Odds and Ends

God is often in the negligible things. To cite a recent example, I walked around Caronport last month just waiting for him to reveal himself to me. I paused to look at everything from paw tracks to the horizon to the ministry of butterflies that were circulating in groups of four or five in the brush. They looked like they were harvesting something, drifting from plant to plant. It was a lovely day. Grasshoppers would dart in and out of the shrubs in front of me as I followed the town perimeter. Birds would thrust themselves from concealment but then dive back into the safety of the uncut grass when they hit gusts of dusty prairie wind. The day seemed ripe for God to part the clouds and condescend to give me words of life. But He was silent. I finally gave up on seeking Him and took one of the rutty dirt roads back into town. I was watching the ground so as not to plunge my foot into the fresh rainwater that had collected into puddles in our neglected side streets when what did I hear but some stranger’s voice calling for help. Some man was fixing his roof and had just discovered that his ladder had been knocked down by the wind. I helped him descend from his roof by holding the ladder in place and told him to have a blessed day. He wished me the same. As I made my way toward Sundbo (the mature dorm) I told God that I had really wanted to hear from Him that day. He said that wasn’t such a bad thing but He had just intended for me to help that guy off his roof. So yeah, God is a tender spirit for such a powerful one. And He has a tendency of communicating with me through simple things. But in really, REALLY special ways. That’s kind of the occasion for these posts.

Shortly after He brought me from death to life, I developed a thirst for learning about him. I bought books on theology and biblical studies faster than I could read them. I was the guy who dropped out of university in 2001 and read two books over the span of the following six years. And those two were a struggle for me. I just didn't have the attention span, and the drugs I did to self-medicate no doubt contributed to my lack of focus. Even now I sort of wonder if knowledge wasn’t just an “acceptable drug,” fundamentally identical to the illegal ones but for the fact that spiritual learning has a certain religious commodity to it. My intentions and enthusiasm seemed really genuine at the time. But it was uncanny how, because I had books to peer into, I would get urges to pick one from the shelf and open to a random page and read it. I would read the same thing twice in a day in different books that were never meant to be studied concurrently. Within a day or two someone would have a question about what God had directed me to read. He was building a teaching ministry in me at a very early stage in my walk with Him. It made me seem a lot smarter and educated than I really was, and He deserves all the glory for the times I had (or ever will have) an answer for someone. Anyway, after this happened many times, I became sensitive to it. So my spirit perked up when, in August 2009, less than a month before I left for Briercrest, it happened again. But this one was different. It was for me. It wasn't the kind of thing that can be taught. It just told me of the existence of a place I'd never heard of.

But anyway, now seems like a good time to close this post since I've filled in some of the gaps between last year and now. Unfortunately, He's done so many wonderful things (and many many that I wasn't made aware of) that I've fallen way short of my goal in starting this blog. Nevertheless, the story of my trip to Mount Shasta, California will have to wait one more post so I can explain the call to go there.