Life is hard. Ever wonder if God cares? If following Christ makes a difference? If you have enough faith?

Four years ago on the day I write this, the Preacher stood in the pulpit of the last church he served full-time and read a note that put a period on his almost seventeen year ministry there. 

His health—ravished. His job—gone. Our parsonage home—no longer ours to use.

I’m ashamed to admit my puny faith. In the dark of night, I often worried. In the day, I sometimes complained. Would we have enough? How would we live? Was my faith enough? I must have added an inch to my neck, craning to see into the future.

And yet, flowing parallel to those concerns was the awareness of our own history. No matter our life circumstances, God had always been our Rock. We chose to trust him to keep us now; to hold our quaking hands and battered hearts. To lead us as he always had.

Precisely one year later, company downsizing ended my own job as a magazine editor—the good job God had provided eight months earlier. A few months later the Preacher’s disability insurance cut out.

For most of the next two years we lived on poppy seed faith and freelance. Our Father in Heaven guided us—one small step at a time.

The exciting thing about “not enough” is that when we apply faith and obedience to that lack, God goes to work. And unlike us, he has the power to do exceedingly, abundantly, above all you or I could ever ask, think or imagine. 

People who practice faith in God have every reason to be bowed by their own frailty. But we have even more reasons to be lifted by his might. Our greatest challenges are simultaneously God’s greatest opportunities. He says yes when the world says no. Possible, when even one’s own soul says impossible.

While still in full-time ministry, we expected we would never own our own home. We could never have enough. Make enough. Save enough.

Out of ministry and standing still beside our withered streams, we watched God go to work. As provision flowed in from multiple unexpected sources, our faith grew. I stopped tip-toeing around as though owned by a tiny God.

Today, the Preacher and I walked into the bank, and paid off a twenty-five year mortgage—in under three years. Gratitude overwhelms us. We told the banker so, too.

Your and my provisions for life flow through multiple different channels. No matter their names; earnings, gifts, bonuses, grants, inheritances, it’s important to call them what they are: God’s provisions and God’s possessions. Without his kindness, without his breath on you, on me, we are nothing, and we have nothing.

Got a little faith? A willing heart to do things his way? In God’s economy, that’s enough—and far more. 

From volumes of commentaries to irreplaceable classics to the wisdom of fellow theologians through the ages, books are vital tools for pastors. Each one in their personal libraries is a useful friend, and every one precious—even those previously un-read. Those wait on shelves like candy in the freezer—reminders that there’s still more to learn, deeper insights to gain—proponents of the myth that says, “One day, there’ll be time. “

Five years ago, disability brought a premature end to the Preacher’s thirty-year career as a full-time pastor. His thousand-plus books got packed into cardboard boxes. We schlepped them around for years. With the help of kind and strong-backed friends, his library migrated from his former church office to our basement to a storage space to a garage, and then a different basement.

Our life has turned an irreversible corner. God has turned disability into opportunity. Most of the Preacher’s ‘tool collection’ is no longer necessary to him. The library, as it is, has made its final move. Half or more of those volumes must go. He knows that.

But knowing something in your head doesn’t automatically propel it down into your heart and shove it into your feet. Anyone who’s ever downsized—a library, a life, a home or business—knows how hard it is—though having done it several times recently, I wish I’d been far firmer with myself.

“Hon, why not open a box a day, and decide which books you want to keep, and which ones you can get rid of?” I’ve suggested often over the last few years. He reacted like I’d heated a pair of pliers and demanded he use them to peel off his fingernails. Gave me a look that said perhaps he ought to downsize me first.

Over the last month or so, we’ve transformed one of our bedrooms into a library small and bright. We’ve added a desk to the middle and lined three walls with shelves. Our plan is to own no more books than will fit on those shelves.

The pliers is hot, the peeling has begun. The Preacher is in the library as I type, surrounded by cardboard cartons. I’m trying to bite my tongue, and not doing a good job. But in my heart I know—this is surely a bittersweet task, this re-uniting. After being parted with his library for years, he must now say hello—but then, farewell—to many of the volumes God has used to enrich his life. The friends that have helped him prepare solid spiritual food for three decades of congregrants.

