It's been a while since I've shown up on the CM blog, and I apologize for that. Life has been busy, and for a while it felt like I was posting too frequently. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a pilot. From Kindergarten up through my first year post-high school that was all I thought about. I enjoyed the flying and learning, but I quickly realized it wasn't my true passion.
I'm a reader. I've always been a reader. From as far back as I can remember I read a lot of books and anything I can get my hands on. It's no surprise, then, that probably the most influential way I spend time with God is in reading the Bible. But there are many who struggle to read the Bible. I will be the first to admit that even I read my Bible in waves - sometimes a lot, sometimes not at all.
I remember once thinking that it would be fantastic if we could travel faster than the speed of light. If we could do that, we could theoretically go back in time. I wondered about what kind of use this would have. What events would I want to see in the past?
Throughout all these centuries, El Shaddai dropped hints about who was coming. “There is a king,” he said, “That will reign forever in my kingdom.” And who else to reign as El Shaddai’s king but El Shaddai himself? And so we are introduced to Emmanuel, El Shaddai in flesh.
El Shaddai’s land is coming, and the people are moving that way. They enter the land, El Shaddai making it absolutely clear that it wasn’t through their power but through his. But they don’t follow the clear commandment from El Shaddai - they lose their identity, following other gods. They are in El Shaddai’s place, but no longer El Shaddai’s people or under El Shaddai’s rule. Again, perfection delayed.
But El Shaddai shows mercy, as always. Every time the people cry out, El Shaddai is there to rescue them. They are imprisoned and overrun, and El Shaddai raises up a rescuer.
El Shaddai repeats an older command to fill the earth, to spread out. But it’s like the humans have no ears – again they come together in direct obedience to El Shaddai’s command – they try to build a tower to the heavens. So they are scattered by El Shaddai, their language confused.
Part 2...
The story progresses.
Part 1
There are three requirements for “heaven,” or “perfection,” as we understand it:
Biking 20 out of every 24 hours, sleeping only 2 hours. What does it take to get across the country in record time? My dad's an ultra-marathon cyclist. In this sport, everything you do counts as part of your time: eating, sleeping, going to the washroom. All that matters is when you cross the finish line.
Sometimes I think I need to slow down. What do I mean by this? I mean that life goes very quickly. We rush from one thing to the next, glancing at our watches and depending on the calendar to make sure we don't forget things that are happening. I'm very guilty of this, and I would make tons of mistakes if it weren't for Google Calendar.
When I went downstairs near the beginning of In-House (our local drop-in) to get the dodgeballs, two young boys were sitting on the stairs outside the washrooms, eating watermelon. We jokingly fabricated a great big tale of how the seeds ended up on the carpet, since they claimed they didn't do it. When I opened the door to the basement, they asked if they could see what was there. I decided to give them a tour.
Yesterday evening I asked the Junior Youth to picture a world in which God's one and only characteristic was love. "Chaos," "Hectic," "Covered in foam" were some of the answers. Okay, so that last one is a little confusing. But I compared it to Jeanette and I letting them into the church, giving them massive doses of sugar, and saying that there were no rules. One of them said there would be at least one fire somewhere, and another said that we'd all be covered in fire extinguisher foam.
I touched on it last week - stories shape who we are. What do I mean by this?
Sometimes I think we don't give stories enough credit. I, for one, love stories. But by the time the public education system has had its way, people lose their imagination. And they relegate stories to children and teenagers. Or to illustrations to be explained. But there has been a loss along the way.
I have never been so excited to get a pair of shoes. Let me tell you, I'm not the kind of person to care about clothing. To me, clothing is always functional. But I gotta tell you about something cool I've discovered. Basically, humans were born to run. For thousands of years humans have been much better at running than any of us joggers are nowadays. We used to run to survive. Now we run to keep the weight off - or for fun. But over all these thousands of years, we've run barefoot through the forests and jungles, and had much better success.
I suppose I need to apologize for my relatively long absence from blogging. Things have been busy around the Loewen household. Last Monday we welcomed Jaden Timothy into our family - and life has been a little less sleep-filled but wonderfully enriching. Reflecting back on this past week, it is almost impossible to remember life without a baby. I'm not entirely sure what I used to do with all my time and all my sleep. But there is remarkable joy in being a parent. I now understand why every parent feels the need to brag incessantly about their child.
Top 5 Books of 2010
Worthy of Mention:
Faith Begins at Home - Mark Holmen
I have never gone shopping on Boxing Day. I'm not entirely sure why. Perhaps in some families it is tradition. In mine it wasn't, and I never showed any interested myself. Last year on Black Friday an employee was killed when trampled by the mass of people entering the building. I can hardly believe that the people were that determined to get inside that they didn't notice they were stepping on a human being.
Christmas comes soon, doesn't it? I took a picture of my advent calendar yesterday with 8 windows open. There aren't that many days left until Christmas. Perhaps it's a part of growing up, but Christmas has less magic than it did 10 or 15 years ago. I still receive gifts, I still enjoy the family time immensely, but it's not the same.
I love snow - always have. When Jeanette and I purchased our house last May, we knew it had a large driveway. But it wasn't so much the size as it was the layout. It is directly along a fence, on the other side of which is our neighbor's drive - meaning we can't shovel off to that side. For another thirty feet, it follows the side of our house, meaning that all the snow in that section needs to be shoveled down the driveway before it can be shoveled off the driveway. After all these recent snowfalls, you would think we'd be tired of the driveway. But that's not the case.
I'm usually not one for a ton of sentimentality, but bear with me a little. Many people like to complain about where they live, whether it be because of rain, cold, snow, heat, or taxes. I find this very strange. I love Winnipeg. It's not that I don't like being in the mountains (mountains are awesome), but I just enjoy this city. I also love the depth and range of our four seasons - going from mushy and green in the spring to too hot in the summer, to crisp and clear in the fall, to snow in the winter.
It seems that Money is an interesting topic. Perhaps we could go on forever on this subject. David mentioned in his previous post about a Money Mart moving into his neighborhood. He drew the conclusion that the most powerful tenets of our society are debt and money, in that order. I am fully in the camp of utter disgust when it comes to how money is treated in our society. My previous post was argued from the point of money-wise individuals.
Should a church parking lot be full of $50,000 cars? Someone once said that it was wrong for Christians to own vehicles of that value. On the one hand, I don't own a $50,000 car. I probably never will. For me a car is a device that gets you from A to B. It doesn't need to be fancy or spectacular. On the other hand, I certainly own some things (an Apple computer, for one) that other people might find excessive. A cheaper Windows machine can (more or less) do all the same things. It would get me from point A to B (to use the driving analogy).
Leaf blowers are everything that is wrong with this world.
Let me back that statement up. Jeanette and I are spending our first Fall in a house. When we lived in our apartment, we didn't mind the fact that we didn't have to mow a lawn, shovel a driveway, or rake leaves. But we also looked forward to those things, mostly because they symbolized the fact that we would have a yard, a parking space (or a garage), and trees. Now we have those things. And we're enjoying the yard work.
Do we care too much about creation? To continue what I said last week, there are all kinds of good things that can separate us from God. It still is strange to me that Paul would list many of these instead of purely negative things, but at the same time it's an important message to keep in mind.
