Consider this

When I was a kid, Evel Knievel fascinated me. I had an Evel Knievel action figure, a stunt bike and a car that “blew up” when you ran it into a wall. I even faintly remember watching him try to jump the Snake River Canyon with his Jet Bike (and that was in 1974 when I was only 5 years old). Of course, things did not always go well for Knievel. Most of us have seen the footage of his December 31, 1967 jump over the fountains at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. He landed short, was thrown over the handle bars of the motorcycle and ended up crushing his pelvis and femur, fracturing his hip, wrist and both ankles and sustaining a concussion that kept him in a coma for 29 days. Daredevils get attention because they do what the rest of us will not. They gather crowds by standing on the edge of their own mortality and pushing the limits. While most of us will never be tempted make a living as a daredevil, I do think that there is a huge temptation to live as a “Spiritual daredevils”. ...

We live in amazing time. Thanks to airplanes, we can be in a Saskatchewan blizzard in the morning and be sitting on a beach in the Caribbean later that afternoon. Microwaves can take a piece of meat that is frozen as solid as a bowling ball and thaw it in a few minutes. We can email people all over the world and expect an answer in minutes. "Facebook" allows us to keep track of every last little thing our friends are doing or thinking (Ok – maybe I could do without that one). Compared to the world that my ninety-year-old Grandma grew up in, life has sped up a lot. We can do more, see more and have more. In most ways, that is a good thing. However, busyness can have a price too. As we do more and more, important stuff can be squeezed out. Luke 10:38-42 tells the story of two sisters, Mary and Martha. One day Jesus came to their home and, right away, Martha got up and got to work. Mary, on the other hand, decided to sit and listen to Jesus. As Martha continued t...

When asked to summarize the teaching of the Old Testament, an expert in the law replied, “’Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’ and ‘Love your neighbour as yourself’” (Luke 10:27). That is when the trouble started. This man figured that “Love the Lord” was not that hard, but he was concerned about the “Love your neighbour” part. That did not sound like quite as much fun, so “looking for a loophole” (as a modern Bible translation puts it) the man asked, “And who is my neighbour?” (Verse 29). Jesus responds by telling him the story that we call “The Good Samaritan” (verses 30-37). In the story, a man was attacked, beaten and left for dead at the side of a road. Soon a religious man, a priest, came along, but instead of helping the injured man, the priest passed by on the other side of the road. Then another religious man, a Levite, came. He too saw the man, but passed by on the other side. Th...

It was cold at 6 am, but we got up, went to the school and loaded the bus. My daughter’s school was going skiing and she wanted me to come along, so I re-arranged my week and headed to “Mission Ridge” with them. Within an hour of getting to the hill, most of the kids could “snowplow” and turn well enough to take the chair lift, go to the top and ski the day away. Interestingly, about 27 years ago, I learned to ski at “Mission Ridge”. I took lessons on the same Bunny Hill. I spent most of my first day on the same “green” (meaning “easiest”) run that Katelyn and her friend were skiing. It was really special to pass on something that I really enjoy, so that my daughter could experience it too. To me, evangelism, or the sharing of our faith, should look a lot like me teaching my daughter to ski. It starts with a relationship. If I did not have a good relationship with Katelyn, she would not have asked me to go on the trip with her. One of the problems with many of our “evan...

“Rrrrr-Rrrrr-Rrrrrr”. Nothing! That is the sound of me trying to start my motorcycle one day last summer. It simply would not go. I took mechanics in high school and I am not afraid to tear things apart, so I started checking everything that I could think of on that bike. Still nothing worked. Finally, I remembered that when I parked it a few days previously, the “low fuel light” had just come on. Sure enough, it was out of gas. After all my goofing around, testing and changing things, there really was nothing wrong with my motorcycle. It was just out of gas. If my life had a “low fuel light”, it would be on today. I am tired. Sundays, of course, are big days for me with lots of people, lots of activity and lots of adrenaline spent. Mondays (today) are often sort of “hard to start”. As I sit in front of my computer trying to come up with something interesting to write about, I have got nothing. I feel pretty empty. I gave out all my inspiring insights yesterday. I use...