I think the apostle Paul would understand. Waiting for death in his final prison cell, he sent this iconic request to his protégée, Timothy. “Bring my books.”

Are you downsizing too? Pruning a life, a home, a business? May God supply the strength to let go of the old, and the faith to embrace the new.

 *****

I know how to work the topside of toilets. And since God fitted me primarily for desk-type jobs, I’ve been content to leave their bottomsides to plumbers.

But last Saturday morning, and my friend and I, using assorted tools, a bucket and three rags, installed a high-rise toilet at my place. My friend, at least, confessed to some experience. I researched a three-minute YouTube video. As I said, I have a desk job.

The old toilet came off willingly enough, leaving us standing over a small black hole with an iron perimeter, from which protruded two bolts on opposite sides. “Aha. The flange,” I said, flushed with fresh learning.

“After you’ve removed the old fixture,” the video plumber said, “place a rag in the hole to prevent sewer gas from coming up the pipe.” When the vapours invaded our nostrils, we did that. We even remembered to take the rag out before we screwed on the new toilet.

As we knelt to tighten the bolts, my friend’s nostrils turned clean inside out. “Sewer gas,” she snorted, reaching behind for cloth number two and stuffing it into the dry toilet. She too, has a desk job.

Not until after we’d tightened the bolts and installed the tank, did we notice that the toilet’s increased height made the old water hose too short to reach the connection. I closed the lid, high-fived my friend, gave her coffee, and sent her packing with a hug. Then I used rag number three to clean up, and headed out to buy a longer hose.

Back home, I connected the hose and flushed. Glug-glug, said the toilet. Opening the lid, I noticed the water headed for overflow. I had to give two or three hefts with a plunger before, with a mother-of-a—glug, the water swirled out.

Relieved, I shut the lid and prepared to clean up. “One, two,” I said, counting rags. “One, two…Drat, where’s the other one?” I wondered that (aloud) right through to Sunday morning.

“Did you think to take it out of the toilet before you flushed it?” the Preacher asked.

I scurried to my desk. “Accidently flushed a rag.” I Googled, and discovered a community of worried flushers. My kids have flushed the oddest things, one mother complained. Including pine cones and light bulbs. Another answered:

“Pine cones and light bulbs? Ha! When I was younger I would have been GLAD to pick that stuff out of the toilet. My dad used to flush live bears and used cars down the toilet, and we kids, had to try and get them out. He did it every day. It took us FOUR days to get one thing out. We had no tools to use, and dad had broken our arms, so we had to use our teeth!”

My son-in-law helped me reinstall the toilet on Monday.

I am profoundly grateful for my desk job.

 The first time I visited my friend’s home, her dogs curled up at our feet and her horse hunkered just below the front door. That’s not important really, except I found it odd. The door opened from the second story. No stairs below, just prairie grass poking through the snow, and that patient horse, poised like the proverbial steed under a castle window (though with no waiting knight).

If I had the nerve, I told Theresa, I’d open the door, hop on and ride off into the West. She chuckled. “The plan was to put in stairs, but the horse was free.”

Funny what you remember.

We were three friends gathered, all women. We’d found a common day, shucked our regular schedules, and carved out time for the thing women once did more than we do now—get together for an Olympic talking event.

We ate salad. We drank hot tea. Then we swaddled on couches in that cavernous, unfinished, husband-built and mostly unheated house. A wood stove in the basement puffed its hardest, but 3,000 square feet wants a lot of logs. We kept coats on our shoulders and quilts on our laps.

Along the west wall the pale winter sun streamed through a series of floor-to-ceiling windows, setting the counter-less cupboards and chipboard floors aglow. It dappled the flea market finds and the old dog on the pillow. The crazy one, leaping from lap to lap, didn’t sit still long enough for dappling.  

Two of us were grandmothers, but we giddied up, like girls. Like men in an ice-fishing shack, but without beer. Our words tumbled out. We interrupted each other. We laughed until we cried. One of us cried until she laughed. Someone said, “Hey, you finished now? It’s my turn!”

We spoke of life’s worries and warts. Of investments gone bad and dreams detoured by debt and disability. We talked of how dollars depart the bank account before days depart the calendar. Of faith. Of frailty.

