Consider this

At a news conference in December, the Nobel Prize winners gave away their secret strategies for winning the prestigious, $1.5 million award: Don’t try! One man, who shared the Physics award, said that winning “requires creativity, humour and patience, with little aspiration to actually win”. The other man added, “It’s definitely extremely detrimental to think that you can win the Nobel Prize; then it basically occupies your mind… if you think and deliberately try to win the Nobel Prize there is something wrong”. The winner of the Chemistry award agreed saying, “I did not plan it, or try to do it, it just came by itself”. The winner of the Economics prize summed up his approach by saying, “Anyone who’s engaged in creative life – whether they’re a scientist, economist, writer or artist – has many ‘aha’ moments, many moments to discovery, otherwise they would not be doing it… they do not do it with some golden prize at the end”. Their philosophy may be summed up by saying, “Focus o...

The other day, as my daughter and I watched “SpongeBob SquarePants” (I think he is funny), I started thinking about the commercials that we were seeing. First there was the “yogurt in a tube” that exploded and sprayed yogurt all over because it had “too much flavour to be contained”. Next a swashbuckling sea captain was in a sword fight with… well, someone who was trying to steal his cereal (Because that happens all the time). Then a remote control truck was climbing over rocks, smashing through brick wall and speeding down the sidewalk. Now, I am all for remote control trucks, but the kids in that commercial looked like they were having way more fun than that truck could provide. Most of the commercials were for unhealthy snacks and the premise of the commercial had little or nothing to do with the product. It was all hype. When marketing is aimed at children, it is easy for me to see how silly it is, but then I started to wonder “Am I as good at seeing it when it is aimed at me?...

“Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:4-7). As I thought about my “New Year’s Sermon”, I could not get Philippians 4 out of my mind and so I have decided to make it the theme for our congregation this year. Throughout the year, we will come back and look at a little more of the passage, but this week I want to focus on just two words. The first word is “rejoice”. It has become fashionable in our society to be critical. You don’t have to sit very long in a coffee shop before the conversation turns to complaining about something. Maybe that is not unique to us as North Americans. Maybe it is human nature to look at life from the “half empty glass” pe...

Kids like to test their balance. Whether it is walking on a fence, a sidewalk curb or a “Balance beam” in a gym, there is something about the challenge of seeing how far we can go without falling off. “Balance” is a key idea when we are grown too. He are some ideas about how to “keep your balance” in the New Year. First, we need to look back. Past successes and failures have a lot to teach us if we would just take the time to remember and think about them. God’s people, Israel, were very concerned about where they had come from and what they had learned. For example, when God stopped the water so that his people could cross the Jordan River, they were commanded to take twelve stones from the river and pile them up on the other shore. The Bible then says, “In the future, when your children ask, ‘What do these stones mean?’ tell them that the flow of the Jordan was cut off before the ark of the covenant of the Lord” (Joshua 4:6-7). God did not want them to forget how he had t...

Words can lose their meaning over time. This can happen because of neglect (we simply do not use the word enough to recall what it means), through misuse (connecting an incorrect meaning to the word) or by reduction (taking a word that means a very broad range of things and reducing it to one meaning). I believe that “repent” is one of those “reduced” words. Most of us know that to repent means to “turn around”, or (more fully) to make “a complete alteration of the basic motivation and direction of one’s life”. Unfortunately, though, these days “repent” has come to be a threat. It is a word that is most often (and, sometimes, is only) heard in the messages of the so called “hellfire and brimstone” preachers. It is a word that has become tied to other words like “hell”, “damnation” and “judgment”. What if we heard it differently though? What if it was not a threat but rather an invitation? That would make a lot more sense in verses like Acts 3:19 which says, “Repent, then, and turn to G...

For forty days and forty nights the rain just kept coming. The water kept rising until there was nothing but water to be seen. According to Genesis, Noah and his family were on the ark for over a year (Genesis 7:11 and 8:13-14). Now, we know how this story ends even before we start reading it, but what would it be like to be Noah? He had no idea what was going to happen next. All he knew was that the rain kept coming. Have you ever felt like that? Like “the rain just keeps coming” and there is no end in sight. Worse than that though, is the knowledge that, even when it does end, everything will be different. The uncertainty that comes with not knowing how things will end is sometimes worse than the storm itself. I do not know what things are like in your life right now. I hope that the skies are blue, that the sun is shining and that everything is great. For many people though, the dark rain clouds are just beginning to appear on the horizo...

It seems like she was always there. My Grandma, Annie Hannan, has been part of my life as long as I can remember. When we were going up, Grandma and Grandpa lived only a few short blocks away from us and so we saw them almost every day. We had sleepovers. We went for walks. We went out for supper together. Every summer, we would go camping with them, mostly at Buffalo Pound Provincial Park. Growing up Grandma was always a part of my life. Then, when I got married and had kids, she became part of their lives too. Visits to see Grandma often meant “Orange floats” and games of Crokinole. In later years, we often talked on the phone and she always wanted to know how Sara and the girls were doing. She had been in and out of the hospital frequently over the past few months, so, considering that she was ninety-one years old, it was not hard to guess that the end may be near. Still it was a shock when my mom called last Thursday to say that “Granny” (as her great-grandchildren call...