Skip to main content

I wasn't expecting that


For: The Institute of Contemporary And Emerging Worship Studies, St. Stephen's University, Essentials Green Online Worship Values Course with Dan Wilt

Something interesting happened to me last week. We had a number of visitors at our Sunday evening meeting at church and at the end of the night, a guy came up to me and asked me if I was the person who answered the phone. I said, "Yes." The phone number given for the church on our website is my home number and always has been, so yes, if he called the church, he talked to me. He said he had called the church in 2005 when he was in the Netherlands. He had been facing a surgery the next day that he was concerned about and wanted someone to pray for him.

I interrupted him at this point to say that I did not have a clear recollection of this call, but that I get a fair number of people who contact me with concerns. I usually just pray for them on the spot and unfortunately, the details do not stay with me for long. He confirmed that this was exactly what I had done. I had prayed for him over the phone regarding the surgery and asked God to intervene. The next day he had gone into the hospital for the surgery on his arm; he had injured it in a bike accident and the rotation needed to be corrected. Before the surgeon began the procedure, he x-rayed the arm once more and was surprised to find that the rotation was fine; there was no need to correct it. The surgeon told him to get something to eat (he had been fasting in preparation for the surgery) and go home. Very cool!

Thank you, Sylvain from Cameroon, for visiting our church and telling me this story, for showing me the other side of a simple prayer. God is always active and moving in our world, but most times we are aware of so little of it. As a result, we sometimes don't expect much from Him. He seems too distant, but the truth is that he is always near. Some days I feel like I am simply going through the motions of faith: praying, studying, interacting, teaching, loving, serving, and needing healing more than being able to offer it. As a result, there is not much excitement behind these disciplines on some days. But God does not require excitement, he requires faith. And faith exhibits itself through faithfulness. Let us carry on with what God has asked us to do, and leave him to do what he said he would do. And yes, he does always keeps his promises. Sooner or later, in one way or another, he comes through.

This is some ornamental tile on the plateau in Montreal.
Labels:

Comments

Shelley said…
what a cool story Matte! feedback is always great, eh? :)
8:06 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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...
3 comments
Read more

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...
9 comments
Read more

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...
10 comments
Read more