Created to Obsess

With this title comes a great memory – Zion Youth Camp (maybe 2006).  The first year that Ps. Curtis Sharp was the guest speaker.  It was the year of awakening for me.  I was just about to head to Bible school, and the Lord was doing some crazy things in my life, and those messages were a big part of that.  The theme was ‘Vessels of Honour’. (actually, it was probably ‘honor’, but that’s just because it was run by crazy United States people)  His messages had titles like ‘Created to Stand’ (about Daniel), and…wow, just drew a blank.  ‘Created to Stand’ was where he used the illustration from the movie Gettysburg.  That is just one, but every one had a similar idea – whatever these characters were ‘created’ to do, they did it with everything they had.

I’ve been recently reminded of the idea that man was ‘Created to Obsess’.  These days, we have strange psychiatric terminology that explain these fixations.  OCD being one (mind you, I’m not saying that the compulsion to turn the light on and off three times every time is necessarily what we were created for).  Yet, if you look around you, pretty much everyone has something they are infatuated with.  No, I don’t want to water it down with words like ‘infatuation’.  That seems to have a lesser signifigance to it.  Things they are obsessed with.

The first things you might think of are hobbies.  As in, “He’s been under the hood of that old car since our 3rd wedding anniversary.  Didn’t even come in last year for our 50th anniversary party.”  Perhaps some people really are that obsessed by a hobby, but they would be the exception.  I mean, ‘obsession’ is a big word.  More likely, they are obsessed with an idea that the hobby gives substance to.

We are most obsessed with ideas: love (or what we think love is), success, financial prosperity, power, maybe even death or evil.  These ideas produce the actions and decisions that look like hobbies and (to us) a waste of time. There is no wasting time on an idea to those obsessed with that idea.  The only thing worse than not getting what you desperately want is not desperately wanting anything at all.  You may say, ‘Well, that depends on what you are desperately wanting’.  Sure, the object is important.  But true or not, I do know that there are too many people who would say they have found the truth and are not obsessive about it.  In fact, I think Jesus said something about that – basically that those unobsessive people make Him vomit.  I fear I am one at times.

Jesus also said that the kingdom of God (and everything therein) is only to those who seek with abandon, who sell all the other things to have that one thing once they realize that it is worth it.  Man was created to obsess.  Adam chose one woman over the whole world.  So did Jesus, in effect, choosing the Bride.  Both suffered for it.  One redeeming the other’s misguided choice.

So what are you willing to do?  To have what others do not have, you must be willing to do what others are unwilling to do.  Pick out the most courageous and admirable characters in any story – you will see this play out.  That one ‘hero’ rises above the others in the story for this very reason.  From a Christian perspective this is true.  If you begin naming the standouts throughout history – Daniel, Paul, Wycliffe, Luther – it is a similar record.  These rise above the others because they were obsessive when they found that One Thing to be obsessive about.  Look in the Bible – every significant character was taken with an idea.  To have a child, to conquer a kingdom, to obey God, to save a soul.  Judas and his coveting, Absalom and his ambition to take the kingdom, Daniel and his determination to remain godly in a godless society, Saul and his jealousy.

Look what it drove them to do:
Ezekiel laid on his side for 430 days in obedience to the voice of God in order to identify with Israel.  Check out the preparation – he made food to sustain himself for the duration, and not only, but the instructions were to cook it over cow dung.  Later on, he actually ate part of a scroll.
Noah started building a “boat” (what even IS a boat?) to prepare for a “flood” (what IS a flood, Noah?) which was going to be caused by “rain” (I truly believe this is where they started the whole ‘quotations by fingers’ thing).  Not just before, but years before.
Abraham left his family and friends behind to walk towards a land (he didn’t know where) for an undefined amount of time, and lived in tents the rest of his life because someday, his descendants were going to live where he had walked. Oh yeah, and his whole life he believed that his descendants would be as numerous as the sand, yet he only had two sons.
God SO loved humanity that He manifested Himself as a Man and walked among us.  And then He let humanity beat and kill Him so that He could redeem them from the results of their sin.

Obviously I could go on.  Esther put her life in the hand of a foreign king for the sake of her people.  Read Foxe’s Book of Martyrs – full of obsessive people.  How can you live as a Christian and not see this?  How did these ever become simply bedtime stories?  I wish we could see the desperation in their eyes.

I challenge you.  Have you found it?  If you know the truth, if you have seen the treasure – what are you doing about it? You were created to be obsessed.

“All things considered, one might think he was saying that man’s passion for God needs to look more like desperation than reason.”Ted Dekker,Obsessed.

