Be of good courage,
And He shall strengthen your heart,
All you who hope in the Lord.
(Psalm 31:24)
Sometimes strength comes only after taking the first courageous step, not before. It is hope in the Lord that allows us to take one more step when we are not sure of what the next season will bring. Hope is about seeing the big picture – by faith.
Hope: vision-led endurance.
Our beautiful valley is lost somewhere in the smoke. Even the sun has trouble finding it.
It’s hard to breathe. Our eyes sting. We keep clearing our throats to rid them of irritating “particulate matter.” A thin layer of ash covers everything, and since we are on water restrictions we can’t use the hose to wash it off.
We pray for rain.
It’s hard to imagine how someone tossing a cigarette out the window could cause worried parents a thousand miles away to rush their asthmatic child to the hospital. Such is the nature of sparks.
I read this in the book of James today: It only takes a spark, remember, to set off a forest fire. A careless or wrongly placed word out of your mouth can do that. By our speech we can ruin the world, turn harmony to chaos, throw mud on a reputation, send the whole world up in smoke and go up in smoke with it, smoke right from the pit of hell. (James 3:5,6 The Message)
Just before this James warns: Not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly. (3:1 NIV)
Here’s the thing. Ideas have consequences. A teaching that is off by only a degree will have negative repercussions years or generations later. Sometimes it’s difficult to make corrections to an idea that has been around for a long time. It’s impure light can taint an entire environment.
We are not called to condemn people, but we are called to use discernment. We are told that prophecy needs to be judged, that we need to cling to Jesus’ sound doctrine, that we need to test the spirits and not believe everything we hear or read. That’s wisdom, not unauthorized condemning judgment. That’s taking responsibility for oneself. Most of all we need to be rooted and grounded in Christ’s love. Examine and test and evaluate your own selves to see whether you are holding to your faith and showing the proper fruits of it. Test and prove yourselves [not Christ]. (2 Corinthians 13:5 Amplified)
The second verse in James 3 says: We all stumble in many ways. Anyone who is never at fault in what they say is perfect, able to keep their whole body in check.
I have known many excellent teachers. The best ones avoid throwing words out carelessly, but none of them are yet perfect. Rejecting everything a person has taught because they have been wrong on some point is equally as foolish as swallowing everything any public figure has ever said. Some are more reliable than others, but no one person has the complete picture of God. To reject a person’s contribution to the pool of knowledge because of an error is to assume that there are teachers out there who are without error. And that, my friends, is a set-up for spiritual abuse.
We have an example of correction when Priscilla and Aquilla, who had a relationship with Apollos, took him aside and taught him more thoroughly. They didn’t stop him; they helped him become better. They built him up; they did not attack him or tear him down.
Let me clarify something here. Jesus knew the hearts of mankind, He knew who was not trustworthy, so he didn’t open his heart to them. He gave very stern warnings to those who would cause an innocent to sin. He added: “If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over. But if they will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church; and if they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector.” (Matthew 18:15-17)
There are times to confront sin and even times to call the police. I’m not talking about covering for rapists, pedophiles, scam artists or other law-breakers here. He gives procedures for that kind of confrontation, but it is always with a view to restoration. Sometimes, alas, a person becomes so toxic to others that protection for the vulnerable is a higher priority. Those not willing to change need to be separated and warnings to the public may be necessary. But this is serious stuff and not accomplished by a stranger’s blog or Facebook rant. What I am talking about is inaccurate teachings; I’m not talking about outright sin and denial of sound doctrine (who God is) or abuse of power. I’m talking about careless words, human error, or incomplete understanding.
Here in southern British Columbia we are still choking on this wretched forest fire smoke that tints everything with orange/brown light, and hides our landmarks. But eventually the rains will come. The temperatures will drop and the fires will die down. We will again have clarity in our vision. The past few weeks have proven that the best efforts of men cannot control the consequences of fire. We are still dependent on the Maker of heaven and earth, which is as it should be.
And we pray for rain.
