Ah Christmas...it heralds so much. The Birth of Jesus, the glorius time of hope and joy, great food, great time with friends, snowball fights, sleeping in..... ahhh!

Now having said that I fully recognise that Christmas and New Years can be a devasting time for many as well. People who have lost someone feel the absence, families that have sundered, and those who just cannot deal with the whole holiday-overwhelming bustle.

I guess thats what I want to talk with you about.

We all know people who deal with (or don't) depression centered around this time of year. And its often easy to forget that they are there in the hustle and bustle. They can easily fade into the background, washed out by all the people who are excited or socially active. That is something that we must be careful about. If we care, we need to make time for the ones who struggle.

What do we do with them though? I am not saying that you must "rescue" them. You don't have to cure them, and to be honest in many cases you couldn't. But what you can do is be there with them. Depression is a terrible load of weight, and somedays its a real help just to have someone sit there with them. Reminding them that they aren't alone.

One of the hallmarks of depression is an incredible and often insurmountable feeling of seperation from those around you. This isn't something that can be shrugged off. You wouldn't say to someone with two broken legs "Hey, just walk it off" but many people will say "Just get over it" to someone suffering from depression.

You may note that I haven't talked about people with bi-polar disorder as opposed to seasonal depression or situational depression or traumatic stress disorder related depression. Thats because there is, practically speaking, no difference. Remember I said that you aren't expected to solve their problems or cure them. Just be there with them.

It can be tough. Sitting with someone who is "dragging you down" or has trouble making conversation when you could be out with happy people or people who are excited and bouncy and festive can be very difficult and exhausting. But if you care for this person, if you want to help them then its something that you can do.

We all need to care, to help. Jesus came because we all need help. He spent 33-ish years wandering about trying to get us in a better position to accept a great offer, and He suffered immensely for it. All I am asking you do do is spend a little time this year with someone who will appreciate it.

Reach out and touch someone who needs it.

Merry Christmas and have a Happy New Year!

see ya

IN response to some who read my previous blog the answer is no. I am not going to stop being a minister. This seems like a good time to explain what a minister really is. A minister is someone who serves God and cares for other people. There is not mention of pay in that description. You don't have to be paid to be a minister, you don't even have to be assosiated with just one congregation.

This leads us to an on-going problem in many congregations. There are many in the pews (or chairs) and only one or two behind the pulpit. That really isn't the way God intended it. Timothy's purpose was to train up the Christians to do the work of the Gospel. Thats what ministers really should be doing.

If your minister is doing all the visiting, the teaching, the preaching, the baptisms, the funerals and weddings, the youth and calling on visitors then both you and your minister are failing the Lord.

Imagine 1 or 2 people doing the work and 200 watching. Wouldn't more get done if the 200 were doing it too? Wouldn't the 200 learn more about the Lord if they were doing what He did? Don't athletes become stronger and more skilled by practising and playing the sports they work at? Christians do too!

People often tell me I am the only minister they know who tries to work himself out of a job. But its a foundational truth of Christianity that the people are to become better Christians by doing the work of the Lord.

Do

Its a tough word. Its an action word. it means to go through the activity so designated. Do the homework, do the dishes, do the yardwork. These things cannot be accomplished by sitting and watching. One has to get up and get into it.

SO...I will always be a minister. I will do the work of the Lord that He sets before me.

What about you?

See ya

3 Months, 11 days. Okay Okay, I know, I have left this for a while, but stuff happens doen't it, you get busy and let things slide.

Where are we now and what am I up to. Ummm well lets see, I have been working at the church, although that is coming to and end Dec 31st as my contract runs out. I have been driving a school bus as well and that is a blast! The kids have been great and its very enjoyable, alas it will not sustain us therefore I have begun the great job search.

This is the hard part. I mean I have to go to someone and say let me do stuff for you and you pay me. Its a weird world in that respect.

So now I am looking and trying to redefine my work parameters. Thats just means that I am looking for a secular job for the first time in 12 years. Thats pretty weird too.

Let me know what you think.
ttyl

Hmmm...its been a while since last we met. And here is why. WE MOVED!!!!

We (well we and the mortgage company) actually own a house!


This is so surreal.

We found this house and 20 min after looking at it we "made an offer" which, apparently, they couldn't refuse because they said yes :-) So to make a long story short we are moved in. The longer story involves tears and prayer and angst and agony, but the shorter version is easier to type :-)

So here we are, and here are a couple of lessons learned...

1) Trust God, He may not be early, but He is never late!

