My daughter made me laugh last night. Not just a chuckle or a short snort but an open-mouthed, body-shaking, tears-streaming guffaw. I needed it. Badly. I’ve been a bit under the cloud of cultural confusion and chaos that seems to be prevalent in our world right now, leaving me with a persistent frown in the face of wars and weather that erupts without warning, leaving death, destruction, and gut-wrenching sorrow behind. It all tends to take the joy away.
Meg’s laughter stunned me because she and her new husband have had nothing but a relentless breaking down lately. Appliances, vehicles, basement foundations, among others. They’ve met it all with humour that I’ve heard ringing in her voice as she talked with her dad. She’s always been a ‘daddy’s girl.’ They say caesarean babies bond best with their fathers. It makes sense since his were the first arms that cradled her, the first voice that welcomed her, while I lay under the lingering anaesthetic and then a haze of morphine. So I’ve always been on the sidelines, watching, not sad but a little wistful. But last night she drew me in and that has driven the gloom away. At least, most of it.
I’d been thinking about Wendy lately. One of my ‘wild women of the Yukon’ friends who has been gone for a while now. The hole she left is still here. She was my neighbour years ago, my mothering mentor. She’d had four when I had my first and found myself treading water in an ocean of rather big waves. She floated around me, showing me how to keep my head above water. It was Wendy I called when I found myself in labour 500 kilometres from home, alone in the Whitehorse hospital. It was her voice that steadied me, assured me the prayers wouldn’t fail, that Spence would get there in time. He did.
She was also the only other believer in that clutch of Yukon friends, the one who would make eye contact in a way the others never could. That made the hole she left deeper and harder to fathom in all the reunions since.
I got the call that she was gone from one of the other WWoY women, just after I’d hauled my suitcase up from the basement. I think I had already put a few things in it, anticipating our annual reunion which was supposed to happen that weekend in Wendy’s big warm welcoming farmhouse. The shock kept me from weeping for some time. She was ten years younger than me. She died alone, in her kitchen, which was her happy place. That has been a small comfort.
The first anniversary of her death came with a shock too – how had a whole year gone by without her? To ease the grief I wrote this –
On the Death of a Friend
When sorrow overwhelms
the heart, the soul, the mind,
slow their pacing
to take in the pain
let it seep slowly in
let it flow with the heart’s blood,
rest in the crucible of the soul
spark the synapses of the brain
with its own rhythm
until the one lost
to our reaching hands,
beyond our seeking eyes,
our yearning ears,
becomes one
instilled
inside
the heart the soul the mind
until our being
is gladdened at last
in the remembering.
I’d forgotten to be gladdened in the remembering, allowed the sadness to become a burden again, one that could only be banished by open-mouthed, body-shaking, tears-streaming laughter.
The director of the Pacific Orientation Course grinned at me. I’m sure he knew what my response would be. Like most Canadians, I prefer the temperatures to be a bit on the cool side. When we were preparing to leave for Papua New Guinea a few years ago, I was quite concerned because extreme heat tended to make me ill. I’d get raging headaches, sometimes migraines. The idea of living just a couple of degrees off the equator did not thrill me. But I was given some wise advice by someone in the know, just before we left. When I told him how anxious I was about being able to take the heat, he said, “Oh yes, you Canadians. I have one word for you. Water.”
“Water?” I asked.
“Yes, water,” he said. “Dehydration is probably the cause of the headaches. Drink as much as you can. Never be without a water bottle. I guarantee you won’t get headaches if you drink enough water.”
I was dubious, but I made sure I took a large water bottle along for each member of our family.
We had opportunity to test the theory immediately, since our first two weeks were spent at the Pacific Orientation Centre, also known as “jungle camp,” in the lowlands of PNG where the temperatures sometimes reached into the high thirties, coupled with a humidity of about ninety-five percent. The director of the camp kept after us all to drink water. We spent a lot of time under the tropical sun, or in a class-room environment, (without air conditioning). Our water bottles were never left behind. And it worked. I did not have many headaches in PNG. Water. Such a simple thing, such a vital thing. Without it, we become ill and quickly die.
Jesus once asked a woman for a drink of water. He tells her if she knew who he was, she would ask him for water. She mocks him, asking how he plans to give her water when he has nothing with which to draw it from the well. And Jesus answered – “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (John 4:11- 14, NIV).