 

The ‘Templeton’ to My ‘Graham’

How could I ever look at my life the same way again?  In fact, does that question make sense? Am I not in the state of mind to always be looking at my life in a different perspective from day to day and even moment to moment?  If I stop, have I not closed myself off to seeing a new aspect of potential or growth?  But here. Now.  How could I?

I have just finished watching a biopic on the early years of Billy Graham.  I have previously had the utmost respect for this man, having read his autobiography and many different things about his life and ministry which always amaze me.  His ministry and life have certainly changed the face of Christianity for much of the world.  However, in the afterglow of this film I am left reeling.  Told from the interview of Charles Templeton on his deathbed, the film takes on a sad tone as Templeton rues the way that he and Graham went their separate ways.  In a nutshell, they met and preached together, being two of the most widely known names in North America – Templeton in Toronto and Graham in Chicago.  But as the war ended, Templeton began to ask some of life’s questions (those of which I have already spoken of in an earlier post) about a loving God and the state of the world.  He let go of his position in the church (very honestly) and ultimately let go of his faith.  It was this that marked a turning point in Graham’s life – when he came to face with his best friend and partner in ministry declaring his outright disbelief of everything Graham believed.  As Graham was travelling around the world preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ and God’s love for all mankind, Templeton was writing a book denying who God was.

Suddenly, I wondered.  Seems like this happens to me all too often.  I have enough of my own questions, and yet over and over those close to me ask them back to me and my own beliefs are challenged and look foolish again.  Sometimes I don’t even believe myself or trust my own decisions.  Was it pride?  Is it judgmental?  Is there a reason?  Is it enough that someone told me?  Templeton and Graham.  Where do my loyalties lie?  To me that is the most difficult of all scenarios – how do you argue with your best friend, who has honestly sought the truth and found answers that are different than yours?  Templeton and Graham.  How do I answer questions to which the world has no answers?  It is at these junctures that I again look in the proverbial mirror and see myself.  And there are no answers there.  Only flaws, failures, and questions – yet, there (is it the gleam in the eye?), there is something.  A determination, a purposing, an undying hope. Faith.  A decision to let these confrontations and challenges make me ask the questions but not let the questions undermine my decision.

Each friend who walks away with a parting comment.  Every betrayal, every conviction different than my own, each new perspective and opinion.  Even each blatant opposition.  Let it do to me what it did for Billy Graham.  Let it drive me to the lonely forest at night, to my knees, and to cry out to hear that Voice once again.  Let it shake those things that can be shaken until I am left with only the unshakable.  I fear being Templeton, who in his deathbed interview said he missed Graham and he missed Jesus, who died a man of regrets.  I would rather be like Billy Graham who will end his days at peace with God and man, whose only regrets are that he wished he prayed and read the Bible more.

I dare not trust the sweetest frame, but wholly lean on Jesus’ name.  When the mountains are falling, when the waters are rising, I shall be safe in you.
Though the nations are quaking, every kingdom be shaken, still I will rest in you. 

Andrew

 

D: Destiny

Destiny.  As an event or course of events that will inevitably happen in the future, I’m not sure if I believe in destiny.  Or have believed.  After reading ‘Blink’ by Ted Dekker, I was somewhat convinced by his arguments that such a thing would be indefinable because God is not confined to space and time so to speak of destiny only in that sense usually puts Him in distinct control of the future, but would undermine the whole idea of free will in the life of each one of us (making Him of no effect in the present).  In Dekker’s argument, choices that we make on a daily basis (and also prayer) cause an effect on the events that make up the future.  This does not steal from God’s omniscience however, it only serves to make Him infinitely more grand that we can comprehend – at once being humble enough to let us choose, and yet knowing the path we will take.

However, it is written.  If I believe the Bible, the future is written – concerning nations, wars, the end of the world, and eternal dwelling places.  So in that sense, destiny is real and true.  I was faced with this argument again the other day.  My brother and I were waiting for a friend at a university in South Africa and came into contact with two people who said they were somewhat atheists or agnostics.  They couldn’t decide, or hadn’t decided yet.  But like every other person on this planet, they had questions.  After the first five minutes when they discovered that I was a missionary and that Bevan is attending Bible College, they decided we would answer all of their questions.  I mean, this was major league.  Every question that C.S. Lewis ever tackled or any apologist has ever debated was thrown at us: “Why would good people go to hell?”; “If God is good why wouldn’t He stop bad stuff from happening?”; “Is homosexuality a choice?”; “Is abortion wrong?”; “What about people who have never heard about God?”.  On it went.  Divorce, fornication, the rating of sin, creation vs. evolution, a gammut of philosophical babble…My brain literally hurt when we finally said good-bye and walked away from that table – I had never faced all those questions AT THE SAME TIME.  I thought I had questions…

The most amazing thing, though, was that they recognized the attitude of love and for that I am grateful.  Sometimes I know that I can be like Judas or Simon, and say “We could have sold that perfume and fed the poor”, or “you wouldn’t let that person do that if you knew what they had done”.  I think it deeply affected them when we told them that God loves a person so much even while they are His enemies or don’t believe in Him.

