took the kids home for lunch I remembered his words.

“The flood showed us that God is faithful and even though we have been down and bone-weary, we now know that with His help we are much stronger than we ever thought we could be.”

 

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Oh My God, You’re Relentless

On By Charis PsalloIn Music, Sky, Uncategorized8 Comments

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Another outstandlingly bright rainbow appeared over my garden this week. I put down my work and just reveled in its beauty for a while. After the three that showed up on the same day, (here)  it was another over-the-top reminder of the keeper of promises.

We don’t need to give up our day jobs and permanently park at signs of beauty or grieve when they fade though. Signs point to something greater than themselves.

I heard a new musician lately -well, new to me. It seems a lot of worship groups are comprised of attractive, energetic young people with strong, healthy bodies, thick shiny hair and impressive orthodontic work.  I appreciate a praise band made up of members who look like they’ve been around the block. There’s an authority there. Some young people get it, but usually only time spent in the trenches gives a singer/songwriter the right to sing about endurance and promises kept. I had been listening to Bob Book’s song, Relentless, when the rainbow showed up.

 

Sometimes I find myself down in the valley

And the shadow is hanging so low.

I can’t see my way to tomorrow.

There’s something I know:

There’s a deeper magic ,

There’s a higher truth than these eyes of flesh can see

And I’m holding on,

My hand in Yours,

You are the greater reality.

Relentlessly good,

Relentlessly kind,

Unendingly patient to the questions we find.

Even the bad can work for the good.

Relentlessly faithful,

even when You’re misunderstood.

In a world where nothing seems certain

Your love is relentless.

Oh my God, You’re relentless!

-Bob Book from Relentless, from the album A Divine Conversation


 

It Gots Bones

On By Charis PsalloIn Uncategorized10 Comments

 

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Have you ever read a brilliant quote –and were afraid to post it because the author has made other statements you don’t agree with?

I quoted someone I thought gave a delightfully pithy observation. Giving credit where credit is due, I named the the author, of course. Later someone contacted me saying, “I didn’t know you were a follower of McBarnacle! Are you aware of his eschatological position on the role of kumquats in the millennium, or his opinions on the Publicat party?”

OK. I made that up. But here’s my point: I do not worship human beings or consider any one of them to be right about everything –at least not as right as I am.

When my then three-year old grandson was visiting he asked me what I was making for supper. I told him chicken. He was quite excited because, as he said several times in a row, he reawy, reawy, reawy liked chicken.

When we sat down to eat he took a bite and yowled, “It gots bones! Why you put bones in it?”

Apparently until that point the boy had never eaten anything more challenging than chicken nuggets. Who knew? I tried to explain how to pick it up and eat around the drumstick, but for him, this was too much work and dinner was a massive disappointment.

I’ve also heard many people complain that they feel called to another fellowship because they are “just not being fed.”

I want to respond, “So pick up a fork.”

We want to be fed our comforting spiritual food in easily digested liquid form from denominationally-approved sterile 10-minute-devotional bottles.

It is written in Hebrews 5: About this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food,  for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.

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Ask any little kid. Teething is the pits. It makes you wonder if chewing is really worth it. Learning to avoid bones and spit out grizzle takes even more skill and diligence and often involves uncomfortable experiences with learning how to dispose of a hunk of gnarly weirdness with enough decorum not to embarrass your mother. If our tummies are full of warm sweet milk, or our hunger is satisfied by pre-masticated mechanically de-boned breaded fried chicken blobs, drumsticks will hold no thrill.

Just the thought of spiritual whole fish (or pomegranates) can send some people on a google search of heresy hunter sites.

I wonder if God is silent on some questions we desperately want answers to because he’s waiting for us to be motivated enough to chew on something for a while. Yes, the young need milk, but not forever. I’ve heard people worry aloud that some writers/teachers/leaders include just enough truth to get you to trust them, but if you do you are certain to be deceived.

Well, if you plan to swallow everything, yes –but not if you use your God-given discernment, developed by constant use, to chew the nourishing bits and spit out the bones.

So, if I quote someone, it’s because that particular statement resonated with me, and not because I plan to sell the homestead and move into a commune where we all wear purple, drink koolaid, and shout “Heil McBarnacle!”

Yes, it gots bones. Deal with it.

Victory Over Fear

On By Charis PsalloIn Black and white, Photography, UncategorizedLeave a comment

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Our first place of victory [over fear] is in believing the truth concerning our relationship with God. Paul tells us that, “having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom 5:1). We reject the lie that insists God is our enemy. We come to believe He is our Helper in the healing of our souls!

— Francis Frangipane

Meaning What?

On By Charis PsalloIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

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One of my favourite lines from the film Awakenings is spoken by Dr. Sayer in a job interview scene. He was describing his research history.