Physically, human being can survive for only about three days without water. Spiritually, we won’t live long without the water of life Jesus speaks of. It is a simple thing, a necessary thing. Without it we become spiritually ill and eventually we will die. It is the water of His Spirit, the water of His forgiveness, the water of His grace, available for the asking. You don’t need a bucket to contain it, or even a cup. All you need is a longing heart waiting to be filled.
The exciting thing about the water Jesus gives is that it pours out again, like the spring he spoke of. His forgiveness, His grace, His Spirit pour out of the one who is indwelt by Him, flowing freely to others. And the spring never runs dry because it is connected to the source of all life.
Who would refuse such a gift?
****
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I attended a play at the Rosebud Theatre some time ago. It was a comedy about death. The dead person was a mother and two of us sitting in the audience had just lost our mothers to that very real and ever-present scourge, cancer. You wouldn’t think we’d find anything about that play funny, but we did. We laughed uproariously as the “Last Supper Committee” prepared the lunch in the kitchen and the harried funeral director tried to manipulate everything so that there would be at least a few people attending the “viewing.” You see the mother in this play wasn’t someone you would remember fondly. But I laughed and I cried and I thought of my mom.
Mom’s life wasn’t always easy. She was an only child of a single mother, raised in a small town during the 20’s and 30’s. She started to work in a florist’s shop when she was only twelve, met my father when she was sixteen, married him when she was seventeen but didn’t tell anyone for a year due to “complications” in both families. They had two children and then she said good-bye to her husband for almost six years as the Second World War raged. She welcomed a stranger home at the end of that time, had two more children and followed him five hundred miles to a new community and a new risk as they opened their first family shoe store. They opened a second store just as a large department store opened across the street. They lost their businesses, their home, more than a few friends. My mom’s mother came to live with us all and more challenges came with her. My father developed bleeding ulcers and almost died. More than once.
Through it all, Mom clung to her faith in God and tried to put a positive spin on even the most difficult of circumstances. When she was eighty years old someone gave her a new purse. When I admired it she said, “Yes, it’s nice but it’s kind of an old lady’s purse, don’t you think?” When I reminded her of her age she looked surprised, then laughed at herself. “But I’m not that old, really,” she said. It was many more years before she finally did seem “that old.”
My mother would have liked the play we saw in Rosebud. She had a strong sense of irony and a deep vein of humour that often rose to the surface for all to see. She would have liked the honesty of it – the way the characters finally admit their true feelings, their fears and their flaws. She would have liked the healing of it too – the healing that happened in the play and the healing that happened in the audience. Because Mom knew you couldn’t take life or death too seriously. She knew there was something more for us all. Now she’s enjoying that “something more” firsthand. I miss her. But I smile when I think of her. And that’s a gift for which I am very grateful.
****
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I moved slowly along the path laid out through the sanctuary, lit by tiny candles. Soft, rather mournful music set the tone. The stations of the cross were positioned along that path, each containing a passage of scripture and a piece of artwork. We had been encouraged to take our time, to let the visual depictions move our minds, our hearts and our souls as we focused on Jesus.
The very first image almost undid me. It was an impressionistic sketch of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. Our Saviour, bowed to the ground, mourning. Each successive depiction was powerful in its own right but, it wasn’t until I came to one of the largest displays that I caught my breath.
A high bower held a stylized crown of thorns, its spears facing out toward me, seeming to stab the air. You had to look through them to read the scripture, (Mark 15:16-20, ESV): “And the soldiers led him away inside the palace (that is, the governor’s headquarters) and they called together the whole battalion. And they clothed him in a purple cloak, and twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on him. And they began to salute him, “Hail, King of the Jews!””
There was something powerful about that perspective, looking through that crown of thorns. The immensity of His humiliation left me stunned, my heart hurt by it, my mind trying to fathom it and my soul crying out because of it. The creator of the universe, enduring, indeed, allowing, such degradation, on my behalf. On your behalf.
I have seen many Easters over the 42 years since I became a believer. Many of them, to my shame, slipped by with barely any stirring in my heart, mind or soul. I pray it may not be so over the next span of however many years God allows me to sojourn on this earth. I pray I will always remember this perspective, peering through the crown of thorns, letting the words of scripture stab my soul. I pray I will never fail to take time to ponder the Via Dolorosa, the way of sorrow He endured willingly, in order to open the door to reconciliation with His Father.
I pray my face will always be wet with the tears I wept that day, in awe and thankfulness for so mighty, so merciful a Saviour.
