Opinion

Easter People

What is Easter?  How does one explain it? What does it mean for you?  

Bunnies, chicks, eggs, cocoons and butterflies, flowering bulbs are all symbolic of new life and spring time in our part of the world.  They symbolize the cycle of life.  New life comes after a period of dormancy or preparation.  I don’t know much about the tradition of chocolate, but we sure do like to eat it.  

Christians are described as Easter people.  In this definitive act of Jesus’ resurrection, we find hope amidst despair.  We declare that death has lost its sting.  God’s love is stronger than death.  We declare that the world’s powers and principalities do not have the last word, God does.  God’s Word is alive and dwells among us as we follow Christ.  

What matters most to me in this Eastertide and every day really, is how we live into being Easter people.

Following are a few thoughts….Wayne Shaw writes, “God has promised to do for us what he did for Jesus, and he expects us to live like it.”  

James Massey says, “The resurrection means that God has broken into our old human order with a divine deed of utter newness; he has taken that closed situation we call death and shown us that it stands open at the other end–the door torn off at the hinges!”. 

John Stott writes, “no temptation is too strong to conquer by this resurrection power.  No task is too difficult to accomplish by this same power if God has called us to do it.  Are you defeated?  Burdened?  Overwhelmed with worries or fears or responsibilities?  Then think of the resurrection of Jesus.  Ask God to open your eyes to know the immeasurable greatness of his power that raised Jesus from the death, and then as you look to Him in quiet, steady confidence, you’ll find the same power made available for you.”  

Easter is not back there, nor is it out there; it is here and now, and you and I are the proof and experience of it.  Let’s live as Easter people with its attending grace and joy and with hearts and minds that are open to the new thing that God offers to us each day.  We are re-born, re-newed, and re-created each day.  

Awaken me, this new-created day,

 O God of love, of life.

O anxious soul, still wrapped in death, come out. 

Walk free. Walk free. 

 (S. Garnaas-Holmes)

Blessings for Eastertide

Rev. Arlyce Schiebout

Lakeshore United Church

Morrisburg

[…]

 

First impressions really do matter. Ask anyone. And flubbed first impressions can come back to haunt you. Forever.

In my extreme youth, I decided to travel to an all inclusive resort in Jamaica for a vacation. By myself. What a great opportunity to meet new friends, especially, the agent told me, since most of the resort visitors would be German tourists! First morning, first day, I approached the crowded pool ready to make that crucial entrance. Didn’t notice the sign which said “slippery when wet.” Rolled head over heels down a shallow flight of stairs, in my bathing suit, and flopped (unhurt), butt in the air, to the cement, before dozens of suddenly quiet German guests. I impressed. Oh yes.

“Tragic” first impressions can even happen to one’s nearest and dearest.

My parents and their friends, Wes and Marian, attended a party hosted by a dignified and formal couple they barely knew. As they were saying good night, Wes, prodded to compliment the hosts, floundered around, then finally loudly announced, “All kidding aside, cheese sandwiches do make a real good cheap lunch.”

They were not invited back.

Two weeks later, the four attended yet another party. My parents had been at this home once before, (and apparently my father hadn’t found the occasion memorable).  This was different. As he vigorously shook the hostess’ hand, he said, with deep conviction, “Gee, I really had a good time, this time.”

They were not invited back.

Of course, no first impression could be as traumatic as that of my friend’s friend, a woman who had been seriously dating a certain young man and had finally been invited home to meet his parents. Dressed in her best, wearing a pair of high, high heels, she nervously made small talk with the parents, while standing at the top of the stairs in their split level. 

She turned, promptly caught one of those heels, tripped, and then rolled violently down the steps  –  landing directly on top of the family’s beloved chihuahua.

They did not get married.

Just to prove that lightning can strike twice where first impressions are concerned, two years ago I went to the Dominican, this time travelling with friends. 

First day, very first public appearance, I wandered (in that inevitable bathing suit) among the lounge chairs and guests, looking for the place by the pool_where my group had set up. 

Missed noticing the “slippery when wet” sign. Again.

Shortly thereafter, found myself, with my ‘better side’ in the air, face down and sprawled before holidaying strangers. 

A large man in a tight t-shirt  reading “Beer’s my Bud,”  actually helped me up, then genially remarked to the crowd, “Wow, that usually doesn’t happen to me until late afternoon, after lots of brewskis.”

Another grand first impression. Sigh.

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Blessed Easter Season

In four more days we will be hunting for “Easter eggs” probably hidden outside in the snow this year! Maybe we will be having Easter breakfast of hot chocolate and hot cross buns with our sweaters on, as opposed to spring clothes. 

Whatever the weather brings the traditional celebrations of Easter will be as it always has been.