SAYER
It was an immense project. I was trying to extract a decigram of myelin from four tons of earthworms.

DIRECTOR
Really?

SAYER
I was on it for five years. I was the only one who really believed in it. The rest of them said it couldn’t be done.

KAUFMAN
It can’t.

SAYER
Well, I know that now.
I proved it.

 

The writer of Ecclesiastes came to this conclusion after a lifetime of research:

“Everything is meaningless,” says the Teacher, “completely meaningless.”

I don’t often read Ecclesiastes. It feels like spending an afternoon with a gouty old curmudgeon  who will extinguish your dream with a cynical grunt. Today I saw it a little differently.

I heard of a famous physicist who announced to his esteemed colleagues that after 30 years of research he came to the conclusion that his hypothesis was wrong. I was impressed. How often do you see that? (May I admit a secret admiration for writers and speakers who freely admit their failures?)

Although many people worship scientists as unbiased seekers of truth anyone who has been caught in the craziness of ego wars in academia will tell you that they are wounded humans like the rest of us. Sometimes political blockades in the form of withheld research approval only come down with the demise of those in positions of power. But maybe that’s just my disillusioned curmudgeonly side coming out. But, you know, science is not the only field where disillusionment has dented trust. There’s religion, politics, arts, media, sports, romance….

The writer of Ecclesiastes lists the areas in which he spent a lifetime of research. His hypothesis was that these pursuits would bring meaning. His conclusion was that they were all futile (or in King James English “Vanity, vanity…”:
-The pursuit of pleasure (thoroughly investigated)
-Wisdom vs. madness
-Work and professional accomplishment
-The pursuit of justice (in a world of corrupt courtrooms and oppression)
-Companionship
-Political power, respect, and honour
-Striving to please God
-Wealth

No wonder he was in a bad mood. He spent a lot more than five years trying to extract myelin from worms; he spent a lifetime proving that human reasoning and effort alone is not sufficient to comprehend the big, even massive, picture of meaning on this earth, let alone in the universe.

I read a bumper sticker somewhere that said something like, “Perhaps the purpose of your life is to serve as a warning to others.”

Perhaps.

Perhaps that is why the stories of tragic drama stay with us longer than happy-ending comedies. The essential moment in a tragedy is that point when the leading character has a flash of insight that allows him to say: This is where I went wrong. That moment gives them the authority to lay the diamond of wisdom at the feet of the audience: This is where you can do it differently. This is where you can repent of my mistakes and change the way you think.

In the final chapters of Ecclesiastes the writer offers us the distilled, refined wisdom of a lifetime that was a process of elimination in the search for meaning. He has earned the right to speak. We need to pay attention.

In my search for wisdom and in my observation of people’s burdens here on earth, I discovered that there is ceaseless activity, day and night.  I realized that no one can discover everything God is doing under the sun. Not even the wisest people discover everything, no matter what they claim.

 

Don’t let the excitement of youth cause you to forget your Creator. Honor him in your youth before you grow old and say, “Life is not pleasant anymore.” Remember him before the light of the sun, moon, and stars is dim to your old eyes, and rain clouds continually darken your sky. Remember him before your legs—the guards of your house—start to tremble; and before your shoulders—the strong men—stoop. Remember him before your teeth—your few remaining servants—stop grinding; and before your eyes—the women looking through the windows—see dimly.

Remember him before the door to life’s opportunities is closed and the sound of work fades. Now you rise at the first chirping of the birds, but then all their sounds will grow faint.

Remember him before you become fearful of falling and worry about danger in the streets; before your hair turns white like an almond tree in bloom, and you drag along without energy like a dying grasshopper, and the caperberry no longer inspires sexual desire. Remember him before you near the grave, your everlasting home, when the mourners will weep at your funeral.

Yes, remember your Creator now while you are young, before the silver cord of life snaps and the golden bowl is broken. Don’t wait until the water jar is smashed at the spring and the pulley is broken at the well. For then the dust will return to the earth, and the spirit will return to God who gave it.

 

 

Crazie Glasse

On By Charis PsalloIn Uncategorized2 Comments

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Lord, how can man preach thy eternall word?
He is a brittle crazie glasse:
Yet in thy temple thou dost him afford
This glorious and transcendent place,
To be a window, through thy grace.

(from The Windows by George Herbert (1593-1633)

It’s amazing that silicon (the dust of the earth)  ground, fired, broken, pounded, fired again, and fashioned into shapes which make no sense when seen in isolation, can become a message of beauty in a Master’s artist’s hands. But in the dark it cannot been seen.

It is the light that makes glass glorious.