Both young men must have thought their lives were over. Taken into a country of foreigners where they were sold into slavery, they must have despaired of ever seeing their families and homelands again. They had to adapt to a new culture, learn a new language and suffer the humiliations of slavery. They must have believed God had abandoned them. But God does not abandon his people. These two young men, one who lived hundreds of years before Christ, the other hundreds of years after, would change the course of history. God gave their lives a purpose and meaning that could only have come through the struggles they endured.
Joseph, son of Jacob, father of the Hebrew nation, was responsible for saving not only the people of Egypt from starvation, but his own family, and therefore the Hebrew nation as well. And Patricius, a sixteen-year-old Briton who would become known as Patrick of Ireland, was the first to take the message of Christ to that nation, the very country where he had been enslaved.
There is another man whose life took a turn for the worse. He was in the prime of his life. He had a huge following among common people and those of influence. It looked like he was going to take the nation by storm. But then he took his friends aside one day and told them he was going to die, and very soon. He told them be would suffer indignities and be treated like a criminal. He told them it would look like utter defeat. But God does not abandon His people. That young man’s name was Jesus.
As with the stories of Joseph and Patrick, God had a purpose for the suffering Jesus endured. It was a purpose that would change the history, not just of a nation, but of mankind. The suffering and death of Christ freed us all from slavery, slavery that was meant to separated us forever from our Father. But God’s purpose could not be thwarted. Through the death of Jesus, His will was accomplished. We were reunited with our true family, reinstated in our true country. What looked like defeat was in reality complete victory.
There are times in all our lives when it appears God has abandoned us. We see the horrors of wars and famines raging all over our world. We experience the loss of loved ones to the plagues of cancer and other diseases that seem to be out of control. We cry out at the injustices that happen every day.
But God has not abandoned us. He will bring all things to completion in His time and according to His purposes. Therefore we can stand in good company, with Joseph, Patrick and Jesus, and repeat the words of Paul, “Yet I am not ashamed, because I know whom I have believed and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him, for that day” (2Timothy 1:12).
I purchased a bunch of yellow flowers yesterday. Those who decide where to put what in grocery stores must have lived in Canada during the winter. The profusion of daffodils placed at the entrance of the store were not only eye-catching, they filled me with longing for spring and a need to relieve that longing. I had a bunch in my cart before I even thought about the price or the marketing strategy.
When I woke up this morning, the buds that were just starting to open had bloomed, their bright yellow faces greeting me cheerily. Then I looked outside and groaned at the swirling snow and howling wind. These daffodils obviously did not come from any garden in Alberta. As I admired them, I thought of a friend of mine. She told me they were her favourite flowers because they are among the first to pop up when spring has arrived. She knows about longing for spring too. She too has lived in cold and desolate places where people are sustained by the warmth of friendships and dreams of sunshine. She too knows about longing for colour and fragrant winds and the smell of the earth. Daffodils are a sign that we will not always have to wait, that the longing will be satisfied with good things. They are a sign of hope, telling us to hang on, spring is coming. When blizzards are blowing, we desperately need that hope.
When the storms of life are blowing we are in desperate need of another kind of hope. When the ordinary cares of daily life swirl around us, we need to know that the goodness of God is enough. We need to believe He will satisfy the deepest longings of our hearts. The longing for spring, for beauty and for good things are only shadows of that deeper need, the need for spiritual satisfaction. In Psalm 63, David says – “My soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water” (v.1). Then he declares – “My soul will be satisfied as with the richest of foods; with singing lips my mouth will praise you” (v.5).
Nothing can satisfy that deep longing but God Himself. We can try to fill it will all kinds of “good” things, but that will only take the edge off, only satisfy temporarily. In the end, the longing increases. The daffodils on my kitchen table won’t really satisfy my longing for spring. As they die, they will only serve to increase it. The writer of Proverbs says – “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life” (Proverbs 13:12). The longing will continue until our focus is turned to the One who can completely relieve it.
Jesus promises to satisfy that longing. He longs to meet us, to draw us into a relationship that will ease the ache of being apart from Him. Let Jesus satisfy the longing in your heart. Meet with Him today.
I have a problem and I hope someone out there in cyberland can help me with it. You see, I have a morning routine – I wake slowly, so I move slowly, wrap myself in a warm housecoat given to me by my wonderful mother-in-law several years ago, and wander to the kitchen, where I make a cup of coffee and usually a single piece of toast with crunchy peanut butter and jam of some kind. This morning it was homemade by a neighbour – mango and strawberry, also chunky.
