This is a picture I took several years ago in rural Manitoba. It reminds me of the barn where as a child I spent many hours playing with cats and dogs; feeding, watering and talking to cows; jumping in large stacks of hay bales; and occasionally cleaning out gutters and helping with milking. I love old barns: though dusty and filled with cobwebs and straw and dilapidated wood, they are filled with the most interesting nooks and crannies, ladders and cupboards that lead to special places, odd contraptions that date back almost a century, and best of all - the air of life and warmth, birth and nurture, and peace and hope. Humble circumstances are often the breeding ground for visitations from God.
The Hebrew word "YHWH" (read from right to left) This past Sunday I gave a talk on the Names of God, the beginning of a series on this topic. This first talk was to be a gentle introduction so I thought it wouldn't take too many hours of preparation. Well, I quickly discovered that the research is almost bottomless; every time I thought I had a somewhat definitive list of names, I found another source which added a few more or gave a different twist on some of the names I had already come across. After several hours I was getting overwhelmed by the sheer amount of data (and that was only looking at the Hebrew Bible). I wondered how I could present this to people in an orderly and accessible fashion and within a reasonable time frame. Not everyone is up for a 3-hour lecture crammed full of detail on a Sunday morning. So I took a break and spent a bit of time meditating on this problem and asking the Spirit for guidance. And then I thought that being overwhelmed by Go...
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