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Posts from the ‘Random Musings’ Category

May 24

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Friday Miscellany

It’s Friday, and I’m not preaching this Sunday. What this means, of course, is that there are a number of unrelated and not necessarily coherent ideas rattling around my skull that I need to dump somewhere. I’m (mostly) kidding. I think much more highly of preaching than that. Although I have found it quite remarkable how frequently the events and ideas and reading of a given week will find their way into a Sunday sermon. At any rate, a few miscellaneous thoughts on a grey, rainy Friday morning… Read more

May 22

8 Comments

Maintenance Check

When I was in my twenties, I swore I would never drive a van. Vans were spectacularly uncool, boring, gasoline-sucking behemoths that middle-aged people who had given up on life and ideals drove. Vans were for tourists. Or people who went to Disneyland with whiny kids who were never satisfied. Never! Not for me. I would drive a trendy Euro-wagon or something. I would get a roof rack for extra storage. I would drive just about anything but a van!

I am now in my thirties. I drive a van.

[Sigh] Read more

May 20

5 Comments

Take Words With You

This morning’s Bible reading was a bit of an unexpected one.  Hosea 14. I suspect I am not alone in saying that I don’t tend to spend a lot of time in Hosea for devotional reading. It’s a fascinating book and a remarkable story about the fidelity of God to his people, but Hosea, like most of the minor prophets is a bit off the beaten path. At least for me. It’s like that interesting little town that you drove through once upon a time but haven’t visited in quite a while. You’re glad to know it’s there, but you don’t tend to treat it as one of the important stops on the Bible highway. Read more

May 16

Open Book

As far as I can recall, the last few weeks have contained my first ever interviews. This sounds quite a bit more impressive than it is or was. One was forty-five minutes in a Tim Hortons coffee shop discussing my time in Colombia last year with a local reporter who is preparing a small booklet as part of an upcoming relief sale put on by Mennonite Central Committee. The other was ten minutes or so in front of a camera in Montreal as part of a feature about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission being put together by Mennonite Church Canada. We’re not really talking a big stage here. But still, kind of interesting experiences. Read more

Apr 14

3 Comments

Word Games

I had one of those semi-awkward, overly familiar God-talk conversations today… You know the ones right?  Conversations punctuated by words about “what God is doing” and breathless declarations that “it was such a God thing” and “God just showed up” and “it’s so amazing how God is just moving.”  Now that I am a pastor, these kinds of conversations are even more awkward than they once were because, rightly or wrongly, I get the overwhelming sense that I am supposed to be eagerly expressing my approval of such language.  Kinda like a professional requirement or something—like if I don’t understand and affirm the words and the experiences, then I get a failing grade as a pastor.  I usually mostly smile and nod while inside I am rehearsing a thousand objections and criticisms and mostly wishing my interlocutor would just take their enthusiastic fervour somewhere else.  Read more

Apr 9

3 Comments

Blessed are those who Hunger and Thirst After Righteousness…

I am a theological schizophrenic.

Some days, I am an incorrigible rationalist. I like reading philosophy and theology. I like rational arguments and logic and consistency. I like highly charged debate about abstract and arcane concepts. I am drawn toward topics that have very little “practical” value. Thinking rightly about God’s nature and God’s purposes is very important to me. I like to be right. Read more

Mar 14

3 Comments

The Cultivation of Regret

Do you ever wonder about what might have been? What if I had taken that job? What if I had moved to that city or stayed in that city? What if I had pursued that relationship? What if I had put my kids in that school? What if I had encouraged that friendship, chosen that church, made that crucial decision at that crucial moment? How would my life have been different? What painful pitfalls might have I avoided? What pleasures and surprises might I have missed out on? What doors may have closed never to open again? What have I missed out on by virtue of choosing what I have chosen when I have chosen it? Read more

Mar 1

12 Comments

On Disappointment

There aren’t many good radio stations in the city I live in. Like, roughly zero. But for a few glorious moments this morning the heavens opened, the clouds parted, and a shaft of wondrous auditory light suffused my little Volkswagen Jetta as I flitted about, running errands on a windswept prairie day. U2’s “One” was playing on the radio. It’s probably my favourite song. Ever. I hadn’t heard it for months, maybe even a year. And here it was! On a crappy Lethbridge radio station that ordinarily dispenses a nauseating combination of top-40 pop trash and mid-eighties light rock (think Katy Perry and Chicago back to back)! Such rapture, such undeserved grace! It was almost more than I could bear. Read more

Feb 5

14 Comments

Sex and Spectacle—This is Prophetic?