We drank copious pots of herbal tea, warming our hands on our mugs. We gave each other advice, and swapped money-saving tips. But we talked longest about what God had taught us through our hard times.

All that tea has to go somewhere. I got up and headed south through the house a quarter-kilometre or so in search of a washroom. On the way, I trod on manna—scriptures scrawled in permanent marker on the chipboard floors. Living words like these:

 “Don’t worry about tomorrow—it has enough trouble of its own,” and  “All things are possible with God,” and, “Be strong and courageous, all you who put your hope in the Lord,” and, “Some trust in horses, and some in chariots, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God.”

Investments crash. Jobs end. Governments disappoint. Health fails. Theresa knew this well, but creatively chose to remind herself and her large family of life’s only true security.

Worried? Trust God. If necessary, buy a Sharpie.

My first chore after stumbling into the washroom some mornings, is to look into the mirror and use all my powers of persuasion to convince that person I see that she’s alive and needs to report for work.

 A few weeks ago someone told me about a similar conversation. He’d called an office he’d dealt with before, to request information about his account. “But I noticed,” he said, “that the woman at the other end didn’t seem to want to talk to me.”

 It turns out the lady had a good reason for her reluctance. “According to the computer records,” he said, “I became deceased last year. I’ve been dead for months! She just didn’t want to talk to a dead man!”

 It’s exhausting business, trying to convince someone who doesn’t want to be convinced that you’re not a corpse. Afterwards, he hung up the phone and decided he needed a rest—but not before breaking the news to his wife. He told her she shouldn’t ask him to help with the chores anymore, because, after all, “dead men don’t work!”

 Ignoring my chuckles, he carried on, “And’ya know the worst thing about all this?”

 “What’s that?”

 “I missed my own funeral!” He sounded downright indignant.

 I may have too. Within a few weeks of a move to a new community, I turned on the radio just in time to hear announcements of local funerals. A few seconds later, I stood, horrified, listening to the date, time and location of the “funeral for the late Kathleen Gibson.”

 Timid phone calls began trickling in almost immediately—a few of our new congregation members, wondering, I suspect, if they’d trucked in their piano-playing preacher’s wife for nothing.

 Me: “Hello.”

 Silence.

 Me again: “Hello?”

 Them: “Um…is that you, Kathleen?”

 Me: “Hmm…think so. Last time I checked.”

 Them: “Whew! I heard…(cough)…well, I thought…well, the radio said…(sighs and hesitation)…So you’re not dead, then?”

 We found it funny after we got it all sorted out. No, I didn’t mind if they didn’t attend my funeral. I’d be too busy myself, working at something or other. And as we all know, dead people don’t work.

 One day my desk chair will be empty of the crumbling shell my spirit called home for a few years. Reports of my death will start trickling out. The phone calls will be genuine. People will say I’m dead.

 Don’t believe it. All this time? I’ve been on a God-assignment. When I’ve uttered my last word down here, I’m going home, people. Gonna live with Jesus. Gonna get a new body and a heavenly assignment.

 “Absent from the body…present with the Lord,” the Bible says. Christ-followers will be more alive after death than ever before.

Fabulous. No more arguing with the mirror, and no more funerals. 

Meet me there?

_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_

Easy Over

-~-~-~-~

Even though none of us will be present at our own funerals, most of us have an idea of how we’d like to be remembered, and many of us will be required to plan a service for a loved one.  Before you must, make time to check out these helpful links:

https://www.mywonderfullife.com/ Inspired by the premature death of a beloved husband, this site is a place where you can collect all your preferences in one place, making it easier for your grieving family.

http://www.godweb.org/planfuneral.htm A basic “need to know” article for Christians who, faced with planning a loved one’s funeral, have no idea what to do first.

Consider the birds, Jesus said. Most days, I consider a green one.

We had a long season of pet-lessness before Ernie joined our family. Prior to living at our house, the second-hand Amazon Green parrot lived briefly at a friend’s home. There, he cawed like a crow and regularly staged stressing little conniptions. When she and her husband left on vacation, Ernie stayed with us. They never picked him up—but, yes, we agreed to the adoption. At only twenty-odd years, with a life expectancy of fifty to a hundred, he’s the only pet we’ve owned who may have to put us down.

