I *think* this is profound, but I also think it needs some work ...
"You believe in magic, but you don't have faith in it."
- "Abracadabra and a Christmas Miracle"
(from Hallmark, of course)
(see also https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/07/profundity-from-hallmark-movie.html )
(see also https://www.facebook.com/share/p/15ZvUAYYHj/ )
Life, just normal life (even though our society ensures that life gets more complicated all the time) is really exhausting when there is no point, purpose, or positive reinforcement in it. I drag through my days, trying to keep going, and, why? Yeah, yeah, 1 Corinthians 3:17, but that's really not that clear, and this dull, draining slog through pointless days ... well, why? I'm not doing any good, and there is every chance that I'm doing harm ...
I facilitated quite a number of seminars in Washington, DC. The last time was probably the worst, because Washington had one of its infrequent snowfalls. Americans are not big on public infrastructure anyways, and since Washington DC enjoys a somewhat subtropical climate most of the time, they apparently see no need to prepare for their occasional snowfalls. But when the snow does fall in Washington, it really dumps. This particular snowfall dumped about two feet of snow on the city and surrounding area.
My flight itinerary, of course, was completely clobbered. I kept phoning the airlines, and rebooking my flights, which had been canceled, for later flights. Which, in turn, were generally canceled. I was stuck there for three days longer than he travel office had originally intended. I helped out snow shoveling for a couple of churches that I had attended during the time that I had spent there.
The last of the seminars that I did on this particular trip was a training camp type, with an extra day of review on the Saturday, and the exam held on the Sunday. I was still there on this Sunday, and so I walked over to the class to did them good luck. As soon as I walked in, the candidates started asking if I could stay for the exam. Now there has always been a separation between those proctoring the exams, and those doing the review seminars. But, at this point, the CISSP certification had, itself, been certified by ISO 17024. This is the international standard for certification, and one of the things that you need to do to obtain the standard, is to ensure that anyone who deals with the exams, does not have direct dealings with anyone who delivers any kind of training or review. So, I definitely was not supposed to stick around for the exam.
But another part of the standard notes that you need a certain minimum number of people to proctor exams. In this case, a number of proctors were supposed to have attended, but only one had been able to make it. She told me that if I didn't stay, they would not be able to hold the exam. So I stayed. This undoubtedly breaks the regulations, but I figured that the candidates deserved to have their exam. I also, although I was very sorely tempted, did not look at the exam questions themselves.
The one proctor who had been able to make it, had not been able to drive to the exam. She had not been able to get a taxi. She had, in fact, contacted a limo service, which had charged her $300 to get her to the exam. So, I told her that I would, after the exam, drive her back home, to save her another extortionate $300 limo ride. She did not live all that far from the venue. It didn't take me that much time to run her home. Even though, when we got near to her own home, I had to take a detour through a parking lot, in order to avoid a *fire truck* which had managed to get itself stuck in the snow. Washington DC drivers really do not know how to drive in the snow.
Previous: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/11/mgg-548-hwyd-norway.html
Introduction and ToC: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/10/mgg-introduction.html
Next: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/12/mgg-550-hwyd-computer-forensics-gotcha.html
Here we can see clear visual evidence of continental drift in action (possibly exacerbated by climate change). The bus stop has moved approximately 100 metres west of its original location (possibly necessitating population displacement).
Sermon 42 - The Christian Vaccine
Amos 1:9, 10
This is what the Lord says: For three sins of Tyre, even for four, I will not relent. Because she sold whole communities of captives to Edom, disregarding a treaty of brotherhood, I will send fire on the walls of Tyre that will consume her fortresses.
Matthew 18:6-7
If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea. Woe to the world because of the things that cause people to stumble! Such things must come, but woe to the person through whom they come!
Once again, this sermon was prepared during somebody else's boring sermon. The person described a friend's transition from atheist to Christian, and noted, at one point, that the person was apparently closer to becoming a Christian, but was possibly further from God than ever before. And I was immediately reminded of the Christian vaccine.
Now some of you will be upset by me simply mentioning the word vaccine. Don't worry, we are not talking about an actual vaccine. Nor do I expect you to get it, since it doesn't exist. But I suppose that I have to mention something about vaccines, and also about viruses.
There are various kinds of bugs that we can get, that will make us sick. And possibly even kill us. There are parasitic insects, there are parasitic worms. There are bacteria. And there are viruses.
Bacteria are living organisms. There's pretty much no doubt about that. Bacteria have a single cell, as opposed to us, made up of many cells, and a wide variety of cells. Bacteria, of a given species, all tend to be pretty much the same. They are large: usually larger than most of the cells in our body. And they contain the same structures as the cells in our body. There is a nucleus, containing the DNA. There are mitochondria, turning whatever the bacteria eats into energy. There is a membrane outlining the outside of the bacteria. These are all structures that we have in pretty much every cell in our body.
We don't use vaccines against bacteria, for the most part. Bacteria are pretty ordinary, as far as living organisms go, and there tend to be other ways that we can kill them.
Viruses are a bit different. Actually, quite a bit different. There is, in fact, within the biological community, a lot of debate as to whether viruses are actually any kind of life. Viruses are much smaller, and much simpler in structure, than bacteria. They have fewer structures, and what structures they do have tend not to resemble the structures that we have in our own cells. As I say, a lot of people consider viruses not to be any form of life, but rather extremely large and complex chemicals, which, somehow, using our bodies and cells, are able to make copies of themselves.
