Category: Get together

Bless you

We have lived through a difficult season of life. Still living through it, actually. We have nothing firm under our feet. Our world is one strong wind away from being blown off the map.

I realized that until recently, about a hundred years or less, this is how the vast majority of people lived. In the large frame of history we are not unique. This is a helpful perspective.

I am thankful for much in my life. I am thankful that my husband and I are still a team even after everything we have been through. I’m thankful for my respectful and thoughtful children. I’m thankful for parents and close friends who encourage me and build me up.

I am also thankful for the opportunity to write here on this little blog and have so many people checking in and commenting. You have no idea the encouragement you have all been to me.

So today I say to you –

Numbers 6: 24-26 “The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you; the Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace.”

True north

I have heard the phrase, “we have lost our moral compass.” You have probably also heard this phrase. It is a great visual. It connotates being lost and unable to chart a course out of the confusion.

What I see in the world around me today is perhaps even deeper. I don’t think our society has lost its moral compass. I think we have lost true north. We have all the gadgets and technology necessary to find our way out, but we don’t have an agreed upon core of truth. What good is a compass if it isn’t drawn to the north (magnetic – I know but that doesn’t sound as good as true – sorry)?

We can’t possibly all head the same direction if we won’t agree on a basic concept of truth. We have lost our way, because we have lost a sense of God. We have removed the ability for our compasses to seek and point us to God.

The good news is, we aren’t powerful enough to remove God. We are vain and arrogant to think he disappears because we won’t see him. He is there, still calling. We need to give our compasses a good whack and jiggle out the dust and we can correct our course.

That is the only answer. The only way to move forward. Find God and begin to walk toward him.

John 14: 6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life.
No one comes to the Father except through me.

We need each other

We were not meant to be alone. We were built to be in community.

It is not a positive evolution to see the increased isolation happening around us. People need people.

I have a fiercely independent spirit. I want to do things by myself, for myself. I don’t like to depend on others. This is good to a point, but it also has its downside. It can lead to being isolated and alone. It can lead to carrying the weight of the world alone.

The way we live is isolating. We don’t live in family groups. We often don’t even know our neighbours. We create communities online and at work. But what happens when you need someone to babysit? Or you need a cup of flour? Or someone to make you feel seen and heard?

I don’t have the answers for these questions. What I do know is what we are moving toward is the wrong target. We need to reinforce family, not destroy it. We need to build real tangible communities. Of course an online community is good too, but it can’t replace the real life communities that have existed for all human history.

We need to look back into the past for what it can teach us. We have to stop looking down on the past as ideologically wrong and backward; instead look into the past and see the strengths in it.

People need people.

Genesis 2: 18 The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone.
I will make a helper suitable for him.”

Mental health

The last few days on my social media feed I’ve been seeing lots of the Bell Let’s Talk campaign. Everyone is showing concern about mental health. Friends are posting kind thoughts and reposting articles. It’s a good thing. It is always good to draw attention to our mental health.

Mental health is a tricky thing. We are strange coping creatures. We can go and go and go and then just crack. Or we can be tough as nails when we need to be and then fall apart when the crisis is over. We can struggle with relationships and with situations. Lumping all these things under the umbrella of ‘mental health’ is some how inadequate.

I’ve been thinking of a friend of mine over the last few days. We weren’t close, we didn’t see each other often, but we were long term friends. One morning, completely out of the blue, a close friend called to say he was dead, that he shot himself in the night.

I have thought of him often over the last couple years. My heart aches for his pain but my mind can’t quite take it in, even now. I have no answers, no platitudes. When I think of it I am just overwhelmed with sadness. I’m not naïve enough to think I could have prevented it, we weren’t that close. I am not the person he would have called if he could have called someone.

What I can do is think of him as I interact with others. I can be kind. I can try to be empathetic, particularly to those closest to me. While I appreciate the kind words on Facebook, lets never think that is a substitute for calling, watching our loved ones, or doing what we can in person. We need people. We need human contact.

Human interactions and the ability to show God’s love to one another is our best defense in the fight for healthy minds.

1 Peter 4: 8 Above all, love each other deeply, 
because love covers over a multitude of sins.