Ok, maybe an even more amazing thing was the planting of a seed in their minds and hearts – inception, if you will.  One of the first things that they said was (I am paraphrasing), “I don’t believe that God is in control of everything and everybody or destiny or anything like that.”  I nodded.  To believe that brings a great decision to bear upon us.  We went on in the conversation, and after a while, they kept exclaiming how great it was that they had randomly sat at our table and that they were glad that they did.  Finally after one such statement, I said: “Look, you said you didn’t believe in destiny, and yet here we are, my brother and I who don’t go to this school and have never been to this school wandered around until we found this cafeteria and sat at an empty table in the corner – and we were only going to be here for an hour – and yet you ‘randomly’ sat down here.  You don’t believe in destiny? Come on!”  I think my mind has been somewhat convinced that some events (at least some) are ordered from Heaven and are waiting to happen for years.

Someone once pointed out the woman who touched the hem of Jesus’ garment and was healed.  She had been sick for 12 years.  Jesus happened to pass by her one day as he was heading to the house of Jairus to heal his daughter.  How old was his daughter?  12 years old.  Seems too much of a coincidence.  Was it destiny?  When I think about my life, it puts things in a new light – were all those things Divine appointments after all?

God, I want to be a part of your destiny.

It is a serious thing, to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or another of those destinations. – CS Lewis

 

Ineptitudinal

I’m not sure how many people actually read these blogs, nor do I really care.  If I did care, I would either shamelessly advertise or else give up altogether I think.  I have often tried to guess by looking at the website ‘footprints’, but afterwards I found it hard to determine if it was actually separate people or just me checking if it was separate people.  So that didn’t work so well.  Either way, if I wasn’t me and was some random person, I wonder if I would read it. Probably.  How could I not want to read something that I wrote?  I don’t mean the quality, but the content.  That’s an interesting thought.  No wonder it’s easy to be narcissistic.

Anyways, all that to say that the entertainment value of this blog goes up times ten for myself when I post stories of my utter stupidness or strange circumstances I find myself in.  I tend to lean towards physical comedy (actually, I like British humour too, so maybe my sense of humour is actually quite eclectic).  At least I like physical comedy.  Dick van Dyke I always find funny.  Chris Farley, Steve Martin…that type of thing.  Anyways.  I know for a fact I should have posted about the time I was trapped inside the Canada Post Distribution Centre’s 12 foot high chain-link fence (wow, that’s a lot of adjectives).  Or the time that I spilled an entire drum of fryer grease all over myself in front of a cute girl.  What about the myriad of times that I got stuck in the mud or in a ditch on some factory property WITH A LAWNMOWER (those were fun times)?  I once drove down the road with the ramp of a trailer down.  I locked the keys in the car a number of times, and once used a rake to get the door open.  (you’ll notice I should have a movie made about me called ‘the absent-minded landscaper’)  I’m sure all of my friends (maybe especially the female ones) could (and I used this word on purpose) DREDGE up stories of things I have said on the spur of the moment with no forethought to the outcome of or consequences of such a gaffe (although I have yet to be slapped, and that right there gives kudos to the character of said friends).  I hit my brother (or was it my sister. Or both?) in the head with a golf club when I was trying to teach him how to swing.  I cut my chin open and got my first and only stitches to my chin when I tried to imitate Kurt Browning on a newly tiled floor with my socks on. Probably never be able to grow a normal looking beard.  I would have to include all the times I have lost my wallet.  I’ve finally managed to nail down a type of system where I do exactly the same thing with it every time so I won’t forget, but I’ve definitely gone through my share of ID and bureaucratic processes.  I put my passport through a spin cycle.

I could go on, and will if I think of more.  I mean other stuff happened to me that I really had no control over but they make good stories.  I got hit in the head with a baseball bat – my sister was batting, I was pitching, and she didn’t have a real good grip on the thing.  So that red-painted flying wooden projectile caught me in the side of the head while I tied my shoe.  Still have that battle scar.  Or when my sister Bonnie knocked my head against my sister’s numerous times on purpose.  Great fun for her.  Loss of brain cells for me.  Of course, I fell down a mudslide towards a waterfall – it always sounds more serious than it was, but how was I to know that?  I know there is more.  I have the ineptitude (and the couple scars) to prove it.

All that to say (well, I actually I meant to say all that as well, but by ‘all that to say’, I really mean ‘I have a new story to tell’.) that this week I think I overcame all.  By overcame all, I mean I did the stupidest thing I think I have ever done.  Now, understand, it only FEELS stupider when it happens in front of other people, but it is just as stupid when it happens to you when you are on your own.  That’s why it’s called ‘laughing at yourself’.

