snow and believing

Okay, I am done with my whining and have overcome my momentary lapse of sanity and aversion to snow, so here are two snowy pictures taken this winter. The shoveling last night turned out to be not as bad as I thought - it only took an hour, it wasn't that cold and the sense of accomplishment at the end was quite euphoric.

Sometimes, as an "in the moment" type of person, I lose sight of the fact that things are in process and not everything that I am seeing and experiencing right now is the final product - tough times will pass, healing will come, and there is always hope that the end result will be much better than I can picture now. I have been having a discussion with God about certain things that I have been faithfully praying for that don't seem to get any better. I admit, recently there has been a tinge of disappointment in my attitude towards the Creator of all things which is the last thing I want. So this morning on my way to school, I was listening to a song as I drove over the bridge, trying to see my way throught the salt and snow spray of the semi-truck in front of me. Here it is:
I have to believe that He sees my darkness, I have to believe that He knows my pain.
I have to lift up my hands in worship, worship His name.
I have to declare that He is my refuge. I have to deny that I am alone.
I have to lift up my eyes to the mountains. It's where my help comes from.
He said that He's forever faithful. He said that He's forever true.
He said that He can move mountains and if He can move mountains, he can move my mountain, he can move your mountain too.
I have to stand tall when the wind blows me over.
I have to stand strong when I'm weak and afraid.
I have to grab hold, hold of the garments, garments of praise.
I have to sing praise when the hour is midnight.
He unlocks the chains that bind up my soul
My sin and my shame, He has forgiven and made me whole.
I have to believe. - words by Rita Springer

This morning I said...that's it, I believe, it is a choice, and I believe. I will not have a faith so fickle that it cannot withstand some pressure or a little bit of waiting or some unfavourable circumstances. And this afternoon I got some good news regarding one situation that I had been praying about. Yep. I believe.

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Names of 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...

Esther's protest

I have been hesitant to write anything here pertaining to the student protests in Montreal, partly because I didn't believe I had any solutions to offer and partly because I just wanted to stay out of the controversial mess it has become. Besides, I have studying to do. But this weekend, something changed. I read the book of Esther. First, some background: the unrest started early in the year when a group of students decided to protest the tuition hikes proposed by the Quebec government ($325 a year for the next 5 years). Seeing that tuition rates have been frozen for almost ten years, it seemed reasonable to the government to increase them to reflect rising costs. This did not sit well with some students, and they organised an ongoing protest in which students were encouraged to boycott classes and refuse to hand in assignments. It has now grown into a movement which has staged several organise...

it's a mad mad mad world (of theology)

The mad dash for the end of term has begun. I have finished all my required readings and have jumped into research reading. One of my papers is on the madness of theology (the correlation seems more obvious to some of us than to others). Truly inspiring stuff, I am finding. Let me share a few quotes here: There is a certain madness in Christianity – in a desert God who is jealous and passionate, in a saviour who speaks in apocalyptic terms, in a life of sacrificial love, in the scandal of particularity. In principle, a confessional theology should bear the mark of this madness, but the mark or wound must constantly be renewed. - Walter Lowe, "Postmodern Theology" in The Oxford Handbook of Systematic Theology , 2007. “In the Scriptures the odd phenomena constituting the ‘Kingdom of God’ are the offspring of the shock that is delivered by the name of God to what is there called the ‘world,’ resulting in what I call a ‘sacred anarchy.’ C...

outWORD by Matte Downey

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