2) Count the cost, this is not just a nifty keeno biblical saying, its true! Figure out what it will cost BEFORE you get into it, and also make lists of what you will need to do.

3) Play lots of ABBA.

4) Lift with your knees, not your back.

5) Even in the middle of moving a piano, listen to God, He might have a better way.

So there you are, a few lessons learned and a home made happy by the Lord and my family. God is awesome in that He does what we need when we need it, not just what we want.

And a HUGE thanks to George McDaniels, our realtor and piano mover, if you are in the Halifax area I highly reccommend him .

See ya

Did you ever hear the old joke "Some days I wake up grumpy, some days I just let him sleep in." ? Well lately that could easily apply to me. I have been grumpy. One reason for this is that the sun is out, and has been now for three days. "What???" you may ask. "What is he thinking, how can you be grumpy with sunshine?"

Well I have lupus and that messes the whole summer up.

In case you don't know, Lupus is an auto-immune disorder in which special antibodies (which some genius named lupus antibodies) react to Ultraviolet Light B and attack the host rather than an infection. Now mind you I have the milder form of it, called Discoid Lupus. The more serious form of Lupus is called Systemic Lupus, and it attacks your internal organs. My form attacks my skin.

"Ah.." you say, "that can't be too bad." "Only the skin you say?"

Well yes, although I should like to point out that your skin is the largest organ you have. And it can develop into Systemic Lupus if not cared for.

Now what is my problem, just this. Sunlight hurts. If sunlight falls on my skin it hurts like a mild sunburn. It hurts my eyes. If I am out very long I get sick. Its not normal or natural and its ticking me off.

Imagine a hot summer day, now imagine putting on a jacket, hat and gloves. No I am not Micheal J. I just don't want to get sick.


Sigh....

So, here is the thing. Did you know that sin causes the same reaction in the presence of God? Its true. The Bible tells us that God is a Holy and just God, and that sin is abhorent to Him. And in His presence we become concious of our sin, and it disturbs us and won't let us be comfortable. In fact its a lot like Lupus. You see, if I take my medicine the Lupus is under control. Then I avoid situations that cause it to flare up and my life is a lot happier. But if the Sin isn't cared for and taken care of it can turn into a much more serious condition called Eternal Punishment.

If Jesus is your Lord and Saviour, then He cleans up the sin that you have accumulated and you feel better. And He will help you to avoid the situations in which sin flares up in your life. No more pain from the sin, and the Sonlight makes you feel better all around.

Okay so maybe I am not as grumpy as I was a while ago. Its good to remember that there are more inportant things in life, and that they can be ours for free.

See ya

I have seen a plethora of movies so far this summer and I have noted some things. Firstly its not a good idea to try to live on a budget if you want to go to the theatre. We went to see Batman Begins, and we watched it on the IMAX screen in Halifax. Wow! My head was buzzing when we came out of the theatre, my eyes took some time to come back to reality.

I have also seen the last of the Star Wars movies, and most recently the Fantastic Four. Am I wasting my time with this frivilous entertainment, well yeah a bit. But its fun. And there is learnable stuff here.

Not vast reams of deep stuff I admit, but good stuff none the less. The Star Wars movie showed what happens when pride interferes with repentance, Batman Begins showed that justice must be tempered with grace and compassion, and finally the Fantastic Four asked the question "What if we have been given these gifts for a higher purpose?"

These are the things of life. These are the things that you and I have to deal with on a daily basis. How do we back away from issues of pride to say we are sorry or that we were wrong. How do we confess our wrongs to others? When we know people have done wrong how can we judge without love, or forgive. And finally what do we do with what we have been given? What do we use our talents for? What if....what if God has given us our abilities to be used for something more that self gratification or self service?

Well my friend, the answer is this. We learn from God. He has all the answers, we just need to read the book.


See ya.

I watched a plane fly over head last night and thought it was cool...

I realised that I am excited to be living next to a city. We used to live on a small island in the Bay of Fundy, where there were approx 900 people. We had to drive an hour do do grocery shopping or even get cardboard boxes when we moved. We traveled to the mainland by ferry, there was usually a wait to get on the ferry, and often one or more (there were two) would break down, slowing up travel plans even more.

Now we live next to Halifax. We are hooked up to high-speed internet, we have restaurants and stores and medical centers nearby. We have several shopping malls, specialty food stores, hobby shops and tons and tons of reasons to spend spend spend!