I have been hitting up the gym fairly habitually this past month, and in my typical fashion, I have put together a routine.  I hate routines, but if I don’t have them I will forget stuff.  I put the same things in my backpack when I leave the house, I put things in the locker the same way when I get to the gym; I put my locker keys in the same place, I use the same shower stall, etc.  You get the idea.  Well, it always happens – I do something stupid because I broke the routine.  I locked my locker before using the shower and didn’t have anywhere to put my keys, so I took them with me to the shower.  Inside the shower stall (a different one than I normally use because MY shower was in use), I noticed that it still had a soap dispenser on the wall, so I figured I would put my keys on top so I would see them when I went to leave.  Unfortunately, there is a big hole in the top of the dispenser, and down down down my keys went into the soap.  Of course, the hole isn’t big enough to put my hands in.  Right away I was getting visions of having to ask for bolt cutters at the desk, or bashing the soap dispenser against the stall to break it open.  Then I had a great idea, and I simply turned it upside down, and GLORY BE!  Sure enough my keys come sliding through the sticky stuff into my hands.  I know it all happened in about 15 seconds, but the fact that I dropped my keys INTO a soap dispenser just about tops everything.  Next week I’m going to get them to replace all my fingers on my right hand with my different keys.  That way I can still play the guitar.

Andrew

 

From the East to the Far Out

Some of the most interesting people you will ever know, or at least sort of know, are those you work with.  Perhaps some of them are your close friends, or become them, but for the most part we only ever know them in a casual, work-oriented-only way (even though we see them almost every day).  No matter what avenue of business you work in, there is such a variety of characters (and you are included in that) that work at a particular company at any given time.  Of course, TV shows have been made to quasi-mock these, putting stereotypes on each member of the workforce.  You have the ‘religious one’ – ever ‘square’ and critical of those who aren’t, but they end up being hypocritical.  The nerd – the one who can fix every computer problem but will never have a girlfriend, the brown-noser who is the ‘yes man’ in every situation and yet power hungry, the flirty receptionist…The world has a firm grip on who they are, don’t they?

My co-workers are the subject of this article.  In honour of those who have laboured beside me – those who have stood over a greasy grill or restocked the freezer, those who have held a trimmer for 4 straight hours in the hot sun or had their minds go numb from 24 hours in the freezing cold, those who were going somewhere after or had no clue – you deserve at least this.  You probably more likely deserve a dinner for two at Ye’s Sushi, but this is all I can give you right now.  Through the high demands, the complaining customers, the bitter temperatures, and maybe even low wages you pressed on.  At the end of the day, no matter what happened, the job got done.  We did it together.  We learned how to be a team, and sometimes had fun doing it.

From ‘Downhome’ to Palestine – they come from many places; from those on their way to the top in the big city to those who could care less – they come from all walks of life.  Their names are important, but not essential for this blog.  Somehow, they all had a part in where I am right now.  They tried to get me to see their point of view, they argued the existence of God, they invited me for drinks, offered me a ‘roach’, showed me their new tattoos – the stories are endless, but they all contributed to my perception of people and were crucial in forming even some of my own philosophies for life.

A&W, Ideal Supply, Fletcher’s Landscaping – the list goes on.  Full-time, part-time, some-of-the-time…these co-workers were always there.  They still are.  I still remember the music I traded with co-workers at A&W, the joke about dating the lettuce, and ‘The Brotherhood’ we formed.  I remember gritting my teeth to Ozzy Osbourne and the like while I laid brick, listening to someone’s new rap lyrics, discussing the meaning of dreams and ravens, golf, cars, the Beatles, the resurrection, evolution (Hey! Did you get that large fry out?), predestination, video games, morals, movies…oh, and the like.  There was no sacred topic (unfortunately) and no topic too hard to tackle…The co-worker is a great sounding board for new theories, for the aftermath of fights with the girlfriend, and for just about anything.

They came in and out of my life with the jobs that I have had.  Sometimes I cared about them more than other times.  They produced something in me.  Character that I wouldn’t have otherwise.  They spurred me to look for answers to questions about life.  They made me ask why God was so ‘harsh’ at Mt. Sinai, why Jesus didn’t fight back, why fornication was really wrong, and (of course) why a loving God would send people to hell.  Eventually, and as I got older, I became more sure about who I was, and they came to grips with the fact that I didn’t party and that I was really no fun.  That’s ok, at work everyone is on the same level.  You can always talk about work, right?  And when no-one wants to talk about work at work, they still have plenty of stories to tell you.  Like the story about how life is so quiet in Newfoundland that you get the binoculars out to see who it is when a car drives by.  Or how the girl finally realized that the friend her boyfriend kept talking about was really another girlfriend.  Or about the last place they worked – because you know it was always better.  Some of the stories I could do without, sure, but that’s life.

