We are only what we are in the dark; all the rest is reputation.
– Oswald Chambers
Tag: Alberta
Outside the Lines
Don’t assume that God will always work in your life the way He always has. A sunset is proof that God colors outside the lines. He has no status quo. Even the laws of nature are His to interrupt. As many times as you’ve prayed before, today may be the day when God sends the answer so swiftly-so divinely-that you’re windburned.
– Beth Moore
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Courageous Virtue
Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.
— C.S. Lewis
We lost our innocence that day on the Sherwood Park freeway. We didn’t know about tornadoes. Of course we had seen pictures and news reports, but we had never experienced a wind that moved oil tanks or leveled factories or wrapped cars around steel lamp standards or sucked people out of their vehicles. On that July day in 1987 we came up from under the overpass on the freeway out of Edmonton moments after the tornado passed and saw the devastation. The tornado was moving on to a residential area where other people, like us, were expecting only a thunder-storm. Many of them died.
There are still arguments going on about whether it was an F4 or F5. Tornadoes are so rare this far north that we had no warning system. All I know is that like the neighbourhood where I used to live, my sense of stability was tossed in the air and dumped in a field of debris somewhere. It could happen here. For years my eyes watched the clouds on hot summer days when we visited family on the prairies. They still do.
As we were driving from Edmonton to Calgary we were caught in a rainstorm so heavy we had to pull over on the shoulder of the highway until it lightened up. A few miles down the road I saw this cloud. Since I was driving I asked my husband to get a photo out the window on my phone. As much as I love cloudscapes I knew it wasn’t wise to stop. It was wiser to pray and keep moving south. Two of our adult kids and their families were also somewhere on the road oblivious to what a cloud like this might bring. I watched the cloud slowly break up and breathed a sigh of relief when they all showed up at our destination.
The next day our daughter and daughter-in-law and five of our grandchildren were in a van driving into the city when signs beside the highway flashed a tornado warning. They saw the ominous clouds and the beginning of a funnel cloud and decided to turn back. Apparently the tornado did touch down briefly before dissipating. It was a minor event, but I am glad for a warning system we never had in 1987.
We grew up with parents who lost their innocence when they experienced war and famine and economic disaster and epidemics of diphtheria and polio that killed and maimed. Many of us do not understand the courage it takes for some people to go on with their lives after trauma. Some of the people from our parents’ generation learned to walk in freedom from fear or expectation of the same thing happening again; some did not. They lived lives hunkered down in sad negativity, protecting themselves from disappointment.
Some learned to be watchmen and put up early warning systems because they had seen this before. They gave good advice: avoid debt, don’t fall for nationalistic political rhetoric or give a leader too much power; research preventative medical practices and take advantage of things like dentists, vaccinations and vitamins; practise water and land conservation methods; plan ahead for natural disasters; expose and deal with crime and corruption in high places before it becomes systemic; don’t ignore poverty and injustice; make amends; forgive; stop the quarrel before it breaks out.
There are watchmen with prophetic gifts who, like weathermen, can automate warnings, “Turn back. This way danger may lie.” It would be unfair of them not to give warnings if they see that hazards lie ahead like weather conditions that could produce a tornado. But — warnings need to be for the purpose of freeing people and en-couraging the virtues to flourish, so they will not be hampered by fear or overcome with a sense of dis-couraging condemnation.
The warning my daughter and daughter-in-law saw prompted them to go in another direction and take the children swimming at a pool in a town outside the danger zone. They had a marvelous time laughing and splashing and enjoying being together.
I am grateful for warnings, but even more for re-directions that instill courage to live fully.
Leave no unguarded place,
No weakness of the soul,
Take every virtue, every grace,
And fortify the whole.
No weakness of the soul,
Take every virtue, every grace,
And fortify the whole.
(from Soldiers of Christ Arise by Charles Wesley)
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Clearly
O my God, shine Your light and truth
to help me see clearly,
To lead me to Your holy mountain,
to Your home.
Then I will go to God’s altar with nothing to hide.
I will go to God, my rapture;
I will sing praises to You and play my strings,
unloading my cares, unleashing my joys, to You, God, my God.
O my soul, why are you so overwrought?
Why are you so disturbed?
Why can’t I just hope in God? Despite all my emotions, I will hope in God again.
I will believe and praise the One
who saves me and is my life,
My Savior and my God.
(Psalm 43:3-5 The Voice)
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Ascent
I managed a visit to my father before the snow fell. This is a couple of blocks from his place.
Dad was a prairie boy, but he was always in love with the mountains.
Our house in Calgary was built on a hill facing the Rockies on the horizon and every clear morning he would stand by the window checking out the view.
Every Saturday or holiday we could get away we drove the hour or so to Canmore, or Kananaskis, or Banff, not to ski or climb or golf or canoe, but to walk along the trails or sit under the trees and breathe.
Dad’s memories are fading, but now he lives beside the river he loved. He doesn’t work anymore or write anymore, and it’s hard for him to tell even one of his thousands of stories. He’s not even sure of who the people are who come to visit him. Life has been distilled to its essence. He looks to the mountains and breathes and he is thankful.
“The moment we become grateful, we actually begin to ascend spiritually into the presence of God. The psalmist wrote,
‘Serve the Lord with gladness; come before Him with joyful singing. . . . Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise. Give thanks to Him, bless His name. For the Lord is good; His lovingkindness is everlasting and His faithfulness to all generations.’ (Psalm 100:2, 4-5).”
-Francis Frangipane
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Pioneer: When you can’t stay here
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
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High River -Stronger
It’s been a year.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.”
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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Not Ready to Settle
Over the years, I have become convinced that in the Christian life at least two things are certain: God never changes, and we are always changing.
Our lives as Christians are a continual transition from one place to another, one level to another, one understanding to another. The purpose of spiritual light is to bring us into change and growth. The more light we have, the more change we experience; and the more we change (for the better), the more we are brought into higher levels of glory. Unless we are in constant transition, we will stop somewhere along the way and settle down. The Christian life is a frontier. God did not call us to be settlers, but to be pilgrims and pioneers.
-James Goll
Charis: Subject to Change 