Consider this

            The “As then/so now” principle states that past habits are the best predictors of future actions.   In other words, regardless of your dreams or your best intentions, you are likely going to keep doing what you have always done.   King Josiah is an exception to this rule.             Josiah became king when he was eight years old (2 Chronicles 34:1).   At the age of sixteen he began to seek the God and when he turned twenty he cleared all the idols out of Jerusalem and the surrounding area (verse 3).   At the age of twenty-six, he reopened and repaired the temple in Jerusalem (verse 8). During the renovation, the workers found a book of the law of God and they immediately brought it to the king and read it to him (verses 14-18).               Now, many times when this story is told, it is stated that finding the book of the law was the turning point in the life of Josiah.   However, that is not true!   Finding the truth was not the important part.   Rather, it was

“How old is your little boy?” I asked the man sitting in front of me at the Bruins’ game a few weeks ago. “Nine months” was the reply. The reason I asked was that this little guy was putting on quite a show. First he would lean over his dad’s left shoulder, look at Sara and me and smile. Then he would look the other way at my daughters and their friends and laugh. Then, back to us. Then back to them. He was having a great time. In fact, he was not the only one having fun. I think we missed an entire period of the game making faces at this happy little boy. Three rows down sat a row of older boys. None of them were smiling. In fact, most of them were angry, yelling and throwing things at the visiting team. It was an interesting contrast. The happy, smiley person in our section received smiles and laughs from those around him. All the not so happy people got was a warning from the security guards.  It is a simple truism, but one worth thinking about: You get what yo

            One hundred dollars seemed like a lot of money for two little pictures at a garage sale.   In fact, most people just walked right past them.   One man, though, picked them up, looked them over, gladly paid the price and left.             This past May, a small, untitled oil painting, measuring just 28 by 21 centimetres, was put up for auction at “Maynards Fine Art and Antiques” in Vancouver.   Identified as being the work of iconic Canadian artist Tom Thomson and depicting a sunrise over Ontario’s Algonquin Park, typical of many of his works before his death in 1917, it sold for $110 000.               A second small painting, this one a water colour by “Group of Seven” artist Fredrick Varley was sold as well.   It brought $6 500.               By now you have likely figured out that the paintings that sold at auction for a total of $116 500 were the $100 garage sale paintings that most people overlooked (Interestingly, they were valued at closer to $300 000

             Sometimes we get the wrong idea and those ideas get passed on as “truth”.   It is not that we mean to do this.   It just happens because we are unaware that we are passing on misinformation.             For example, all of my life I have been taught about the New Testament hero, Paul, who single-handedly converted the entire known Gentile world.   The strange thing about that story: It is not true!             Even a cursory reading of the New Testament shows that Paul was not a “Lone Ranger”.   He always worked “in” and “with” a team!    For example, at the end of the letter to the Colossians, Paul greets and comments on no less than ten friends and co-workers.   Some of these names, such as “Luke” and “Mark”, are familiar to us while other names like are less well known, but no less important.               For example, Tychicus was Paul’s co-worker in many places and he is mentioned four times in the New Testament. Aristarchus was with Paul on many of his missi

            If you were to come over to my house right now and ask about our summer vacation on the north shore of Lake Superior, you would get to see two things:   Pictures and rocks.               Everywhere we went, we found rocks.   The beaches were rocky.   The hiking trails were rocky.   The rivers were full of rocks.   In fact, there were so many rocks that I hardly paid any attention to them. After a while, they all looked the same.             However, my wife and daughters kept picking them up and saying, "Oooh…look at this one".    To my surprise, rocks that looked very plain and ordinary on the ground were actually very interesting up close.   A grey, boring rock often had beautiful lines of colour in it.   Some of the rocks were broken and though the outside was plain, the inside was very cool.   You had to really look, but almost every rock had something interesting about it.   Several were so beautiful that they found their way back to our house and are

            Back when she was a little girl, Charlaine Dalpe could not have predicted the end result of her spontaneous act, but she is glad for the way it turned out.             In 2004, when she was 12 years old, Dalpe and friend Claudia Garneau tossed a plastic bottle, with a message inside, into the Gulf of the St. Lawrence to see if anyone would find it. The bottle was found, 8 years later, on the shores of a small village in Ireland.             A couple of weeks ago, nine year old Oisin Millea found the bottle and contacted Dalpe.   Somehow the story got the attention of Tourism Ireland and they offered the two women a free trip to Ireland to meet Oisin and to see the place where their bottle ended end up.               The interesting thing about this story is there that is no way those girls could have predicted or engineered this result.   Once they threw the bottle in the river, they gave up all control.   The events, as they unfolded, really had nothing to do w

          After building a magnificent temple in Jerusalem (see 2 Chronicles 2-5), King Solomon wonders, “Will God really dwell on earth with men?   The heavens, even the highest heavens, cannot contain you.   How much less this temple I have built” (2 Chronicles 6:18).                That is a great question!   It does seem sort of ludicrous to think any building, even a spectacular one like Solomon’s temple, would in any way be home to the God who formed the entire universe.   God must have rejected this notion right away, right?   Well, not so fast!                  “When Solomon finished praying, fire came down from heaven… and the glory of the Lord filled the temple” (2 Chron. 7:1).             The question is, “Why?”    Why would God take up residence in that place?   Why did he need a temple?             The answer, I think, is found between Solomon’s question and God’s response.             Right after he asks the question, Solomon adds, “May your e

             When Doug Eaton turned 65, he wanted to do something special to celebrate, so he decided to stand on a street corner and give money to strangers.   Turns out, handing out free cash is harder than it sounds.            Doug made a sign that said, “I have a home… and a car… and a job.   Do you need a few bucks for some coffee?”    He then spent 65 minutes in downtown Oklahoma City giving away $5 bills, or, at least, he spent 65 minutes trying.               Many people would not take the money! They thought that it had to be a trick, because it sounded too good to be true.     In fact, Doug had to plead with several people saying, “It’s ok.   It’s just a blessing” before they would accept his gift.               I wonder if that is how God sees us at times.   Many times, in his word, God says, “I am just waiting to bless you”, but instead of listening and accepting that, we refuse, because we do not think that His offer is real, or that we somehow have “

            “What are the two most powerful words in scripture?” the speaker asked.   Then he answered his own question with two words: “In Christ”.               I sat there for minute and then thought, “He may have a point.”               I am sure that one could make a case for other phrases as well, but a quick survey of the New Testament will show that “In Christ” is right up there.               For example, Romans 6:11 says that we are to be, “Dead to sin but alive to God in Christ.”             Romans 8:1 says that “There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ.”             In verse 38 of the same chapter we read that “Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”               “In Christ we who are many form one body” (Romans 12:5).    

            This past summer, my family spent two weeks on the north shore of Lake Superior and it was great!   I would highly recommend it.   We visited a bunch of State Parks.   We hiked miles and miles of trails.   We saw lots of waterfalls and we even “cliff dived” (or more accurately “cliff jumped”) into the lake.   None of that surprised me.   After all, we went there because of the trees, the hills and the water.   However, there was one aspect of our trip that I truly did not anticipate and that was hearing Gordon Lightfoot’s voice every five minutes!            Every store we went into, all up and down the coast, was playing “The Wreck of the Edmond Fitzgerald”.   You know the song that starts, “The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down of the big lake they called 'Gitche Gumee’”.   (If you still don’t know the song, “Google” it and you will likely say “Oh, I remember that song”).               The “Edmond Fitzgerald” was a freighter that carried taconit