No Denying It

On By Charis PsalloIn Black and white, Uncategorized11 Comments

IMG_8651 clouds river Bull River Road

“Negativity is killing you.”

That was the message from a little boy sitting beside me at the end of a conference table in my dream last night. At the other end was a person I admire who was talking about practising the fruit of the Spirit – especially peace.

When I woke up I argued with the Lord that I am really trying to be positive, and I’m much better than I used to be. I also want to be honest (integrity matters!) and isn’t speaking only positively and not acknowledging the darkness in the world just a form of denial? How can you pray about a problem if “there is no problem?” The Bible says nothing about “speaking that which is as if it is not.” That’s not faith! That’s sticking your head in the sand!

Oh God, there is so much darkness and evil and unbelief in this world! I can say that I have peace, but my body reminds me that stress is churning my stomach right now. I feel like a hypocrite when I deny the experts’ dire predictions.

The answer came: Negativity is denial when it gives more weight to what the enemy of your soul says than to what I say. Negativity is denial when you neglect to give thanks for all the ways I have already blessed you. Negativity is denial when you forget that I love you relentlessly. Negativity denies that I AM is sovereign and that I have overcome the one who came to steal, kill and destroy. Who is the talking head authority in your life? Which “expert” do you choose to listen to? The one who devours, or the One who loved you so much He overcame death just to set you free from it? Who do you choose to yoke up with?

So where do I find peace when darkness is all around? How can I  change atmospheres?

Jesus said: “I have told you all this so that you may find your peace in Me. You will find trouble in the world—but, never lose heart, I have conquered the world!” (John 16:33 JBP)

OK, Lord. Today I choose to keep my eyes on You. I will enter your gates with thanksgiving and your courts with praise.

For it is you who light my lamp;
    the Lord my God lightens my darkness.
 For by you I can run against a troop,
    and by my God I can leap over a wall.

(Psalm 18:28)

A Day of Celebration for a Miracle!

On By Charis PsalloIn Uncategorized17 Comments

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Today is a day of celebration, not only because it is our precious granddaughter’s birthday (a miracle herself), but because it has been one year since the disaster that struck her family led to a miracle and taught us so much about the abundant love of God.

For those who have not read the story here before, her Daddy went to the hospital with what he thought was the flu and a pulled hamstring. It turned out to be necrotising fasciitis –flesh eating disease. After surgery his blood pressure crashed and he experienced multiple organ failure. He was on total life support and bleeding out. Privately, a team of highly skilled physicians treating him gave him 0% chance of survival. One of them said, “If this guy survives it will be the biggest miracle I have ever seen.”

Our daughter’s Facebook posts, intended to save time and answer friend’s questions, went viral and tens of thousands of people around the world joined in the effort to pray for him. On Good Friday last year he bled into his lungs and his condition was so unstable he couldn’t be moved across the hall for more surgery, so it had to be done in his room. Within half an hour of hearing the news a hundred people showed up in the hospital to pray for him (many more met in homes) and he survived that day. On Easter Sunday morning he responded to his wife’s voice and opened an eye.

Defying predictions that if he survived he would lose limbs, suffer brain damage, need dialysis indefinitely and be in rehab learning to cope with multiple disabilities for a very long time,  he was pronounced medically cleared forty days later, and ten days after that walked into his church unaided -on Pentecost Sunday. He stood and gave the sermon the week after that. One of the specialists said to another, “You know it’s a miracle that guy is alive.”

Throughout the experience we saw a demonstration of love as God raised up an army of praying people -in his room, in the waiting room, in groups in homes and in African, Mexican, and Inuit villages and churches across the country. In the process He healed the hearts of many of those people who had suffered the pain of disappointment and moved many other Christians to reconcile their differences that they might come in unity to pray for not only our son-in-law, but a broken big C Church universal. God showed us that the church is like a sleeping giant who needs healing from hidden corruption with broken dysfunctional parts that do not communicate with each other. His desire is to restore the church and see it raised up to be the influence and demonstration of love He intended.

Like Ezekiel or Hosea in the Bible whose lives were a picture of what God wanted to do, our son-in-love gave God permission to do whatever it took to get him to a place where God wanted him to be, and was willing to lay down his life for his friends, and for the church. God took him up on that offer, and while he slept in a coma, accomplished everything our son-in-love had been striving to teach others.

This past year has been quite the ride. Our son-in-love is back to playing the sports he loves and except for a bit of decreasing pain in his feet that was a side-effect of the medications, and an impressive scar that covers most of the back of his leg, is in better physical condition than before he became ill. God has been faithful and kind beyond anything we understood before.

Our little granddaughter says, “I think Jesus healed my Daddy because he knows we like to jump on him and He is good.”

With her we celebrate and sing. God is so good! This is going to be a great party.