this could happen to you

About a week ago, one of my friends, at least I always thought he was my friend, suggested that I should put cameras around my house, videotape my life and sell it as a reality show called, "This Could Happen to You!" After yesterday's incident, I definitely see the brilliance of his idea.

I was doing my kickboxing workout downstairs when the phone rang. It was Dean (husband of the year award-winner) asking me to look up some information for him that he could not access at work due to internet restrictions. I complied, like the good wife I am, and interrupted my exercises to run upstairs to my office. He had me on speaker phone with 3 of his colleagues, so as I was sitting at my computer, searching for a particular Skype identity, I could hear the office banter. I was not having any luck finding the person he needed and we were about to give up when I heard a strange noise coming from the kitchen. It was an odd meowing that was getting more and more intense and turning into a wail. I hurried to the kitchen, phone still to my ear, and saw Tea lying on the floor beside the fridge, her one paw stuck beneath it and her in obvious distress trying to free it from some sharp edge. I just said, "Cat emergency," into the phone and set it down on the kitchen counter without hanging up. I tried to calm Tea down and reached out to free her paw from the underside of the fridge, giving it a good squeeze in order to release it and thereby causing her to cry out in pain again.

What I did not see was Jazz coming up behind me, responding to the universal cat distress call, and upon seeing me tugging at Tea, assuming that I was killing her. Suddenly, I was being attacked by a territorial overprotective maniac cat (good thing I was wearing shorts for my workout!) who lashed out at my legs and growled and hissed at me. I turned around to fight her off and told her to get lost and received a few more strikes on my arm and my other leg. At this point Tea somehow freed herself and ran off, so I managed to get Jazz to walk away stiffly, still quite worked up, but not clawing me anymore.

I picked up the phone and Dean said, "What is going on?" I told him what had happened and mentioned that there was now blood oozing out of scratches on my legs and arm and while he laughed so hard that I could hear him struggling to catch his breath, the other three in the office were not sure whether to be concerned for me or horrified by our savage animals or just relieved they were not part of the wacky household. Dean assured them that I was fine, though slightly melodramatic, and everyone would recover just nicely. And thus ended one of the most interesting phone conversations those four would have all day.

For some reason, as I reflected on the strange events of that morning, I thought of Job, his wife, and his friends. How often, when we find ourselves (or see a friend) in a tough situation, feeling trapped, and things seem to get worse, do we blame or attack the very one who is our only hope of rescue (that would be God!). We so often hold our understanding up as the ultimate means for approaching truth, when in fact, faith is the thing that pleases God and enables us to know Jesus, the Truth.

Now, if my cats could only trust me instead of trying to understand a being so far beyond their mental capacity, we could avoid most of the stress, the unhappy noises, and the scratching.

This is Tea and the offending paw sleeping off the traumatic event.

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

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