I then sit in my favourite chair which faces the front window of our home so I can keep track of the few vehicles that might drive by, as well as the deer that wander the neighbourhood every day. I sip my coffee and munch my toast, then pick up my laptop and check my email. After that I open a Bible app and read a chunk of scripture. It’s a rather big chunk right now, because I’m doing a challenge, put out by Mary DeMuth to read the entire Bible in 90 days.
This is when my problem occurs. His name is Little Duffer (aka Little Stinker, Little Terror, Bad Cat, Cheeky Cat, etc.).
You see Duffer likes to jump up between the laptop and the arm of the chair and crawl up to lie on my chest. That effectively restricts the ability to move my left arm, and view the monitor, which makes it a little awkward to type. I could put up with that, I suppose, but then Duffer wriggles a bit higher and begins to knead with his sharp little claws, while twisting his head around to lick my hand. Not just one lick, mind you, but over and over again until there’s a small river running between my fingers. If I push him down, he immediately comes right back. By then I’m ready to do some writing or editing on my WIP (work in progress), so Duffer’s habit becomes rather annoying.
To this point in time, I have found no way to stop him from doing this. Can anyone help me? Pleeeese! I like the little critter but he’s driving me crazy!
By the way, I am following the advice of Garrison Keillor in writing this post. Mr. Keillor wrote – “Life has its sorrows. Make something beautiful out of it.”
I don’t pretend that this is ‘beautiful’ nor would I class my problem with Duffer as a ‘sorrow’ but I hope it gives you a chuckle as well as a proverbial light bulb idea that works to solve my dilemma.
If not, I may have to resort to putting a wire cage around my chair so I can get some work done!
Blessings of this Blessed Season to you all! In the midst of all the turmoil in the world, know that God is still on His throne. I’m sure He weeps with us and longs for His return when He will set all things right. But for now we must trust and pray and try to follow His path as best we can, ” to do justice, and to love kindness,and to walk humbly with your God.” Micah 6:8
Here is one of my favourite Advent poems by Malcolm Guite from his book, Sounding the Seasons. (If you don’t know Malcolm’s poetry I encourage you to look him up).
O Emmanuel By Malcolm Guite
O come, O come, and be our God-with-us O long-sought With-ness for a world without, O secret seed, O hidden spring of light. Come to us Wisdom, come unspoken Name Come Root, and Key, and King, and holy Flame, O quickened little wick so tightly curled, Be folded with us into time and place, Unfold for us the mystery of grace And make a womb of all this wounded world. O heart of heaven beating in the earth, O tiny hope within our hopelessness Come to be born, to bear us to our birth, To touch a dying world with new-made hands And make these rags of time our swaddling bands.
****
And, for your reading pleasure, a Christmas story –
Missing Christmas By Marcia Lee Laycock
Sulking and soaking. For me, the two always go together. I know when I’m not fit to be around people, especially the people I’m mad at, so the bathtub is the best place to be. I run the water as hot as I can stand it and stay there until I feel like I can be civil again. That night, the night before Christmas, I thought I might be there till dawn.
Tim had dropped the bomb when he came home from work two days before we were to go home for the holidays. Somehow he’d managed to mess up making the flight reservations. How could he mess up something so important, so essential to my sanity? Bad enough he’d talked me into coming here, to the end of reason and any sign of civilization, just so he could have a “real northern experience.” Bad enough he didn’t once compliment me on how I’d bravely been enduring the minus fifty-degree temperatures. Bad enough we still had five more months to endure life in this town on the edge of the universe. Now we were stuck here for Christmas.
Even if we drove south till the temperature was warm enough for planes to fly, there weren’t any seats to be had. And what was his excuse? He thought he’d told the travel agent to book it, but he had only asked her to give him the details. When she didn’t hear back from him, she assumed we’d changed our minds but didn’t bother to check. There are too many people in this town who definitely aren’t the brightest bulbs on the tree.
And speaking of trees. To try and pacify me, Tim dragged a tree home today. I caught him going out the door, downed from neck to ankle, a toque on his head and wool scarf wrapped about six times around his face. When I asked him where on earth he was going, he said something unintelligible and walked out the door. Three hours later I heard him stomping around on the porch. I poked my head out, the cold hitting me like a slap. All I could see were his eyes. They were laughing. He tugged the scarf down long enough to tell me to wrap up and come out for a minute. Curious, I pulled on my parka and went outside.