Ernie dislikes hats, earrings, red fingernails, and black clothing. He loves to laugh, and adores walnuts, almonds, and peanuts, all of which he cracks with his beak. He detests most large men and cracks those with his beak too, when he’s in a snit.

We don’t need a watchdog. Ernie thinks he’s one, and plays the role with surprising ferocity. During the Preacher’s naps he perches like a regal eagle on his shoulder, and not even I dare approach when he’s on duty.

For awhile, Ernie’s cage sat in our room, on my side of the bed. One night I went to bed early, hoping to catch up on a sleep deficit. Ernie, his cage door open, positioned himself at the inside corner where he could watch me snore.

 A few hours later I woke to hear footsteps in the hall. I recognized the Preacher’s tall figure entering the room, but clearly, Ernie didn’t. He darted to the top of his cage, spread his wings, and dive-bombed. Landing on the Preacher’s hand, he dug in with his beak, clamping down with the tenacity of a pit bull.

The Preacher grunted, pried the bird off, and pushed him (protesting loudly, wings akimbo) back into his cage, this time shutting the door behind him. When he came back into the room, I noticed a bandage on that hand.

The next morning as Ernie ate his morning snack of sunflower seeds from my palm, I said, “With two fingers, the Preacher could have wrung your pretty green neck. What were you thinking? ” He cocked his head at me. “Hello!” he said, bowing and fluffing his feathers, pleading a good scratch.

Ernie may only weigh a few ounces, but his iridescent feathers hide a colossal personality. He often forgets he’s a bird, not a dog or a person. That he’s small, and we’re big—and trustworthy. And that as the pet in the family, his only real responsibility is not to attack those he sees as a threat, but to be our friend. To love us back. To trust us to care for him.

On good days, he seems to remember all that. On those days, his companionship thrills us.

Consider the birds, Jesus said. They teach things about relationship with our Father. I’m considering a green one, and am wiser for it.

***

Below: The Preacher’s precocious parrot purloins a pear. Lesson here?  Before risking life and limb to achieve what you desire, be sure it’s the real thing. (In this case, it wasn’t.)

I entered the church, turned and found my old friend standing below me on the steps. Until she smiled, I mistook her for someone else. But only one person smiles like that.

We hugged, opened our mouths, and started in, just like old times in another church foyer. Back then, we almost wore the carpet thin after worship, standing there yakking. We discussed rebellious kids, our dissatisfaction with our prayer lives, the upcoming women’s retreat, new dessert recipes…

Decades ago, when we first met, she came wary to worship. Hurt. Prepared for rejection. Not expecting the friends she found. We shared committees, planned events, went on retreats together; chatted every mile. Together with our husbands, we spent time at each others’ homes, enjoying an easy companionship. Bright. Helpful. Solid.

But life is gritty sometimes. Like a sandstorm, petty little things gust in, swirl over and blow us away from the people we care about. And suddenly you wake up and realize a friend has gone missing.

I can’t recall what it was exactly, but hurts and disappointment clouded over our comradeship. The sun of that friendship got lost for years. No final words, no real explanations. Just a far quieter phone. An empty pew. And sometimes, tears on the pillow.

Years later, crises visited both our homes. One day, as we drove near her home, I picked up my cell phone, almost without thinking. Punched in her number.

“Just drivin’ by,” I said, all in a rush. “Wondered if….”

“Please come,” she said.

Around the kitchen table, the conversation felt fragile and cautious. We dodged the sensitive things. Our husbands, our partners in hard times, talked between themselves. Slow words, polite, but cool. Mostly, we listened.

But when we left, something had changed. “D’ya think…” I asked myself. “Don’t do that,” I answered myself. “You think too much. Follow God, one step at a time.”

We met “accidentally,” after that. God’s doings, I’m sure. Like that day in a church neither of us attended. In restaurants, at stores. Gradually, the ice thawed. Now when I see my friend we talk as naturally as we ever did. Laugh, too.

Thank God for hard times. Difficulty, disaster and disease, if we’re paying attention, bring clarity. Make us see the important things we can’t otherwise—like our own pettiness, and what we’ve sacrificed to hang onto it.

