Skip to main content

saint M

Taken October 22, 2006, this is the church at Ste-Marthe, Quebec. It is nice to have a saint and a town with your name on it, though today is perhaps not one of my most saintly days. I just returned from my second French class of the semester and while driving home, found myself wanting to kill or seriously maim some fellow students who were whining and complaining about the new teacher's methods. Most of this was done behind his back, but finally a few of them talked to the teacher about some of their concerns and that was good, because they need to hear his point of view as much as he needs to hear theirs.

I don't like whiners. I don't like people who compare everything to how it has been done before. I don't like people who think everyone else should accommodate their needs. I don't like people who complain but can offer no positive suggestions. I don't like people who have no grace for other people's weaknesses. I don't like people who see only lack instead of seeing everything as an opportunity to learn. I don't like people who think they know it all. And I don't like the fact that I just wrote seven sentences doing the very thing I hate!! God does not like complaining and grumbling (read the story of the Israelites if you doubt me). There were some pretty stiff consequences for letting others know that your situation and others' actions have fallen far short of your expectations and demands. Things to remember to avoid being a complainer:

1. God is the centre of the universe, not me.

2. He does things according to his plan, not mine.

3. He will take very good care of me, no matter what it feels like at the moment.

4. Instead of looking to see what I can do to improve my circumstances, let me see how I can help someone else improve theirs.

5. Thanking God and others is always appropriate and necessary for my soul to keep from shriveling.

6. Never compare - it leads only to places I don't want to go.

7. This moment is a gift from God; treat it with the care and gratitude good gifts deserve.

8. No one wants to be friends with a whiner, so don't be one.

God is good. Life is beautiful. And it gets way better than this...

Labels:

Comments

Kate said…
It never ceases to amaze me - you really can't outgive an animal - even the "maladjusted" ones! Well said, Matte! -Kate
12:33 AM
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

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.’   Consider but a sampling o
10 comments
Read more

comedic timing

Comic by Joel Micah Harris at xkcd.com One of my favourite jokes goes like this: Knock, knock. Who's there? Interrupting cow Interrupting cow w--- Moooooooo!! Timing is important in both drama and comedy. A well-paced story draws the audience in and helps it invest in the characters, while a tale too hastily told or too long drawn out will fail to engage anyone. Surprise - something which interrupts the expected - is a creative use of timing and integral to any good story. If someone is reading a novel and everything unfolds in a predictable manner, they will probably wonder why they bothered reading the book. And so it is in life. Having life be predictable all of the time is not as calming as it sounds. We love surprises, especially good surprises like birthday parties, gifts, marriage proposals, and finding something that we thought was lost. Surprises are an important part of humour. A good joke is funny because it goes to a place you didn't expect it to go. Sim
Post a Comment
Read more