Skip to main content

things I want


This is a picture I took of one of my friends' plants beside the pool after a summer rain. I like pools and sometimes wish I had one so that I could learn to swim properly, but it is nice to have friends that let you come over to use theirs and offer free swimming lessons as well!
On Saturday, I spent several hours online and on the phone trying to get tickets to see The Police when they come to Montreal in July. It was something Dean really wanted to go to and another friend had asked me to get him a ticket as well, so I thought it would be a rather simple thing to call the box office or go online and purchase a few tickets of my choice. How wrong was I! The Police have not played together in ages, so the concerts were selling out very fast. After the first hour of not being able to log onto the ticket site, I realised that all my efforts might be in vain. However, I determined not to get all stressed out about it and continued to click and wait and dial the constantly busy box office number while doing laundry and tidying up after weekend guests. Dean had given up helping me after the first hour and said it was a hopeless case. I wasn't about to give up that fast and asked God to please help me secure some tickets because it would mean so much to Dean and my friend. I know God didn't have to do it, it was just a want, a desire, nothing necessary or even important like healing, but it was something that would bring joy to those I loved, so I asked God to release some tickets to me if he thought it was the right thing to do. I got through on the website not long after that and it offered me 3 tickets behind the stage. *Frown* Not exactly what I was hoping for. I ran downstairs to ask Dean if sitting behind the stage was acceptable and he told me just to buy whatever I could get. However, by the time I returned to my computer, that window was frozen and I could not get anywhere with an order. Sigh.
So I kept pointing and clicking and not too long after that, 4 tickets just to the left of centre, near the back, and at a very reasonable price, appeared on my screen. *Yes!* I proceeded to accept and order and give my Visa number and was very excited that nothing had frozen up on the overloaded website in the process. Then it gave me a screen to print, but as I moved the laptop to plug in the printer, the power cable came undone and the screen went black. *Noooooo!* Nothing I did pulled anything back up on the screen and I didn't know if I had successfully completed the process or not. I went to the other computer and checked my email, holding my breath and there it was, a CONFIRMATION of 4 tickets purchased. YES!
Unfortunately, the other friends that were also trying to get tickets that day were unsuccessful in their attempt. I have no idea where those 4 tickets came from when just minutes before the best available seats were behind the stage, and I don't believe that God likes me any more than any of my other friends, or that he always gives us everything we want, but I do believe that when you ask and leave the answer up to him, you will always get what he deems best. Thank you, God, for Police tickets and friends' swimming pools and 5 senses that can enjoy things like music and beauty and water.
Delight in him. He delights in you.
Labels:

Comments

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