It hit me last night while I was watching the jet fly overhead. This is cool. All this stuff is handy to us, we can see a movie, eat out and then fly to Toronto or London England if we want - all in the same night! We could go to a wireless cafe, we could stroll on the water front or visit a museum. There is all this stuff to do and its amazing. I see all the people racing about doing it all. Scampering hither and yon people seeking fulfillment from every neat and nifty thing around them. Kids go to two or three sports a month, their parents driving them. The kids take martial arts, dance, drawing, painting, and music. They have kid committees and kid boards... there is no end to the activities that are possible around here.

And this gets me thinking.

If this is how cool it is here and now, how much cooler is it going to be in Heaven? I mean my gosh, talk about being close to whats important :-)

And you know what?

I won't need to drive an hour to get boxes for that move :-)

See ya

Shazam!

I love saying that :-) Its important to do things that you love. Yesterday I got to preach again. I haven't really done that (well once a couple of months ago) in the last 7 months. I left a preaching position at a different church to come to the Family Minister position here at Hammonds Plains. What , you may ask, is a Family Minister?
A Family Minister is someone who works with Families and children. I am responsible for the "Sunday School" program, the youth programs in general, and over all the Fellowship and Discipling programs. But I don't get to preach unless Jerry, the Senior Minister, is away.

I miss it. I had been preaching for about 12 years when I came to this job, and that is roughly 1248 sermons comprised of 18720 hours of preperation. I really didn't think that I would miss that at all. But I do. Its good to preach, its good to give a straight forward message to people that addresses some need that we share.

Over the years I have had good sermons and poor ones. That is inevitable. I have had people say that something in the sermon what just what they needed to hear, and other who said I wasted their time. Such is life.

Here is the thing. If you have figured out what God has gifted you to do, then go do it. Don't sit around moaning and groaning about not being sure, or it doesn't pay enough. Get out and do it. Maybe God has gifted you with the ability to make really cool kites, or knit, or maybe make awesome pancakes. Great! Awesome! Get out there and do your thing for God.

If you aren't sure what God has gifted you with, ask your self these questions.

1) What do I love to do?
2) If I had no financial worries, how would I spend my time when I wasn't on a vacation?
3) When I am on vacation, what do I go to check out in other places?

A friend of mine is a Lobster fisherman. He does it cause he loves it. If he were worth a million dollars he would still do it. When he and his family went to Cuba on vacation one year, he went down to the local fishing guy hangout and helped knit trap-heads for lobster traps. He loves it and God has gifted him with an ability to serve others through lobster fishing.

What are your answers to the questions?

Get out there and do it!

See ya

Geoff

I am a games kind of a guy. My dream job would be to be a paid beta tester for almost any of the companies that produce computer games. Westwood would be awesome, or LucasArts...they have great games. I could sink into that lovely world never to emerge except for more Coke and chips. The thing is that unlike real life, games almost always show you the consequence of your action right then and there. You don't have to wait for years to see the fruition of bad or good choices...well except for the old Quest games (Space Quest etc) where if you didn't pick up the rock atthe start of the game then you were messed over at the end. In real life you don't see what comes of decisions for a while, if at all. You say something to a person and they are offended by it but don't tell you, they just tell other people, and thus you are affected. You pick a degree program that ultimately ends with asking if people want fries with that, but you didn't see that 4 or 6 years earlier.

With a game the manual tells you how to do things and how to make right choices in the game. The manual explains how things work, and importantly, how to save you game so that you can start over when you make too serious a mistake.

In real life there is a manual as well. We call it the Bible. It tells you how things work in life, how to make good choices and avoid bad ones, and it tells you how to save you life, and how to restore things when you make too serious a mistake.

Its been pretty useful for me, and I still get time for Coke and chips :-)

See ya

Geoff

Fine Fine Fine... Grant says I need a new blog post, so here it is!


Kids are growing up way too fast these days, and I don't mean it in a physical way. There seems to be some weird expectation that kids have to be little adults. I sort of understand the idea of getting a young kid a cell phone. You can keep a better eye on them that way. There there is far too much emphasis on kids dressing like their semi-pornographic idols from music videos. I am repeatedly astonished by the number of parents who apparently agree to their children dressing in incredibly revealing clothes. I know that I probably sound like everyones parents now, but hey, did you ever stop to think that they might be right?

Think about it

See ya

Geoff

Wow!

We went to the Maritime Christian Youth Conference this past weekend, and it was great! The downside to it was that there were too many people there. And the only reason that was a downside was that most of the guys had to sleep on the floor in the gym.

