that sinking feeling

We are trying to sell our house. It is not going as I had hoped. Many of the people who have walked through our home have noted that the floor is uneven in a basement room, and mention that our stairs are off as well. What? I never noticed this and I LIVE HERE! And there is the problem. Because I live in the place, I see it day in and day out, and I do not notice small changes. We get used to what we live with and assume it is normal. Our eyes and attitudes and actions adjust and embrace the crooked as the new straight. It takes the objective eye of someone who is outside the situation to notice that things are askew.

The first reaction when someone points out that things are off in ones home (or life) is denial. Surely not! Hey, everything is fine! I would know if something was not right. I am here 24/7. I can't be that blind! Um, yes I could be that oblivious, especially regarding something that I have grown so accustomed to that I assume it is normal when in fact, it could be on the verge of developing into a major problem. We get pretty good at adjusting our standards and expectations to accommodate where we are at. That's never a good idea. Instead, we should be aligning our lives to a higher, immovable, godly, straight standard. The leveling tool never lies. Measure by that, not by what you feel or see around you.

The second stage when you see that there might be deep foundational problems is PANIC! The concept of things not being correct at the foundation is frightening and the idea that it will have to be addressed and dug up in some way is unsettling. So much easier just to fix the symptom. Can't we just straighten the floor? Add some cement? Leave the issue under the carpet, for real? If everything looks fine, it will probably be fine, right? At least for another 5 years. Today, I can't get my head around how this is all going to work out and I feel the flutter of fear. I am a bit overwhelmed.

The third and fourth stages are acceptance and action. As Dean says, things can always be fixed. So we are having a foundation specialist come in to assess the state of our foundation. Worst case scenario, our house is sliding off into the woods. Best case scenario, the house settled after it was built and just needs some tweaking. Despite it looking like one of the worst possible things that could happen when you put your house up for sale, I do believe in God's timing. We never would have addressed this issue at this time had we not had other eyes to point out the problem. Our home is still under the builder's warranty for another year so in that way I believe the timing is a blessing as well. I don't know that we would have looked at the foundation under everyday living circumstances.

In the meantime, I have been speaking to my house (and myself) from Isaiah 40, calling it into alignment.

Prepare for God's arrival!
Make the road straight and smooth, a highway fit for our God.
Fill in the valleys, level off the hills,
Smooth out the ruts, clear out the rocks.
Then God's bright glory will shine and everyone will see it.

May it be so.

This is a photo of the shack where my sponsor child and her family live in South Africa. Kind of puts things in perspective.

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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