Like hundreds of millions of my fellow humans, I spent part of Sunday watching the Super Bowl. I don’t particularly care for American football (I prefer the real version, where they don’t wear armour and stop for a break every 10 seconds or so), but we were invited to someone’s place to watch the game, and there was to be good food and good people present, so off I went. And, leaving aside the mind-numbing tedium of so much advertising and hype and endless time outs (some unexpected) and the bizarre pre- mid- , and post-game commentary about how God may or may not have been involved in the outcome, it was a pretty good game.   Read more

Jan 30

3 Comments

I Felt Very Small

I spent my day off this week at the ski hill ninety minutes or so west of town. I skied a decent amount growing up, but once our kids arrived and I decided to back to school, skiing wasn’t really much of an option any more. It’s not a cheap sport, obviously, and certainly beyond the reach of a student trying to juggle studies with work and a young family. I don’t think I skied more than a handful of times during the first decade or so of my kids’ life. Read more

Jan 26

Waiting Room

Among the unexpected pleasures of a full weekend at home alone with the kids, which included the usual worship service preparation, our church’s AGM, as well as basketball games and swimming trials, and hosting a friend for night who was stopping in on his way back to British Columbia, was a 3 am trip to the local Emergency Room to deal with a dislocated toe that my son sustained at an all-nighter at the church. Great. Just what the, ahem, doctor ordered. Read more

Jan 7

8 Comments

Monday Miscellany

It’s Monday morning, the kids are back in school, my Christmas flu finally seems to have released me from its miserable grip. A New Year has begun, and life is back to normal. A couple of miscellaneous topics and ideas for a Monday morning, then. These have very little to do with one another other than that they have been collecting dust either in my brain or in my “drafts” folder over the past little while. If this comes across as a rambling mess, or a series of incoherent rants, well, I blame on the accumulation of weeks worth of flu medication which has undoubtedly scrambled my brain. Read more

Jan 2

10 Comments

Less is More

“So, did you make any New Years Resolutions?” The question came from my wife last night as I was fitfully settling into the foggy state of half-sleep produced by general holiday fatigue and the accumulation of several days’ worth of sinus medication. “What?  Oh, right… New Years… Um, no, I don’t think so, I can’t think of anything.” Pretty impressive, right? I can assure you that my response was even less inspiring in person than it no doubt seems in print. The adoption of New Years Resolutions quite literally hadn’t even occurred to me. Read more

Dec 29

2012 in Review (And a Thank You!)

A new year looms just around the corner and as I scan some of the blogs out there that I follow and highly respect, I notice that apparently the thing to do at the end of a year is something like  a “year in review” for your blog. Usually, this involves highlighting some of the most memorable posts of the last year, or the most interesting conversations or something like that.   Read more

Dec 12

2 Comments

Surprise!

My daily prayers throughout the Advent season thus far have been guided by the second volume of Take Our Moments and Our Days, which runs from Advent through to Pentecost. One of the readings for Morning Prayer today was a familiar one from the Gospel of Luke: Read more

Dec 10

10 Comments

Brave New (Online) World

There was this funny YouTube video last week. Somebody posted it on Facebook. Or tweeted it. Or something like that. It was very clever and witty and it got all kinds of likes and shares and tweets and re-tweets.It was one of many potentially entertaining diversions in the middle of a busy day. I laughed and moved on. I would link to the video so you could see for yourself, but I think I saw it over half a week ago, so it’s already ancient news. You’re already way behind. Read more

Dec 3

6 Comments

Nothing New?

I was reading a book recently—I don’t remember exactly when—when, after reading a particular paragraph, I closed the book in irritated frustration. “I’ve read about a hundred paragraphs just like that one,” I thought. I had the same experience on my morning walk today, listening to a sermon. I heard the preacher breathlessly declaring the wondrous significance of some Greek word and what it meant for us today, and thought to myself, “I can’t even count how many times I’ve heard something like that before and it contributes precisely nothing to my understanding of this text.” So many words—in print or out loud—saying the same old things, again and again and again…

Read more

Oct 30

8 Comments

U-Turn

I got a traffic ticket on Sunday.

It was an ugly exclamation point at the end of an exhausting weekend. My wife had been in Calgary for a seminar and I had been going nonstop from about Friday noon until Sunday evening. Volleyball tournaments, swim meets, soccer games, piano recitals, a communion service, church meetings, kids’ social gatherings… It just seemed to go on and on. There was just one thing left to do on a late Sunday afternoon before an enjoyable evening with friends beckoned, and that was to drop my son off so that he could get a ride to soccer practice. We stopped at the place where he was to be picked up.  I then proceeded to make a U-turn to head off for supper. And then, the ominous red and blue lights in my mirror.  Read more

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