Now I don't know about you, but sharing a gym floor with 50 or so guys is not my idea of a great time. Especially when many of them snore. A buddy of mine was there and we set up our bedrolls beside each other. Had a good chat, calmed our guys down, then went to sleep.

Well at least he went to sleep. And snored.

We made two very important discoveries this weekend. 1 is that my friend has sleep apnea ( http://www.cpapman.com/disorder.htm ) which means that he snores TERRIBLY and also that he stops breathing while he is a sleep. That is pretty scary.

The second discovery was that people who are near people who have sleep apnea may never get to sleep.

He is my friend....but I could have cheerfully done him in by 4 am. Of course to be fair, he could have done me in because I kept poking him to stop the snoring.

I think I finally understand my wife poking me all these years.


Anyway, the rest on the conference was great, the kids had a good time, saw old friends and made some new ones, and best of all God was glorified!

See ya

Geoff

For those of you who know me well, you will be shocked by what I say next.....



Curse You Coca-Cola!!!

Last night my wife and I watched LOST. Its just about the only show I make an effort to watch. We had a bag of chips to share and I had purchased a 2 litre bottle of Lime Coke as well.

The show starts at 9 and runs 1 hour. In that time I drank approx 1 litre of Coke. Thus I have been awake since 7 am yesterday morning....sigh.

Now here is the thing. I know its not really Coke's fault, I know that I am the one that poured it into the glass and then drank it. Its very easy to blame someone or something else for our problems. I need to stop doing that.

Well... at least I will sleep well tonight.

See ya later

Geoff

Today I am my dog's hero.

Its garbage day here, and so our garbage cans were by the side of the road. They had already been picked clean by the garbage collectors and their dissicated corpses were rolling in the chill wind.

Jack (the beagle in question) was put out on his tether, and discovered this macabre scene. Thereupon he set up a racket, baying with all his might to alert us (and the entire neighbourhood) of the fate consigned upon our poor garbage cans. This was the scene as I came out to investigate:

Jack was crouched almost at the end of the line, barking furiously, and baying occasionally at the garbage can remains. The wind was blowing one of the cans back and forth, and when it would edge towards Jack, his bark would change to a bay and he would edge back towards the house until the can in question rolled back a bit.

I brought Jack into the house. He immediately lept to the window as I went out, and moved the garbage cans to their accustomed places.

When I came into the house Jack greeted me with honour and praise, rejoicing in the restoration of all things.

Today, I am my dogs hero :-)

See ya later

Geoff

Same day, not too much later. Did you ever wonder if beagles really know that when they give you that sad-eye'd look that it has an emotional effect? My beagle seems to do it on purpose. He also wanted out (he was bored)(its true...beagles get bored) and my wife did'nt want to get up and let him out so she said no. He looked at her a minute or two and then deciding that she was serious, he walked over to my desk, took a pen, went to the door and lay down with it. Here is the thing....

He pretended to chew it so that she would come over. When my wife got to him it was obvious that he hadn't chewed the pen (he also knows that he gets in trouble for that) and he hopped to his feet and looked eagerly at the door.

He got to go out.


See ya later

Geoff

Two days in a row. I personally am astounded and astonished. Today being Sunday we went to corporate worship. That just means church. But it bugs me to say church because then everybody pictures what they think church is . And ours isn't like that. Hammonds Plains Christian Church is a recent start up. There really aren't a lot of rules to starting a church except worship God. So we do.

I work with the kids and families. Thats why they call me the Family Minister I guess :-) We have the "Construction Zone for the kids pre-school to grade 4 and a class for the older kids too. This takes place after the main service starts. When I arrived I was both startled and impressed at the level of teaching that the children were recieving. One of the nice things about a new church is that people don't know what you aren't supposed to be able to do, so they go ahead and do it anyway. The grade 3 and 4 class was doing a comparison through the synoptic gospels of the torments of Jesus prior to the cruxifixion. The teacher sat and quietly worked while the kids did the research.

This place is SO cool!

Anyway see ya later!

Geoff

It has been a year and a half since I last posted something here. In fact I had forgotten about it entirely until I found an old link to it. Much has happened in that year and a half. We moved to a different province, I have a different job and we are now (trumpet music) in the process of buying a house!

Fear and trembling have become a part of my daily existace. The truth of the matter is that I am a financial coward. I have done some very dangerous things in my life, I have faced down armed attackers, I have fought fires (from inside the fire) in forests and homes. I have worked to rescucitate the dead and have intervened in suicide attempts. But nothing so far has caused me fear and anxiety as the idea of buying a house.

More on this later. Its good to be back.

See ya!