I still think and pray for some when I think of them – the brother from the Church of the Latter Day Saints, my golfing buddy from Listowel, the art-school drop-out who was confused about life and yet truly passionate about it (sorry I couldn’t help more), the farm-girl from Lebanon, the seminary graduate, the story-teller, and the one who read books about Mandela, Ghandi, and Jesus because he wanted to do something important with his life.  I think I have turned this around, but wherever they are now, I hope they found what life was truly about and that their questions were answered by a more able teacher.

More than anything, I think what they deposited in me is this:  it is in life as it is in the workplace – no one is second rate.  Some are paid more, but as people everyone matters.  The one who stays around for a few weeks and the one who stays for 7 years – they all have a lesson to teach you, if you will listen.  Just a person in a uniform, or suit, inside another suit.  They taught me that I should have more answers, or at least be willing to say ‘I don’t know’.  They taught me that I probably wasn’t the easiest person to work with either.

From the East to the Far Out: I love them all, and pray all the best for each of them in return for the things they have deposited in my own life.

 

Tears for…feets

Ok, I do understand that only a select few will really understand the full implication of the title.  In fact, probably even they wouldn’t pick up on it right away.  For some reason, I suddenly thought of: ‘and it was Jeremy in 1983, in his Ocean Pacific tee….’ Tears for fears, you know?  Anyways, enough about that – though it did make me smile.  Another lifetime, that.

But this post is actually and honestly on an entirely different and more serious note.  It’s sort of about the difference between literature and the Bible.  In the technical sense, the Bible is literature:n, creative writing of recognized artistic value.  Valuable, yes, but also, the Scriptures have been recognized over the course of time as artistic and creative, especially the poetic books.  However, to stop there – to place them on the pedestal of ‘best-selling literature in history’, or ‘a great, inspiring collection of works’ is to devalue them.  (Here I was going to insert similes to describe this devaluing, but there is nothing like it – with any other author or body of work, one could simply say ‘it isn’t my genre’ or ‘it took too long to read’ or ‘a classic, but I’ll never read it again’) There is a definite disconnect when trying to compare with any other literary work.  In fact, you will find the same when the Muslims speak of the Quran or the Jews of the Torah, etc.  These holy books are revered as something more than literature.

In fact, I was reading the story of Joseph recently and realized that indeed I became frustrated with it just for that reason – I was reading it as a story.  Sure, we can enjoy the simplistic: ‘this happened, then this’ account; the Bible does give the basic outline of the story.  But you get to the end and Joseph keeps breaking down and weeping.  Suddenly I wondered what he was so upset about – the story seemed to have left out virtually all of the heart-ache and sorrow in his life.  Isn’t that what makes a great story?  It is the development of the characters, the crest and the trough in the story’s wave, the climax, and (of course), the denouement.

No – the Bible would hardly compare to War and Peace or Tale of Two Cities or The Lord of the Rings.  There is another reason entirely for this reverence, and for that matter, for the top spot on the all-time best seller list (I say this in direct contradiction to most of the lists now.  Seems they got tired of always having the Bible and the Quran on top [people like variety you know], so now they exclude them because the sales figures are hard to determine for all the free copies given away).  The reason is not understood for unbelievers – do you find a plethora of them reading the Bible for pleasure?  It is simply in the power, simplicity, and wonder of the message.

In it we see incomprehensible actions – forgiveness where retribution was perfectly justifiable, one Man dying for all, blood that washes, leprosy healed by water, material goods sold and money given away to follow Jesus, and the list goes on.  Of course there are also the subjects that even Christians still don’t fully understand – an eternal hell that exists in the face of a merciful God, eternal life that cannot be earned, blood that washes, suffering and testing that works for good, and that list goes on.  All of these things combine to form what we call ‘the Scriptures’ – and the greatest of all is that we believe they are the words of God – by ‘verbal plenary inspiration’.

I say ALL of that to say this:  this morning I was struck by this again.  That so often, the monotony of literature overtakes me as I read the Bible.  I forget the wonder and awe I should have as I read – forget and hurry through, taking little thought to ponder the infinite measure of grace that allows me to read the words of God to ME.  Today I read the story of the woman who broke the alabaster box at Jesus’ feet, washing His feet with her tears, wiping them with her hair, and anointing them with the costly perfume.  How often are we Judas, who saw the whole thing and said: ‘we could have sold the perfume and used it to feed the poor’ (or worse, are REALLY like him and wanted to grab some of the money for ourselves later); or how often are we like the Pharisee, Simon who thought: ‘He should know this woman who is touching Him is a sinner’?  I felt like them as I read this story, and it (to use a Bible word) smote me deeply.