He stood there like a little boy who’d just bagged his first bird. Only it was a Christmas tree he held on to. Or rather, it had been a Christmas tree. My mouth fell open and I sputtered through a mouth full of scarf. Tim pulled his away from his mouth and grinned.
“Just call me Charlie Brown,” he said.
The tree was almost bare. Tim described how the needles rained down with every blow of the axe. What else did he expect at fifty below?
Then we tried getting it inside. The few needles left on the branches showered the linoleum in the kitchen until it looked like a forest path. We stood it in a corner and stepped back. Tim glanced at me sideways just as I did the same and we both burst out laughing.
“I’ll go buy an artificial one,” I said. Tim didn’t argue.
I trudged off to the only store in town, but of course they were sold out of Christmas trees, artificial or otherwise. Then I went to the grocery store to buy a turkey. No turkeys left either. No cranberry sauce, no fresh vegetables. They had some Caribou steaks on special. Whoopdeedoo. By the time I got home I wanted to scream, “Baaah Humbug!” That’s when I locked myself in the bathroom and tried to soak away the frustration.
The next morning I wished Tim a halfhearted “Merry Christmas,” then told him his present was waiting for him at my parents’ house, three thousand miles away. The house that would be decorated so beautifully, with a six foot tree. The house that would be filled with the smell of roast turkey and pumpkin pie. The house where all our family would gather to sing carols by the fireplace. My pity party was complete when he told me my present was waiting there too.
I was choking down tears when the phone rang. A cheery voice said, “Ho, ho, ho, Merry Christmas.” I handed the phone to Tim. I heard his voice go up a few notches the longer he talked. He kept glancing at me, then finally said. “We’ll be there,” and hung up. When he told me we’d been invited to his boss’s house for dinner, I just turned and walked into the bathroom.
He gave me an hour to soak, then tapped on the door. “They have eggnog,” he said. “And it’s warmed up to minus forty.”
I sniffled a bit, dried off and opened the door. “Okay. Why not?”
We dressed in our Christmas best and arrived at the house just in time to see a dog sled scrape to a stop. Tim’s boss, Jerry, waved us over. “The Yukon version of a sleigh ride,” he said. “Hop in.”
Tim and I crawled under the down blanket and I let him wrap his arms around me as the sled jerked forward. The dogs trotted easily and the sled slid with a sighing ssshhh over the snow-packed ground. Jerry gee-ed and haw-ed and within minutes we were on the river. It seemed like we were floating now, whooshing around ice sculptures heaved up by the force of water and carved by wind. I rested my head on Tim’s chest and watched the reflection of a rising moon glint on nature’s statuary. By the time we got back to the house I was breathless with the thrill of the short ride.
Inside, Jerry’s wife, Sonya, handed me a hot spiced apple cider and, as we joined several others in the living room, I realized I almost had what you could call the Christmas spirit. The smell of roasting turkey helped. Sonya had decorated with impeccable taste, but my heart sank a little when I saw there was no Christmas tree. There was a rather odd shape draped in a sheet in one corner, but everyone seemed to ignore it, so I didn’t ask. I even sang along with the others as someone led the carols accompanied by some light finger-picking on guitar.
The meal was wonderful, the laughter and constant chatter enough to bring the spirit of the season into full bloom. But I was not prepared for what happened when Jerry tapped his glass and told us all to follow him back into the living room.
Sonya was behind me as we went. She leaned forward and whispered. “This is always the best moment.”
I followed the group and stood on tiptoe to see what the big secret was. I couldn’t see anything remarkable. In fact, all I could see, as everyone formed a semi-circle, was that we’d been led to the corner with the strange shape draped in a sheet. I held my breath.
Jerry turned and Sonya excused herself through the crowd to hand him a book.
“This has become a tradition for us ever since we moved north,” Jerry explained. “We gather our friends, feed them, entertain them, and then we read a bit.” He flipped the book open and adjusted his glasses. This is the book of Luke, chapter two, verses one through twenty. “In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree …”.”
As the story unfolded, I watched the faces around me. Some were intent, some looked bored, but there wasn’t a sound in the room – just the words of an ancient story told with simplicity and grace. It thrilled me to know the story was true. Tim stepped to my side as it came to an end.
Jerry closed the Bible, looked around at everyone and smiled. “Now we unveil the tree.”
