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