August 16, 2010
-
Good things
It’s been a while since i’ve written, so it seems. The weather has warmed up considerably. Just now as i write it’s gloriously sunny just out the door and on the deck. Because of all the changes that are happening in our compound with the vegetation we can now see out our deck door, past where the hedge used to hedge in our deck and into our neighbour’s living room doors. LOL. it’s like we live in Winnipeg. I reckon soon Josh will declare that we need to put up some temporary lattice or something to shield the deck from the house next door since the warming weather will draw us out there more often than not in the days to come.
This last weekend our church hosted her first outreach event. Although most of the events happened in the evenings when my boys are not at their best for public appearances we did contribute in a very small way by baking sheet cakes (like a regular Mennonite housewife, i felt like
) and we loaned our MAF generator to run the lights and whatnotall that they used to put on their big production. If you visit the TCC website in a few days there should be many photos of the event. Apparently there were over 500 people, most of them non-TCC people, who attended the three days of events including drama, preaches, music, lots of treats and, the last evening, the Tana Gospel Choir, who i’ve had the pleasure of hearing at the Grand Caravan welcome party we had at the MAF hangar way back in 2007. They are a phenomenal group to listen to live. The church did so much work to prepare for the weekend including sending out small groups of people out into the community to hand out invitations the week before the event. And i was so impressed with the focus on doing this event primarily for the glory of God rather than to count the number of new attendees or new believers like a greedy miser counting his loot after a grand marketing scheme. Truly, the effort will undoubtedly cause changes in the community over the months and years to come, but for now i reckon the fact that the church was obedient and willing to serve the community for God’s glory is the more important thing. To be sure, i am looking forward to being more free from the confines of crabby infants in a year or so in order to be more involved in the exciting ways TCC is living the call of Christ in the community.Moreover, this Sunday we had a fantastic preach by our pastor who, if i may say so, tends to give messages that require a great deal of courage. I’ve been sensing an underlying theme in much of what has been going on at TCC these past few weeks, that being Freedom in Christ and, what really is the Good News rather than what Man has made the gospel out to be (not really very good at all in many cases). The Life which is coming out from our church has done a lot to revive the both of us from the difficult few months we’ve been experiencing due to transition, goodbyes, and general winter blahs. Praise the LORD for TCC, and, undoubtedly, for the persistent prayers of the Saints in Manitoba on our behalf.
The change in weather these past few days has given rise to the hope of summer fast approaching, which at times makes me feel a bit bad for those of you in the northern hemisphere who are likewise experiencing a change in temperature although not for the warmer. Shame. As the weather gets warmer here i am compiling a list of to-do items in the house and around the garden that i think should be done before the AJReimer family descends upon us en masse. Fix window screens, clean out closets, suss out recipes, prepare Christmas decorations, figure out how we’re going to fit around our down-sized dining room table… shuffle MAF furniture after the Slaubaughs leave (sigh… sniff), arrange itinerary and hotel reservations, compile wish list for the allowable space in the luggage that’s coming along…
Recently in my reading of the Word of God i’ve also been sensing a personal theme: that the people God uses to do great and God-glorifying things are many times such scoundrels in the eyes of Man that we often think ‘what good can come of them?!’ Jacob, for instance, was really quite a dirt-bag when it comes to being a ‘nice guy’, at least in our ‘modern’ idea of what that means. Swindling his brother out of both his birthright and his father’s blessing, open deceit, not keeping his sons in line (“immobilizing” a whole city of men and then slaughtering them while they are all in pain), demanding blessings of the LORD, etc. etc. And yet, he is a huge name in the history of the people of God, and of the lineage of Christ. There are many other human examples of this kind of theme throughout, although Sunday School stories tend to tell their stories in such a light as to glorify them rather than the God who took the foolish things of this world to shame the wise, as it were. Indeed, even Jesus was disregarded as being anyone worthy of paying attention to by the ‘church goers’ of the time because what he was saying didnt jive with what they knew of him, “So the Jews grumbled about [Jesus], because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” They said, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? [who, incidentally, were involved in that scandal surrounding Jesus' conception prior to their marriage!! ] How does he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?”"(Jn6:41-42). I have myself been reminded not to disregard the Spirit using broken vessels – people who seem a bit ‘dirt-bag-ish’ to go about Kingdom work. Indeed, it encourages me in my own broken state that scoundrels are not beyond being used by the Almighty for the things He has planned in advance for me to do.
Also this weekend we have been in the throes of helping with and cleaning up after the group of Firemen who came to chop down our trees. They began on our yard this Saturday and it was a grand spectacle indeed! I’ll post some photos shortly. They’re returning tomorrow (tues) to continue the job and it is our hope that they can be persuaded to cut off more branches than it seems they have been commissioned to do by the lady in charge of the compound. I have grand hopes of the added sunlight, allowed in by the absence of the plethora of pine tree boughs, will do wonders in helping grass and plants to grow with added vigor in my garden. Not to mention the great lessening of pine needles which have until now over-acidified the dirt.
Photos to come.