Sonya slipped through the crowd again and the lights went out. I heard the soft sound of the sheet falling to the floor. Then the room burst into white light. Before us stood, not a decorated Christmas tree, but a spindly birch. Thin branches reached up toward the ceiling. Each branch sprouted groups of bright green leaves. The leaves glowed with the twinkling of tiny white lights.
I stopped breathing and started crying at the same time. The sight filled my eyes with a color they’d been hungering to see and filled my soul with a light that made me forget about myself. I reached for Tim’s hand.
“We don’t like to cut down an evergreen for the sake of tradition,” Jerry said quietly. “So we grow one.” He waved toward the birch. “It seems to suit the spirit of Christmas, the Spirit that teaches that the birth of Christ was a point of new beginnings.”
Sonya stepped to her husband’s side. “Jesus was an ordinary man, nothing special to look at, the scriptures tell us, like this little birch, but he was also the Son of God and he brought new life and light to a dark world.”
Jerry’s eyes gleamed in the reflection from the tree. “Merry Christmas,” he said.
The words echoed from all the lips in the room, including mine.
A while ago our neighbourhood was turned into a beautiful winter wonderland. The temperature had dropped suddenly and for a while we were shrouded in thick fog. When that cleared, the sun came out and everything sparkled as though it had been painted with a fairy’s brush. The thick frost was dazzling. As I walked Livy that day I remember thinking,
What could be more beautiful?
I love where we live. It’s a quiet neighbourhood full of large trees, crisscrossed with walking paths dotted with boxes of doggie bags at strategic places. On a calm night we can hear the gurgling of the river behind us and the lights from the small town aren’t enough to block out the stars. Deer often wander up from the nearby woods and now and then a moose will jog down the street. I often fall asleep to the sound of coyotes yipping at the moon. Yes, I love it here.
But it’s not where my heart belongs.
My heart belongs in a faraway place that I’ve never seen, a place that, unlike our current home, can never be corrupted or destroyed. Matthew 6:19 & 20 says – “do not lay up for yourselves treasured on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.” (ESV)
I thank the Lord every day for giving us such a beautiful place to live, but my true home is where my Saviour is, where my Heavenly Father lives. Remembering that truth keeps me from grasping for the eathly things that will fade away, rather than focusing on those things which are eternal.
While watching a video recently and listening to this song I was struck by the image of that ancient tool of time, the hourglass. It made me sigh just a little, since I am not just “over the hill” but getting very close to the bottom of the far side.
And I have a friend who is dying. A friend who does not believe there is anything more than this life. He believes that when those last gains of sand fall into the receptacle on the bottom, that’s it. There will be no one there to turn the hourglass over so we can start again.
That belief saddens me deeply. Because I believe there is one who is waiting for us, a God who is monitoring the inexorable drip of the hourglass of our life, the one who will turn it over and open a new life to us, a life lived forever in His presence.
It makes me think of the place where I went to school, on the shores of a short strip of water called the St. Mary’s River. It joins two of the largest inland bodies of water in the world, Lake Huron and Lake Superior. The high school I attended stood on a hill overlooking that river and the locks that allowed huge ships to pass from one lake to the other. I remember staring out a window before classes began one morning and thinking about the courier du bois, those courageous explorers who paddled canoes from one lake to the other.
I wondered what they must have thought as they came to the end of Lake Huron. They had heard rumours that there was more beyond, (their first nations guides told them so), but I imagine they wondered. Could it really be true? Could there be another lake, larger and more wondrous than the one they had just navigated? I imagined their excitement and fear as they came to the end of the St. Mary’s River and saw that yes, it was true. Lake Superior lay before them.
Just as heaven will one day lay before those who have believed in Jesus, the Christ.
As someone who is getting closer and closer to that moment, I take great comfort in that promise. Unlike those explorers, I have no fear of what is beyond because Jesus has told me, “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.” (John 14:1- 3, ESV).
It’s that last phrase that excites me but yes, makes me a little nervous, in a way. For how can I, one with so many faults and failings, come face to face with Jesus? But then there is another promise. “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.” (Romans 8:1,2, ESV).
Hallelujah! What a Saviour!
****
Thank you for taking the time to read. I invite you to follow me if you’d like to read more of my work about finding your way home, into the arms of Jesus. 😊 You can find me on Medium.com at Pond’rings and Words on the Wing and a few other publications along the way.
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