Say what you will about fire season. It makes for some amazing sunsets. This was the view from my house last night.
It also makes for burning eyes, sore throats, and wheezing from the poor air quality – not to mention the inconveniences of evacuation, closed highways and the expenses of firefighting and outright loss of life and property.
Our valley is filled with smoke. There was a minor fire nearby, which I believe is now under control. Most of this smoke is not “ours.” What I mean by that is that most of the smoke is from fires burning across the border in Washington and Idaho states. British Columbia is experiencing more fires than usual, but the prevailing winds here in the East Kootenays are from the southwest, which means we are choking on smoke from the country to the south.
I learned something the other day. I saw an article on “The Big Burn,” a massive forest fire in 1910 that burned from Missoula, Montana, through Idaho and into eastern Washington in merely three days. This was in the early days of the US forestry service and they had only a few men with shovels and pickaxes to fight it.
I googled it and according to the maps provided, the fires must have held great respect for Canada’s crown land because the red patches indicating affected areas stopped right at the border in a perfectly straight line. (They looked just like the weather maps on American news reports that seem to imply that weather systems also stop at the border.)
You know I’m being facetious. These boundaries are entirely artificial as far as nature is concerned. “The Big Burn” did include southern British Columbia. The terrible fires in Okanagan county in Washington (which have put an entire county on evacuation alert) have spilled over the border near Osoyoos in Canada and shut down two highways. While we were on a day trip to Idaho last week we saw a fire starting on a mountain near Porthill. It’s threatening the folks on both sides of the line now. Both have received evacuation alerts. I’m sure Canadian cigarette-instigated fires have slipped south over the line as well.
It struck me this morning how often we dismiss something as “not my problem” until it directly affects us. Sure, we all suffer from compassion overload and outrage exhaustion sometimes. We also need to respect boundaries when it comes to being responsible for taking action to solve a problem, but there is really no choice in this big old world that has consequences for one person alone.
Some people say, “This is MY choice. It doesn’t affect anyone but me.” But you know, it does. The connection is not always obvious, but it will show up and drift across boundaries eventually. Unhealthy habits, “just business” practices that exploit the poor and pollute the environment, religious power-grabbing ploys that exploit the trusting and pollute the spiritual environment, political commercials that dishonour other candidates, the destruction of a human life in the womb, even the decision to turn left to buy beer or right to buy tomatoes – many choices are unaffected by borders and will spill over into the lives of others somewhere, someday.
I think that’s what Jesus meant when he talked about being aware of the yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of Herod. It was a metaphor for the way an attitude or idea can permeate an entire society. We have accepted an attitude that our own personal peace and our own personal prosperity are more valuable than other people’s and they can somehow be protected by artificial boundaries. This attitude has permeated our culture. We need good personal boundaries, (good fences make good neighbours) but we also need to recognize our connections and that we have an influence on our brother’s and sister’s well – fare.
I apologize to the people south of the border who have been suffering from a terrible fire season. I’m sorry I never took note until the smoke bothered me. I believe in the power of prayer and I will also appeal for you. If you are reading this from another part of the world, please join me.
“The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity… and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself.” – William Blake
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.
(from Soldiers of Christ Arise by Charles Wesley)
It is in vain for man to endeavor to instruct man in those things which the Holy Spirit alone can teach.
— Madame Guyon
I had a dream a few years ago in which an angel came to visit me. I wasn’t frightened, just terribly curious because I couldn’t discern its gender. I kept looking surreptitiously for lumps or bumps under his/her/it’s loose garment that would give something away. It’s quite an unusual occasion, to say the least, to dream of seeing an angel and I wasn’t sure why he/she/it was there or what I was supposed to do. Finally it dawned on me that I should do something hospitable and I offered to make tea. I grabbed an old-style kettle with a long narrow spout and tried to fill it at the sink. The water from the faucet came out with greater water pressure than we had ever had before in that house. The hole in the spout was partially closed and I was having a difficult time filling the kettle through the tiny opening. Water was spraying all over the place.