Most of us have traditions for certain celebrations during the year. Customs, information or beliefs that we pass on to our next generation that aren’t necessarily written down anywhere but that are passed on by thought, action, or word of mouth. 

What are your traditional celebrations of Easter?  We don’t always know where these traditions have started, but we know that we always do them.

Our communities of faith all have traditions too. There are 11 churches in Morrisburg inviting you to come along and be a part of the spiritual and religious celebrations of Holy Week and of Easter Sunday. Easter comes every year to make sure that we don’t forget that all we are is transformed in and through God. The only thing that limits our Easter joy is our reluctance to believe in the risen Christ.

I personally invite you to join us by coming to church with us to celebrate.  

May God bless your Easter Season!

[…]

 

Canadians really love driving the open road in the spring.

We want to forget clutching the wheel in white outs, spinning through freezing rain, and snarling in frustration trapped behind a lumbering snow plow. But do we drive well? How does Canadian driving compare to other nations?

Now in Italy, car drivers know the general location of the accelerator and the horn. (Everything else appears irrelevant!) Cars routinely stop by simply running into each other’s rear ends. 

Traffic cops in Italy are regarded as rather entertaining street mimes, while ordinary pedestrians take on the aggressive traits of gladiators.

I watched an elderly gentleman, carrying a neatly rolled up umbrella, step off the curb directly into eight lines of traffic on a main street in Rome. Brakes squealed. Horns blared. Lines of cars slammed to a halt as the man strolled (strolled!) across the road. When he got to the other curb, he turned, gracefully raised his umbrella, then smacked it down on the hood of the vehicle nearest him. No warrior could have signalled victory better.

Cairo also approaches  driving in a unique way. 

I was racing along in a rather rusty cab (unnervingly, every light on its dashboard was lit up!) in the heart of the Egyptian capital. On all sides, ancient WWII trucks packed with camels jockeyed for road space against tiny motor scooters (each loaded with six passengers and a cage of chickens) and oil burning old busses. My driver suddenly took both hands off the wheel without slowing down for even a second. Then he folded them and bowed deeply out his open window. Turns out he saluted all the major mosques along our route in this fashion. 

I got fairly religious myself on that particular taxi ride!

I’m not saying we Canadians don’t have our own little traffic quirks, especially in spring.

You had to watch the expression on the face of a police officer as he listened to one local lady indignantly explain that, of course, she hadn’t bothered to signal because “everybody in town knows I always turn left here at 4:30 on Tuesdays!” 

Then there was the large Irish setter spotted driving a Kia down Hwy 2. Well, it seems a small human was actually somewhere underneath the setter, but as the gentleman expressed it, “Dog really loves to sit on my knee when we go driving in nice weather, so I like to let him.”

Now that it’s spring time again in Canada, it might be a good idea to review a driving fact or two. 

Yield signs on our major access ramps are not just amusing suggestions. Solid double yellow lines on the road seldom indicate street art. Signal lights are generally more effective when actually turned on.

We brake for spring around here.

[…]

 

Time for Our Kids

I’m glad I was warned. From the moment we had our first child, friends told us that we’d better make the most of the days our children would be home, for those days fly by all too quickly. How true. 

Our oldest child is applying for universities and will soon be moving on and (presumably) moving out. Our second child isn’t far behind. Wow. Childhood is as brief as they say.

It reminds me of a story about author Arthur Gordon that I heard and that has also helped me over the years. Here’s what he wrote: “When I was around 13 and my brother was 10, Father promised to take us to the circus. But at lunch there was a phone call. Some urgent business required his attention downtown. My brother and I braced ourselves for the disappointment. Then we heard him say, “No, I won’t be down. It will have to wait.” When he came back to the table, Mother smiled and said, “The circus keeps coming back, you know.” “I know,” said Father, “but childhood doesn’t.””

Obviously, Arthur Gordon’s dad was sensitive to how fast children grow up. But more importantly he understood two things. He knew that his kids were to be his priority for those short years that they’re home.

I don’t know anything about Gordon’s dad, what he did for a living, how busy a man he was, but he knew that more important than his work or anything else were his kids. Smart man he.

The other thing that Arthur Gordon’s dad understood that’s so important is that being a good parent takes sacrifice. He was willing to sacrifice work, maybe even some income for the well-being of his kids. 

There’s no way around the fact that good parenting takes sacrifices. It may be work or income. It may be having all the toys or hanging around with the boys. 

There are simply too many demands on our time so the only way our kids will get the love and nurture they need is if we’re willing to let stuff go.

As I look around South Dundas, I’m convinced that many families get what Arthur Gordon’s dad got. The importance of family. The importance of parents having loving and close relationships with their kids. I see it all around my neighbourhood. You see it at the hockey arena or soccer field. 