Suddenly I understood this woman.  She was indescribably ‘poor in spirit’, embarrassed and humbled that Jesus even sat still while she poured out her perfume and her heart.  Simon, Judas, the other apostles, and myself were all amazed that Jesus commended her most highly, forgave her sins (without her confessing them to Him), and made her whole.  She already loved much – already loved more than the religious Pharisees who believed they didn’t need forgiveness – and she expressed it in the way she knew how, in fact, it probably wasn’t even a planned event – simply a response to the cleansing and forgiveness she was already experiencing in her soul.

I never want to read the Bible the same way again.  D. Martyn Lloyd Jones was the minister at Westminster Chapel for many years.  These words I will end with are his thoughts on the subject:

“There is nothing more important in the Christian life than the way in which we approach the Bible, and the way in which we read it….We know nothing about God and about the Christian life…apart from the Bible…Here, in the Bible, is our sole authority….

We must start by agreeing that merely to read the Bible is not enough in and of itself.  It is possible for us to read the Bible in such a mechanical manner that we derive no benefit from doing so….It is a good thing to read the Bible daily, but it can be quite profitless if we merely do so for the sake of being able to say we read the Bible daily.  Our approach to the Bible is something of vital importance.“

Andrew

 

We are in the midst of the hottest month of summer, and it has almost ceased to cool down at nights at all.  Thank God for fans.  I’m not exactly looking forward to winter here though.  It gets quite cold up here (‘up’ meaning ‘in the higher elevation’).  But we will go snowboarding!  And I think I signed myself up to teach an African how…umm…maybe that wasn’t so smart.  I think a certain movie director destroyed my self-confidence in my snowboarding abilities.  All I can think of is ‘Beautiful Day’ and me going head first down the hill at Chicopee.  Ah, the spring of youth.

Anyways.  Nothing has changed extravagantly here.  I am getting more and more comfortable here all the time the more we see people and I become a fixture here.  I keep getting asked when I am getting married.  Humph!  Bah Humbug…and all that.  Nah, kidding – but thankfully I do have a standing offer to be hooked up with a Sotho girl should my other (options?) fail.  Hah, that makes me laugh.  Options.  I also got my cheeks pinched by a Sotho who is younger than me, but married with a child.  That pretty much gives you that right here, since it basically means you are older.  But it was weird nonetheless.  They also have this strange fascination with my haircuts.  Tom and Justin just basically buzz(ed) it down, but I can’t bring myself to that yet.  I get complimented every time I get a haircut.

The weekend saw us endure til 5AM to watch that thriller of a football game known as SuperBowl XLVI.  What a game.  I made pizza, Tom made bean dip, and we had a Brit over to watch the game with us.  Since we were all supporting the Giants, we were all pleased with the outcome.  I wish I could have watched it with you, Lyss, but maybe there will be other times!  Like the Seahawks and Patriots in SuperBowl L or something.  I can dream.

You may have seen a FaceBook status of mine that waxed quite eloquently on the merits of Sotho entrepreneurship.  (That is a hard word to type).  I was in the open market and decided on a purchase – on this particular item I did not know the going rate, but the general idea is: Don’t pay what they ask.  So when he quoted a price, I knocked it down to less (from like 3 bucks to 2 bucks basically), and thought that was fine.  Well Tom found out and laughed, and got out, went to the guy and said, “No, for 1.25 (this is with the exchange)” and the guy said yes.  (Granted, Tom knew the going rate).  The guy realized I was with Tom and came over to explain his reasoning – saying that Tom would obviously get the better rate since he was a returning customer, but I got the rip-off rate because it was my first time, because “that is how we attract the customers” he says.  Wow.  That was new.  Suddenly, so many things became clear about Lesotho.

In other news, we discovered the Coke distributor.  We can get a case for about M53.00 which is equal to about 7 dollars.  Less than 40 cents – and plus in glass bottles.  I feel like such a bad man when I pop that cap off a cold one!  Haha..I think I am kidding.

I think I am picking up more of the language.  I can tell you if I am hungry, tired, happy, playing guitar, thirsty, or that I want cold water.  Good thing most everyone speaks English…Although on the other hand, that also limits my apprehension of the language.

I received my first care package from home, which was great!  Keep em’ coming…heh. I hope everyone at ‘home’ is well.