The specific hurt that drove a wedge between us is long forgotten. In light of the really big stuff we’ve both faced since? Not even worth discussing. Somehow it feels more important to simply grab the present opportunity. To embrace the moments and the people God has allowed, for as long as he allows them.

Let it go, people. And follow peace, in Jesus’ name.

Easy over…

Anyone remember Ethel and Lucy? Theirs was one of the best friendships television has ever portrayed. Take a few moments to watch these two classic clips–both accompanied by great songs. They brought me memories of other friendships, particularly the ones I share with my sister Bev, my daughter Amanda, and my dearest friend, Glenda. There are more, too, all gifts from God. Sometimes we clash (we’re women, after all!), but how worth it it has been to keep following peace. 

Sometimes I miss Danny Orlis. God used him, and the medium that brought him to me, to plant a vision in me.

At 11:30 every Saturday morning growing up, I and my siblings gathered in the kitchen. We tuned the family radio to KARI, then shut up and listened to the latest episode of Danny’s story.  Every week the fictional young Christ-follower got into a scrape. Every week his story ended on a cliff-hanger. And every week we came back.

Our radio tuned in other stations, their call letters as memorable to me as any alphabet jingle: CJOR, CKNW, CKWX and CKLG. They introduced me to pop music and talk radio; to journalists like Jack Webster, Pat Burns, Ed Murphy (Reaction Line), Jack Cullen and a roving reporter named Roving Mike.

We had no TV. Radio delivered our entertainment. But only KARI delivered soul-food. Its Christian programming introduced me to a faith perspective wider than the small church our family attended—though not one I appreciated at the time. The station played stuffy music, and I had little patience for the preachers who frequented its airwaves.

Danny’s stories made up for all that. Danny taught me how to live like a Jesus-kid.

Much later in life, when I began freelancing for CBC Radio, I found I loved making radio as much as I enjoyed listening to it. One day I posted a yellow sticky note at the top of my computer, “Pray about doing radio spots,” it said. I wanted to do for others what Danny did for me.

For years, whenever I really noticed that yellow rectangle, I prayed, “Lord, if it fits in with your plans, I’d love to broadcast a few simple words of faith.”

Meanwhile, in Yorkton SK, a man named Dennis Dyck, who had a gift for sales, a passion for Jesus Christ, and a love of Christian radio, began a 50 watt station called The Rock, 100.5 FM. And in Calgary, Ray Sargent, an ex-clergyman-turned radio producer, began EnjoyRadio.org, producing two syndicated gospel music programs, Enjoy the Mix, and Sunday Side Up.

In his time and for his higher purposes, God caused all our passions to increase and our paths to intersect.

In January of 2011, my 90-second radio spot, Simple Words (shorter versions of this column) began airing on 100.5, Rock. One year later, the Rock sits at 98.5 FM, with a newly increased power of 50,000 watts. (Congratulations, Rock gang!) Simple Words is just one of many weekday features God uses to inspire faith in that station’s listeners.

Within a month after its first air-time, Simple Words caught the attention of Ray Sargent. Today his programs, including Simple Words, air on more analog and digital gospel radio stations than he can count, in no fewer than twenty countries around the world.

In every Christ-follower’s life, God plants his own vision—always three sizes too big, to leave room for him. Our part is to accept it, keep praying, and take action. 

Are you?

I resolve to memorize more Bible passages this year. They grow my spirit. Besides, I have Beans to keep ahead of.

 Celebration day, feast on the table, house full of people. Five-year-old Butterfly Bean watches me pour out cider. Whispers, “Nana. I have something to tell you.”

 “Yes?” I reach for another glass.

 She reaches up. Grabs a hank of hair and yanks my head down to hers. Very persuasive, that one. The pouring stops instantly.

 “Goodness, darlin’, what is it?”  I suspect blood. A broken toy. Writing on the wall. At the very least, a request for help in the washroom.

 Still holding my hair hostage she hisses into my ear, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that if anyone believes in him, he will not perish, but have eternal life.”