We’re a community that places high value on family, on children, on parenting. It makes for a great place to live.

Yet it breaks my heart to see that this isn’t always the case. It’s painful to see kids not loved as they ought to be, or neglected or worse. It’s sad to see parents too busy with their own lives. Not making their kids their priority; not making the sacrifices called for.

Children are precious. Our love, affirmation, and encouragement affects them for their entire lives. How we raise them and what we teach them will even affect them for eternity, for the life hereafter. 

Let me close with a quote from another author, Lisa Wingate: “Your children are the greatest gift God will give to you, and their souls the heaviest responsibility He will place in your hands. Take time with them, teach them to have faith in God. Be a person in whom they can have faith. When you are old, nothing else you’ve done will have mattered as much.”

Pastor Clarence Witten

Community Christian 

Reformed Church

Dixon’s Corners

[…]

 

Yielding to His Loving Care

I read a story a few days ago of a British Sculptor who carves miniature works of art from grains of sand or individual granules of sugar.  His painstaking works of art can only be seen as they are viewed through a microscope.

 The story reminds me of The Mighty God who takes the time to work in our individual lives.  He takes the time to work in the smallest details of our life so that His great work of Grace can be seen by people whom we come in contact with and who may not know Him or His goodness.  

The thing we need to remember is we are not like the grain of sand or the sugar granule.  We are created by God in such a way that we can cooperate with Him or resist Him.  

There is a chorus we sometimes sing in church, it has these words, “something beautiful, something good, all my confusion He understood, all I had to offer Him, was brokenness and strife, but He made something beautiful of my life.”

Maybe you’re reading this and you are thinking – I know people who claim to be Christians and they’re not all that beautiful. 

May I tell you every Christian is a work in progress.  

God is not finished with me yet.  I’m not what I was and thank God I’m not what I’m going to be.  

As long as I am willing to submit my life to the Perfect hands of the Master Sculptor, one day I will be what He sees that I can be.  That is true of each one.

 God, you see, is the ultimate artist.  If you are willing to be His child, He is, in every situation you face, preparing you for greatness. 

Maybe someone is reading this who would say, I’m tired of trying.  That’s probably the best place you can be.  May I encourage you to stop trying to be good enough and let God have His way in your life.  

After all, He is the one who knows what purpose He created you for.

Just like the grain of sand which had no say whatsoever in what the sculptor made, we need to just let God have His way in our lives.

Let me close with the words of Ephesians 2:8-9, “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.”  

One more verse of scripture, Philippians 1:6 says, “being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ.”   

What we all need to do is just yield to His loving care. By the way we are truly enjoying the beautiful, warm, sunny weather here in Florida.

Rev. Duncan Perry,

[…]

 

There are certain inescapable theatre rules actors must learn early in order to survive. Rule One: all the technical elements in a play never, ever work quite the way you expect. Rule Two: an audience never, ever works quite the way you expect.

My grade 11 drama class was invited to stage a children’s production of The Three Little Pigs. Among the hockey playing actors there were immediate mutinous rumblings about having to appear in public in pink pig suits until I stressed that the company sponsoring the play was providing free all-you-can-eat pizza.  Happy “grunts” all around.

Actually, the large forward playing the Big Bad Wolf really got into his role. Behind his fake fur cardboard mask and construction paper fangs, he was doing a credible job of roaring and chasing. (Several small audience members openly panicked every time he appeared.) At the precise moment where the BBW had the three Pigs trapped, theatre Rule Two effectively kicked in.

A little boy, no more than five, jumped to his feet, and clambered on stage. The Wolf, Pigs (and all of us backstage) froze. Finally the Wolf leaned down inquiringly. The boy, in a voice that carried nicely to the rafters, exclaimed “Don’t you touch them pigs!” hauled off and belted the Wolf smack in his pointy nose so hard his entire mask flipped sideways.

The audience was treated, as the curtain mercifully dropped, to the sight of three large Pigs piled on top of a struggling Wolf, who later assured me he wouldn’t have murdered the boy, “just damaged him a little.”

The senior class was staging a docudrama about the Mounties’ heroic 1880’s seizure of the American Fort Whoop-Up. The big scene was to feature a cannon blasting through the papier-maché gates with the ‘mounties’ bravely firing their (prop) carbines while the stalwart defenders furiously fought back. Sadly, Rule One then reared its inevitable head. 

Instead of a loud cannon roar, the audience was decidedly startled to hear, instead, a deep Fog Horn pealing out. By the time the sweating sound student could get the tangled tape silenced, it was only to reveal all the attacking Mounties haplessly clicking their prop guns: not a single, solitary gun had actually fired! As epic battles scenes go, a bit of a dud.

