things gone wrong...and right

1. I left the house at 7:00 am and forgot to account for traffic so missed the train I meant to take downtown to keep a 9:00 am appointment and had to wait for the next one.

2. While waiting, I realised I had neglected to get exact change so could not buy a ticket for the train from the machine and had to approach a kind fellow commuter to buy a ticket from them.

3. After I got off the train and made my connection to the subway, I realised I was heading the wrong way so I got off at the next stop and retraced my steps.

4. I exited one stop early in the hopes that it would save me time because I reasoned I would be walking towards my destination instead of passing it in the subway and backtracking. Alas, the walk was just longer that way and actually cost me time.

NEVERTHELESS, I arrived at my appointment at 8:58 am much to my amazement! It appeared that God had surely bent time in order to accommodate me, or at least it felt like it, as I had been asking him to get me there on time the whole way. Sometimes I am ill prepared, sometimes I make the wrong decisions, sometimes I just can't seem to get it right, often I forget important things; and yet, God seems to care more about the fact that I am heading in the right direction than how much I falter or how awkward and halting the journey is. Let me develop a grace this generous such as God extended to me today.

This is a building in the McGill ghetto, taken while Zac and I were hunting for housing for him on Monday night.

Comments

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

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

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

outWORD by Matte Downey

Search This Blog