 For over two decades I wore a fragile gold cross, a cherished gift from an older sister. Until its chain received one tug too many, I recited that very verse whenever one of the Beans touched it. Eventually they joined me, their infant lisps more tones than words. We did that hundreds of times, always including the reference: John 3:16. It stuck, I assumed.

 “Wow, I’m impressed! And where does that verse come from?”

 “From Awana,” she hisses again, referring to a mid-week kid’s church club she and her siblings attend.

 Not the cross after all. Nevertheless…“Neat! And what book do we find it in?” 

 “The Bible!”

 “Right, honey. But it’s in another book, too. Do you remember where?” I’m chasing the reference.

 “My Awana book!”

 “Anywhere else? Is it in J….”

 She’s shouting now, or as loud as a hissing whisper can go. “It’s in MY BROTHER’S AWANA BOOK, TOO!”

 “NEAT! But, honey, in what place can we find it?”

 “AT AWANA!”

 I hint. “What about John…?”

 “THREE SIXTEEN!” she yells. Skips away, grinning.

 Memorizing is good for the brain, researchers have found. Most of us tuck away phone numbers, social media tags, and favourite channels without effort.  But memorizing scripture? That’s slow-release fertilizer for the Christ-following spirit. The more we bury inside, the more it grows us up.

 Celebration day. Feast on the table. House full of people. One little girl reminds us why. Pour out the cider! Raise a glass! And…”Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!”

 And that’s found in 2 Corinthians 9:15.

***

More on memorizing:

Friend, if we want to hear God speak to you, we MUST carve out time to spend with his Word. The times of my greatest closeness to God have come during periods of meditating and memorizing not single verses of scripture, but entire chapters. Rev. John Piper  has plenty to say about the importance of scripture memory…take time to watch his powerful sermon on scripture memorization below. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOkLP6VHtWk for those on RSS)

The Zebra Crossing, a sensitively re-furbished century-old Yorkton home, hosts several businesses these days. But I recall it best when customers came for rooibos tea and conversation. Sat at glass tables and tall iron chairs. Ate paninis, gorgeous salads, decadent desserts and spread linen napkins on their laps.

The Crossing occasionally held evening by-ticket only functions. Dessert, entertainment, and great conversation. One Christmas the owner asked me if I’d emcee one of those evenings; a night of readings, music and dance. An intimate concert—with an African accent. I’ve told my readers about that evening before. Perhaps for my benefit alone, or maybe that of someone who shared that special evening with me, I need to recall it again.

 Candles illuminated the tea room, once the gracious living room, and little changed over the years. One primitively carved giraffe lamp with a wide basket-woven shade glowed in the corner, and several small Christmas trees—slender silver rope-wrapped cones—hung with stars that reflected the flickering candles.

 The Crossing bulged with its cargo of thirty guests. We clustered around steaming cups of hot apple cider and exquisitely arranged plates of decorated shortbread cookies.

 For two and a half hours some of the area’s brightest artistic lights shared their gifts—stories, poetry, music—vocal, guitar and flute, and an exquisitely interpreted ballet number (by a young woman I didn’t know would one day become a friend). The presence of a tiny five-month old infant resting quietly on her mother’s lap lent an almost hallowed atmosphere.

 The performers had been asked only to choose pieces with a holiday theme. But almost without exception, they read or performed pieces that reflected the true meaning of Christmas. Not a single mention, that I recall, of the fat guy in the red suit.

 Closing the evening, I recited the Christmas story from Luke 2 to a recorded orchestra playing “Oh, Little Town of Bethlehem.” Reflected in those candlelit faces, I sensed wistfulness. Longing. Hope. I ended with John 3:16: For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.

 All evening, but especially then, it felt that the reason for the season had chosen to join us. Jesus, in that very room, fingering the edges of our shop-weary, Christlessmas hearts, and tuning them once more to a genuine Christmas key. Perfect pitch.

 This year’s Christmas concerts are over. The gifts are unwrapped, and the turkey picked to the bones. But truth has not left us, nor the Christ whose birth we celebrate. I hope you made some great memories, but I’d like to know…do they include an encounter with the Reason for the season?

***

No matter our faith–or lack thereof, God never stops reaching for encounter with us. Watch the remarkable story of one young Muslim practicing cultural Jihad in the Bible Belt of America: