Whatever He Says

He goes before us--"he" being God, and the "going before," meaning that I've been so aware lately that he does, all the time, and I should really relax more into that! I could give many examples, but I am trying to focus on the main thing, that being our current adventure, and not stray off onto bunny trails. I, and 14 other team members, are in the process of leaving, over the next three days, for Mishkeegogamang First Nation, which is 2000 north of here, near to Pickle Lake, in north-western Ontario. Our "lead goose" and trip coordinator, Susan, left this morning by road, with a small convoy following her. Jamie and Kevin leave in the early hours of tomorrow morning, and Paul and I and the rest of the team are flying to Thunder Bay on Saturday morning and will reconnect with the "roadies", then drive together the rest of the way to Mish, arriving late on Saturday. We have been preparing for weeks, and truth be told, by the t...

In the continuing story of our week long adventure in Mish, this story of the evening after our outing to the beach on Thursday, is from Susan Stewart.  When Paul mentioned that he was disappointed that Belinda wasn’t going to be at the community center that night to take photos, I completely understood her position.  The night before, I felt just like I suspected she felt now - like I had “hit the wall”.  Everyone else had headed over to the community barbecue and the dance that followed it, but though my spirit was willing, my body told me in no uncertain terms, “there’s absolutely no way you’re going anywhere tonight where there are people”.  My muscles were aching and my brain was fried – to a crisp. I felt like I couldn’t answer one more question, make one more decision, or interact with one more person.  So I stayed back while everyone else went to the dance, knowing I was probably missing something very significant, and quite possibly even “wonder...

Jeremiah 17:7-8 The Message (MSG) 7-8 But blessed is the man who trusts me, God, the woman who sticks with God. They're like trees replanted in Eden, putting down roots near the rivers— Never a worry through the hottest of summers, never dropping a leaf, Serene and calm through droughts, bearing fresh fruit every season. By Belinda We are back from a three day conference at Geneva Park, just north of Orillia. The time away involved early mornings and late nights and hours in between soaking in information that strengthened our leadership on all sorts of levels. I have so much to process and unpack in my working, spiritual, and personal life. But that's not what I meant to write about--that was just to bring you up to date on where I've been! I led the devotions on Thursday morning and had been praying about what to share for some time. I recruited my colleague Marirose, with her guitar and beautiful voice, to join me at the end in leading a song and what I shared...

By Belinda This is a post script to what I wrote on Monday, in my  Confession  post. So much more goes on behind the scenes of a "post" that doesn't get shared here, and you can probably be thankful for that! But in this case I have to let you what happened next... First of all, I set my alarm for 5 the next morning. In my blog post entitled Timely Counsel I wrote that I was listening to Stephen R. Covey's book, First Things First . In it, Covey defines "integrity"in a way I'd never considered before; as the keeping of the promises we make to ourselves. I guess the way I've defined integrity, "as a gap between what we say we believe and what we do," does fit with the making and keeping of promises to ourselves. Covey illustrated the importance of following through on promises with the example of his counsel to a man who was always emotionally up and down. Covey challenged him to get up a little earlier every day for a week. At fi...

By Belinda The day was glorious with windswept blue skies filled with scudding puffy white clouds. The fields, some with rich earth freshly turned by plow, some with the stubble of recent harvest, stretched out like a patchwork quilt of gold, brown, and soft green hues flung out to air in the breeze. Late fall in Ontario: with the leaves mostly blown and beaten from the trees by autumn wind and rain; stands of orange pumpkins outside every grocery store and frosty mornings a promise of winter surely coming. It was after lunch when I headed to my office, turning my back reluctantly on the beauty of the day. I checked the phone for messages, pen in hand. A friend's familiar voice played back from among several work messages. "Hello dear," she said, "I don't usually leave messages but I must leave this one." And she went on to ask me to hold her true, as her "spiritual mother," to the importance of prayer. I listened to the message, thoughtful...

Jenn Clark 22 October 07:27 Update: Wednesday and Thursday I apologize to those who are waiting for news, but I'm finding it more difficult to find the time to be on here--I was home for two days, so I needed to be with my girls, and now I'm here in the hospital for two days, and Nick is often awake so I need to be with him. Anyway, I'm going to try and hit the important points of the last two days. Nicholas slept all of Tuesday night and most of Wednesday morning, which was such a HUGE relief to us. One of our biggest concerns, as I think I've mentioned, is that he's hardly been sleeping at all. Once he woke up, though, it was a bit difficult: he was feverish and very agitated, trying to climb out of bed and not wanting anyone to touch him, crying a lot and hallicinating a bit as well. The doctors had starting trying to wean him off the morphine the night before, and they figured that was what was causing it--his body reacting to the lower dose. They put him...

By Belinda Going back in time a lttle (I have so much to catch up on gradually;) on Tuesday evening I flew to England to spend a few days with Mum, but not before spending most of the day at a Staff Day Apart at work. I drove to nearby Bradford early that morning, to pick up someone who needed a ride to Jackson's point, about 45 minutes away, where 50 of us would  spend the day together in worship, having fun and a 3 hour training on Soul Care for the Caregiver. On the way I told my passenger about the Nick, the 11 year old boy with Stevens Johnson Syndrome, for whom we've been praying. I told him the wonderful news that Nick's skin is already beginning to grow back. That's when he told me a story I knew I had to share here: A few years ago his mother called him about a man who was depressed due to family circumstances. Distraught, the man decided to end his life and went to the basement and where he planned to drink...

Jenn Clark Back again! i'm going to try to be brief, because it's getting late and I haven't been getting much sleep. The other kind of upsetting thing about yesterday was that, about an hour before the vent-suctioning fiasco, the nurse told me that she was becoming increasingly concerned about how low Nick's blood pressure was. On Saturday night he was put on a new sedative which we eventually found out was because they were trying to wean him off of the morphine somewhat, and this particular sedative helps to manage withdrawal symptoms. Anyway, it was responsible for the sharp drop in blood pressure, so the nurse consulted the doctor and was told to lower the sedative, up the morphine a bit, and quickly give 500 ml of saline through the IV. All of those measures got his BP back up within about 40 minutes, but it was worrying for a while there. Only good news yesterday was that the opthamologist paid him a visit, and told us that his eyes are looking totally perfect...

Nothing that I can say tonight is as important as this. Please pray for a little boy whom I have taught in Sunday School, Nicholas Clark. What is written below was posted by his mom, Jenn, who is a friend of Brenda's. Susan and Nick's grandmother Kathy, have been close friends for many years and I also count her a dear friend.  I know some real prayer warriors read this blog. I hope you'll join me in praying for Nick. Belinda By Jenn I'm not sure if this post is going to be restricted to a certain number of words...if so I'll have to start over and create a document. (Don't know much about Facebook groups.) I'll give it a shot though. We took Nicholas up to the ER about two weeks ago, because he had a very sore throat and had for several days. (It was late, which was why we didn't go to the clinic.) They examined him and told us that there was nothing wrong that they could see. This past Thursday, Jim took him to the hospital again because he had be...

By Belinda I wrote last Tuesday about my experience of peace in the midst of a storm back in 1984, when I knew instantly that someone was praying and felt flooded with peace. I just had another such experience. I shouldn't have had the peace I felt all week, but it was there in every moment, every conversation, even beneath deep grieving over something very hard. On Thursday evening I stopped at the post office to pick up our mail on the way home from work. I didn't have time to look at it when I got home because it was cell group evening so I put the pile of envelopes on top of the fridge to look at later. I got busy making coffee, setting the table and preparing supper and then the house filled with people. I forgot about the mail until the next evening, when I noticed the edges of the envelopes sticking out over the top of the fridge. Among the routine mail--bills and flyers--was a rare thing, a hand addressed envelope. My curiosity was stirred by the sender's address l...

I slip from the warm blankets later than I intended, but it is minus 28 degrees Celsius outside and so cosy beneath the covers. Downstairs the coffee maker is soon percolating, making rude, snorting, gurgling noises; but since they herald that first delicious steaming hot cup of morning coffee I don't mind at all. I cradle the precious cup of dark golden brown liquid in my hands and pad barefoot into our big back room. Curling up in a wingback chair by the window, beneath the reading lamp, I notice that it is still dark outside. I think of how much I cherish these quiet moments at the start of the day. I read a couple of pages from Mark Buchanan's book, The Rest of God ; the section called, Sabbath Liturgy; Paying Attention . I determine to be more intentional in paying attention--noticing better. I start, first, as I begin to pray, by noticing that he is here and acknowledging that. I think of how rude it would be not to greet a guest or beloved friend in our home, and so I s...

Mark 14:37-38 (New International Version) 37 Then he returned to his disciples and found them sleeping. "Simon," he said to Peter, "are you asleep? Could you not keep watch for one hour? 38 Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the body is weak." The days passed in a whirlwind of busyness. It seemed that there was always something calling for her attention from the moment she awoke in the morning, until she stumbled exhausted, to her bed at night. So busy was she that she actually forgot about eating. Oh, she intended to eat, and she did snatch little snacks from the shelf here and there, but although she thought longingly of having the luxury to sit and eat at length, and although she aimed to get up early enough to have a good meal at the start of the day, her increasing fatigue made it hard to wake up in time and each day she got up too late to eat. She began to lose weight and without proper nourishment her energy l...

On May 27th our cell group will be starting a 12 week course called The Truth Project, with Dr. Del Tackett ( http://www.thetruthproject.org/ ) We are bursting at the seams with people who wanted to participate. There is such a hunger for truth. It seems that there is a heart cry among people today, echoing the words of Pontius Pilate, who asked cynically, "What is truth?" In the first of 12 DVD's, Dr. Tackett challenges people to probe underlying assumptions behind statements generally accepted in our culture as being "right." Throughout the series he teaches participants to think, reason, and challenge commonly held assumptions and contrast them with truth as presented in God's Word. Reading The Spiritual Brain got me thinking a lot about assumptions, especially the part of the book outlining a study on prayer that had unexpected results. The study of more than 1,800 patients who underwent heart bypass surgery led the press to ridicule those who believed ...

Job 14:1-2 (New Living Translation) 1 “How frail is humanity! How short is life, how full of trouble! 2 We blossom like a flower and then wither. Like a passing shadow, we quickly disappear. I thought it was a discarded piece of waste paper, and stooped to pick it up. I found that it wasn't paper, but a flower that had fallen from the lovely white orchid that is in full bloom in a pot on top of one of our bookcases. The flower had dried where it fell, but it was still beautiful, a fragile work of art. I examined it carefully, admiring the handiwork of God. I gently opened it to see the colours within; the purple and gold at the centre. It rustled in my fingers as I touched it and I held it to my ear to listen to the sound of the empty shell-flower. I couldn't bring myself to throw it away, so I put it on my kitchen window sill. Later that week three of us sat together after cell group, having a final cup of coffee of the evening. We had watched the Alpha DVD entitled, Does God ...

Isaiah 41:10 (New International Version 10 So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. I sent the verse above, from today's Daily Light reading, to Susan last night. Her heart was in turmoil; her father very ill with pneumonia in Windsor, and she worn out from a tiring week and sleepless nights. She had quickly packed a bag and planned to leave this morning to be with him and to do what she could to make him comfortable. In spite of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, requiring oxygen 24 hours a day, this old soldier of 84 had decided not to go to hospital and was not on antibiotics. As we drove to church for the Good Friday communion service, she was on my mind and in my prayers. The worship team leading the service had chosen songs that were moving and meaningful and drew the congregation of our little church into a place of reflection and deep gratitude for the sa...

Numbers 16:47-48 (The Message) The Message (MSG) Eugene H. Peterson 47-48 Aaron grabbed the censer, as directed by Moses, and ran into the midst of the congregation. The plague had already begun. He put burning incense into the censer and atoned for the people. He stood there between the living and the dead and stopped the plague. Paul and I are still slowly digesting Watchman Nee's little book, Sit, Walk, Stand , a tiny bit at a time over breakfast each morning. We must seem like very slow readers, but we want to absorb this teacher/preacher's thoughts and consider them well. We had just finished reading Watchman's words about the great legacy to the Church; the name of Jesus, in which we are invited to pray, when I read in the book of Numbers chapter 16, verses 47-48, the story of the plague that was judgement for the sins of the people and which was stopped when Aaron the priest, burned incense before the Lord and atoned for the people. The image of Aaron, standing b...