“We charged you more the first time because that is how we attract the customers…”

Andrew

 

Help Me Tonight

Help me tonight; I’m striving to seek Your face
But I’m more aware of my sin, than I am of Your grace
Find me tonight; I’ve wandered and I’ve strayed
I know You’d leave the rest, just to keep me in my place

I’m so thankful, Lord; that You’ve died for me
And all I can do, is worship You
I’m so humbled, Lord; that You care for me
And all I can do; is worship You

Help me tonight; I’m striving to seek Your face
But I’m more aware of my sin, than I am of Your grace

 

Enigma

I do tend to repeat myself (just getting an early start on being senile or something), but as I reflect on this New Year, I feel to once again pass along my enthusiasm about science.  Ok, who am I kidding?  I don’t know a thing about science – even though it is a bit of Hamilton lore that I did receive a grade of 105% on a final science exam.  Still, I really don’t know much – I am more of a general knowledge buff when it comes to science.  As in most other things, I come out as pretty much average as far as my science expertise goes.

However, one thing I distinctly remember from that Grade 8 science class is a picture of a Camaro abandoned, now rusting and falling apart from neglect.  It was a representation of the truth of the law of thermodynamics.  The second law of thermodynamics basically deals with impossible processes.  Heat cannot be transferred from a body of lower temperature to a body of higher temperature.  Energy, once used, cannot be harnessed to be used again.  There was a time when scientists tried to create a machine of perpetual motion – one in which, when the machine expelled energy, it would simply harness the used energy and repeat the cycle.  This would obviously expel the need for petrol of any kind to run an automobile. It would revolutionize our world.

However, naturally, this is not possible.  It breaks the law of entropy.  Entropy is (loosely) that energy cannot move from a lower form to a higher form.  In other words, the neglected Camaro would never get better while it sat, only worse.  The universe is running down.  Look anywhere around you.  Without an outside or impeding force, energy never improves.  Movement stills.  Together is broken. Full becomes empty.  Hot becomes cold.  New becomes old.

But the New Year.  What an enigma… Somehow in the space of a minute, the whole world recognizes that something has renewed.  Not physically of course – nature is not reset from December 31^st to January 1^st  - but somehow.  Mentally perhaps.  I wrote a blog post (the very first I believe) explaining how the air was rife with new things at that time.  It comes back to me now how impossible that is.  There is nothing new under the sun, didn’t Solomon say truthfully like 3000 years ago?

It’s the beauty of grace.  An outside force breaking the less-than-idyllic monotony of a world running downhill to chaos and decay.  Even we are capable of it.  Remember how it feels when you’ve wronged someone and they forgive you?  They repay you with a kind word instead.  That’s something new.  They give you another chance when none should have been available.  Everybody wants this – this magnificent catharsis – in their lives.  I think that’s why we latch onto this idea of a New Year so tightly, and celebrate it so joyfully.  I’ve not met many people who desire the past to be replayed – those who do (and I have been one at times), do so at the cost of neglecting their chance for a new start.  The New Year is a time to do something different.  Resolutions to change the monotonic way that we have been living.  Resolutions to make wrongs right, to achieve our goals, to patch relationships.

A simple “I’m sorry” will heal a relationship.  There is that pile of something that needs to be thrown out or sorted through.  What’s stolen should be replaced.  What’s lacking should now be paid attention to.  Whatever it is, we know.  It is the ‘old’.  That weight continually harassing, never letting us forget.  It is the daily grind, the ‘same old’, it is everything opposite of ‘new’, ‘fresh’, ‘revitalized’, ‘alive’.  Once we take that action and make the decision, we stand again at that ‘New Year’ in our lives.  What do they say: “I’m turning over a new leaf”? Amazing isn’t it?  There is a mystery there.  The mystery of the new.  Who knows what a day may bring forth?  No one – it’s new.  It has never been lived.  This year, 2012, is untouched, a blank page – it is new.  With one choice – the choice to embrace the new and be done with the old – the law of entropy can be revoked.

The natural can become the super-natural.  I dare you.

“All glory comes from daring to begin” (Eugene Ware)

 

“There’s blood around the corner…”

My family for sure will know right off where I am going with this.  I think if there was one good movie that came out of that Feature Films studio, it was ‘Same River Twice’.  Only maybe it should have been called ‘Never the Same River Twice’ since that was actually the catch phrase…don’t know where they went wrong on that.

That is all I could think of both times I was white-water rafting in Costa Rica. Great fun.  However, even now there is this feeling welling up within me that I had the chance to not be able to sit an write this out after what happened last week.  Like in the space of a few seconds, I made a decision that possibly profoundly altered the course of my life….or once-impending death.

Tom and I were invited to take a trip to see the Drakensburg mountains that border Lesotho and South Africa on the Eastern border of the country.  The man who offered was Allan, a Brit, (a good bloke!).  He was part of our Tuesday night Bible study and was working with the Ministry of Roads here in Lesotho.  His contract has expired and he wanted to see the country just before he left and graciously extended the use of his vehicle and his company to us.  We wrangled up another Brit to go with us and off we went last Monday.

If you want to follow along in your books, just turn the page when you hear this sound….

We left Maseru, the western border, and travelled North through Teyateyaneng, Hlotse, Bhuta-Bhute, and then turned southeast for Mokhotlong.  Upon reaching Mokhotlong, the paved (when I say paved I mean that some of it WAS paved at one point) road comes to an end and the real mountain pass begins.  If you zoom in on Google Maps far enough, the track that we drove through the mountains on is actually in yellow and on the South African side if you follow that path is ‘Sani Pass’.  It is the first mountain pass I have ever experience, and an experience it was.

This is more or less the ‘breath before the plunge’.  We had just crossed the border into ‘No-Man’s Land’ between Lesotho and SA and we stopped to take a picture.  You cannot tell very well (since I am no photographer), but straight ahead where you no longer see the road it basically drops off vertically.  And drops.  And drops.  I am pretty cool-headed, but I think my knuckles were white and they ached at the end of this drop.

The other harrowing factor was that we only had a limited time to cross over into South Africa, so we were actually racing the clock down this treacherous path.  But still, there were African taxis navigating this road. Crazy.

I was seemingly more interested in what was rising beside and behind us, because I didn’t get many shots of this path, or any good ones…but here is another..

Beautiful really.  Majestic.  Awe-inspiring.  I said ‘Wow’ an number of times, and I don’t say that a lot.  Or do I?

Needless to say (I think), we made it across in time and arrived at the Lodge that we stayed in for two nights.  It was a beautiful place, family owned, right on the river that ran into the mountains should you follow it far enough.

The next morning we went to the Reserve and picked a trail through the mountains and began walking.  Before you realize it, you are standing at well over 2000 metres looking down at a lot.  Tough going, but when the people ahead of you are all over 40 (and one is 70), you don’t say a word…you just keep walking.

We ended up walking for about 4 hours and arrived back at the Lodge wiped out; but Tom and I decided to grab inner tubes and float down the river the old fashioned way.  See, from where we stood, we could see a bit of white water, but it was pretty tame.  Nothing like a Level 3 or 4 rapid you might find on the Sarapiqi.  Still, when you are floating on the tube and the current picks you up, its pretty fun.  We floated a couple k’s down, got out, walked back and started again.

The reason being that we had been warned that further on (or, ‘just around the bend’), there was a gorge, and it was actually name ‘Thrombosis’.  Side note: We later found out that national kayak teams actually came there just to hit that gorge and rapids.  Apparently it was well-known in those circles.  But we didn’t know that.

So the second time, when we still hadn’t seen the gorge, we decided to go a bit further, always looking before we entered the rapids to see if we could see the other side of them.  By and by we saw the water start to pick up and our natural reaction was ‘OH YEAH!’ (course, by this time we were whooping and hollering like a couple of…well, kids); but as we got closer, Tom pointed out that this time he couldn’t see the other side…so he got to the side of the river just before the white-water, but of course, clearer heads prevailed, and I gallantly pointed out – “it doesn’t look so bad”.

Famous last words.  I got about 15 seconds in and realized I was a goner.  I could see the water about 100 metres in front of me (and rapidly approaching) sloshing against the rock wall and disappearing around…you guessed it, ‘the bend’.  At that moment, my life almost flashed before my eyes, but I made desperate grabs at anything…and finally grabbed a rock in a last gasp attempt to save myself from sure destruction.

And now I really wish that somehow I had been able to take a picture of Thrombosis Gorge – for we climbed out and took a look at what we narrowly avoided.  The beginning of the gorge (that mark 100 metres from where I got out) was a good 6-7 foot drop into unknown water – and it took off from there, down a level, through jagged rocks; the water boiling, rushing, foaming – and just generally looking like it wanted my life and my inner tube.

Of course, as we walked back, we had to discuss it (hey, J – you remember walking back up the Zion hill after a night of fun?) and we almost decided that we should have gone ahead.  I mean, now that we had looked at it from up top and thought about it, we probably would never attempt it the same way.  It would have been a once in a lifetime experience.  But something else tells me the river was going to make sure of that.  Something also tells me that I made the right call in that moment.  Call me chicken.

The cool thing was that over the course of the whole trip there and back, we basically circled the country of Lesotho.  I have already been a bit in the interior, so I really only have a bit of ground left to cover (there are only so many good roads here) by road.

Anyways, that is my Christmas holiday – or one of them.  Hope you liked it as much as I did.  Go to: “therealhamshank.shutterfly.com” for the rest of the pictures – I should have them up next year sometime.

“All will be well that will be well” – (maybe C.S. Lewis? or maybe I just paraphrased him…)

Andrew