My guest sighed.
“That,” he/she/it said. “That is the problem!”
“What is?”
“You are asking questions but trying to explain the answers to you is like filling a big kettle through a tiny hole. Take the lid off!”
Why didn’t I think of that?
“You have much to learn but answering your questions is like trying to explain the internet to someone who has never heard a radio, or a seen a light bulb. You need another way to take in information than the way you have been doing it.”
Then I woke up, confused of course, and feeling a little reprimanded – and questioning my sanity because I didn’t know how seriously to take a dream. But I had a sense this was a God-dream. What was I doing now and how was I supposed to do things differently to “take the lid off?” I could study harder, and sign up for another Bible study course! Then I realized that would increase the pressure, and my brain was not receiving it all anyway. I was still stuck in old thinking patterns.
I tried to imagine myself explaining my day to a great great grandmother who knew nothing of electricity or motorized vehicles. I started with the radio alarm going off in the morning and listening to a man hundreds of miles away read the weather forecast for the day and talk about the price of oil in Azerbaijan. Then I took some cooked quinoa from South America I had stored in the refrigerator and warmed it up with raisins from California and cinnamon from Sri Lanka (the old Ceylon, Grandma) in the microwave for breakfast. While the coffee from Columbia was dripping into the carafe in the coffee maker I threw a load of laundry in the washing machine and tossed the wet clothes that had been there into the dryer… It didn’t take long to realize that great great Grandma would have a lot of catching up to do. She would be amazed; she would be overwhelmed. I couldn’t explain it to her. She would have to spend time with me and learn about television remote controls and ignition keys and Google. I’m sure it would be disorienting, so maybe we would start with a light switch.
I have a lot of catching up to do. Sometimes my need for “prudent wisdom” is actually just the fear that the power of the deceiver is greater than the power of the One who gives the gift of wisdom. The result is narrow-mindedness.
Going higher means adopting a wider way of receiving than the physical senses can provide. It means opening up to the Holy Spirit in a way that does not require everything to pass through the tiny opening of mere scientific method and logic. It means knowing that some things can only be ascertained through spiritual senses (taking the lid off) and that requires spending a lot of time with Holy Spirit to learn his ways. If you don’t believe he exists, you won’t hear what he has to say or experience his input in understanding the scriptures or anything else. His ways will continue to seem strange — like explaining to a nineteenth-century person that using a “mouse” to move an arrow on a screen to click a publish button will allow people around the world read your words the same day.
We have not yet even begun to fully understand the basics, let alone imagine all that the Lord has for us.
But a person who denies spiritual realities will not accept the things that come through the Spirit of God; they all sound like foolishness to him. He is incapable of grasping them because they are disseminated, discerned, and valued by the Spirit. (1 Corinthians 2:4 The Voice)
I am pleading with the Eternal for this one thing,
my soul’s desire:
To live with Him all of my days—
in the shadow of His temple,
To behold His beauty and ponder His ways
in the company of His people.
His house is my shelter and secret retreat.
It is there I find peace in the midst of storm and turmoil.
Safety sits with me in the hiding place of God.
He will set me on a rock, high above the fray.
God lifts me high above those with thoughts
of death and deceit that call for my life.
I will enter His presence, offering sacrifices and praise.
In His house, I am overcome with joy
As I sing, yes, and play music for the Eternal alone.
(Psalm 27 The Voice)
Ubi Caritas
Where charity and love are, God is there.
Christ’s love has gathered us into one.
Let us rejoice and be pleased in Him.
Let us fear, and let us love the living God.
And may we love each other with a sincere heart.
Where charity and love are, God is there.
As we are gathered into one body,
Beware, lest we be divided in mind.
Let evil impulses stop, let controversy cease,
And may Christ our God be in our midst.
Where charity and love are, God is there.
And may we with the saints also,
See Thy face in glory, O Christ our God:
The joy that is immense and good,
Unto the ages through infinite ages. Amen.
(Ancient hymn)
Charis: Subject to Change 