The next show, an enterprising actress and her father wheeled in a very small brass canon from off their sail boat. The little gun could not be loaded, fired no objects, and would, they said, only “make a nice bang during the fight.” 

The audience was breathlessly thrilling to the exciting attack on Whoop-Up. The red-coated colonel shouted “Fire!” The parent pushed the button on his little sailboat gun.

The stage crew hit the floor. All the ‘mounties’ hit the floor. In fact, several rows of the audience hit the floor. Apparently, no one had considered that our ‘little gun’ had been specifically designed to be heard over very large expanses of open water.

Our brave mounties were still cowering on the floor as a ragged, quivering, white handkerchief slowly appeared over the card-board battlements of Fort Whoop-Up.

[…]

 Travelling the Lenten Journey

I wonder how many of you have seen the film Les Miserables? I’ve seen it twice-once with family and once with a close friend. I’d be only too happy to see it again and will undoubtedly purchase it when it comes out on DVD. 

Les Miserables is about a man who is sent to prison for stealing a loaf of bread to feed a starving child. Many themes arise from this one story, and I for one was crying as the movie unfolded.

The characters sing all of their lines, and they do such a good job that I felt that I could see into their very souls.

Les Miserables is about power perhaps gone wrong–oppression, pain, and what some people have to do to stay alive. It is, however, also about light triumphing over darkness, forgiveness, redemption and hope.

In this Lenten season, we can remember that every individual faces both good and bad times in their livers. We rejoice at occasions which call for celebration, but we sin against God and against one another. We sometimes cause pain to others but forgive people when they hurt us.

We are imperfect men, women and children. Yet God continues to love us and calls us to be the best that we can be. As His faithful followers we are to place God at the centre of our days–we are to reach out to our neighbours with compassion and mercy. We can seek justice, love kindness and walk humbly with our Lord.

As we travel along our Lenten journey this year, let us take moments for prayer, for discernment, for seeking the peace which passeth all understanding.

May we walk in the paths which Jesus has put before us–let us remember that Jesus will ever be our guide, our inspiration, our example, our teacher, our friend.

Jesus challenges us to build a better world, but He promises to love and cherish us, this day and in all years yet to come.

Rev. Janet Evans, 

Iroquois United Church

[…]

Actual snow this winter has brought happy skiers swarming to area slopes and chalets. These enthusiasts do not include me.

Frankly, I still experience flashbacks of my one and only attempt at skiing. I was told it would be memorable. It was.

Our destination was the TNT Lodge in Michigan (motto: Explode on to the Slopes! In my case, an unfortunate bit of foreshadowing). 

Already a little edgy in my rented skis, boots and poles, I came out on the main hill, crisp and snowy, fringed at the bottom with scrub trees and bush. I looked at this winter vista and made my first important discovery: I hate heights. 

My next determination: no way am I going down this precipice strapped to two flimsy boards.

But the other girls had already headed out. And they’d left me with the rather cryptic comment, “You’ll be fine. Just watch out for the moguls.”

There I was, pondering why a group of business tycoons out for an afternoon ski should be of concern to me, when I spotted it: The Bunny Hill.

Very low incline, very short distance, tow rope at knee level. I struggled over, and got into the line. Eventually it occurred to me that my fellow Bunny Hill skiers were looking at me oddly. Their average age appeared to be seven. And it didn’t help my credibility that I fell several times. Unfortunately, my red mittens even came off and travelled up the tow rope alone, giving the impression that a pint sized invisible man was enjoying a day on the slopes.

My friends found me on the BH several hours later and insisted that I try one run on the ‘real’ hill before we left. I knew it was a mistake the instant I pushed off. I hit light speed. 

The world became a blur. All I could do was scream “Look out! Look out!” as I caught fleeting glimpses of people in my path leaping like fleas madly in all directions. 

At one point, I realized that many of them were shouting the words “Snow plow! Snow plow!” Under the circumstances, however, I failed to understand why they would be warning me to watch for a large slow moving vehicle with flashing blue lights.

One man in bright orange was, I recall, a tad slow getting out of my way. I ran over his skis.

Ahead, at the base of the hill was the packed line up for the T-Bar. People were standing stock still, simply staring as the Gibb train wreck hurtled toward them.

Then at the last minute, the line  miraculously parted like the Red Sea, and I shot through and into the bush.

I can to rest over a small frozen creek. It was really quite peaceful. I thought I’d just stay there.

I heard the swish of skis. The man in orange came up beside me. Now that I was no longer moving at Mach 3, I could read the large badge fastened to his jacket: Ski Patrol. Sigh.

Have fun on the slopes, folks. I won’t be joining you.

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