We use vaccines to fight viruses.
Don't worry, I am not going to go into a great deal of detail. Suffice it to say that the idea of vaccination is that you take the virus, or something like the virus, and put it into our bodies, in such a way that it wakes up the immunological defenses within our body, and prepares those defenses to fight a specific type of virus.
Sometimes the virus that we use for a vaccination is not the actual virus we want to deal with, but rather something similar. This was the case with the first deliberate and recorded vaccination. Someone found out that when people got cow pox, a disease that didn't make people terribly sick, thereafter they didn't get smallpox, a disease which would often kill people. Sometimes the virus that we use for a vaccination is the actual virus, but weakened in some way. I haven't got a really good illustration of that one. Sometimes what we use for a vaccination is a part of a virus. Therefore we are not risking people actually getting sick from the virus, but, if that part is important to the virus, we wake up the body's defenses and get it to tear apart the virus at an important point. There are a number of different ways to make a vaccine, and we are finding more all the time.
But, as I say, I am not going to fight political battles over vaccines here, I just want you to have the idea. You give somebody a version of something, so that they are better prepared to fight off the real thing.
And that's where the Christian vaccine comes in.
There are many ways to look like a Christian, and even *act* like a Christian, and still not have an actual relationship with God. We say that Christianity is a religion. But many of us know that Christianity isn't a religion, it's a relationship. The word religion comes from Latin, and is based on the Romans idea of religion. Their idea was very legalistic. In fact, it's really hilarious, sometimes, to read Roman religious inscriptions, and then compare them with Roman laws, and to see how much one looks like the other. Sometimes they even cross over, and go to the other side.
For example, there is an inscription in a certain Roman city, which was created on the occasion of a sacrifice to the gods. The inscription goes into great detail, and says that, if the gods promise, and *fulfill* their promise, that by this time next year, this town will have the same level of prosperity, or to have increased its level of prosperity, then the city promises to sacrifice to the gods so many bulls, and so many goats, and so many sheep, and so many pigeons, and that the city faithfully promises that they will do all of this sacrificing, if the gods have, by this time next year, fulfilled their part of bargain.
Then there is an edict on maximum pricing, which one of the emperors proclaimed, as a law, and the preamble is much longer than the actual law, and reads like nothing so much as a sermon. The emperor is sorry, but his subjects have behaved very poorly, and some of his subjects have raised their prices so much that the Roman army is having a difficult time taking care of its soldiers, and so it is necessary, even though the emperor is sad and dejected to have to do this, but, since the Roman citizens have misbehaved, and raised prices so much, to the detriment of the general population, that, etc etc etc.
The important part of this comparison is that Roman religion was very legalistic. That probably didn't feel too strange to the Jews living within the Roman empire. After all, both the prophets, and Jesus, pointed out that the Jews were pretty legalistic. They were concerned about being scrupulous about how you would wash out cups, and tithing ten percent from your herb garden, but didn't pay attention to the more important aspects of taking care of widows and orphans, and being kind to your fellow man, and loving God. And then along comes this guy, who boils down the commandments into two: love God, and love your fellow man. Somebody else, a bit later shortened it either even further: love God, and do as you please. That's not very legalistic. That's a relationship.
But we keep on slipping back into legalism. We keep on saying that it's important to do this action, or to say precisely these words, and that if you don't, it doesn't matter how much you love God, and how much you are helping out your fellow man, God isn't going to let you into the club if you don't say the right words, or go to a certain building on a certain day, and wear certain clothes when you do.
And, of course, every time we make a list of the things that it's important to do, it's a list of things that *we* find not too arduous, but that other people might have trouble with.
And the thing is, that those things that we think are so important, are generally things that God, somewhere or other, has told us He's really not worried about. Are you doing good in Jesus name, but you weren't part of the official group? Oh, no that's not right! You should stop! Are you doing sacrifices of the right animals, and in the right way? Well, if you're not, then regardless of what you're doing, and how much it is helping other people, and how much those people are coming to appreciate God through your help, then, no! You can't do that!
But God has already said that taking special care over washing a cup is not a big deal, as long as you are helping others in his name. God has already said that he doesn't care how many animals you sacrificed to him. If you figure that that's all you need to do, and that, because you sacrifice animals, you don't need to do anything else he is prompting you to do, well, you really haven't got the idea.
And when we decide that certain words, or certain phrases, or certain formulas, or certain actions, or certain ways to dress, or certain days on which to worship, are more important than actually paying attention to what God wants us to do, well, that's the Christian vaccine.
You see, the Christian vaccine is something that is *similar* to Christianity, and the necessity of having a relationship with God, but it lacks the central, and important, part.
Thus, the Christian vaccine inoculates us against having a real relationship with God. Number one, we are too busy doing the right actions, and saying the right words, and wearing the right clothes, to listen to God, and pay attention to what God is telling us. Number two, the Christian vaccine makes us feel that we are protected. Since we are doing the right things, the fairly easy and visible things, we are in. We don't need to learn, or to listen to, or to do, anything else.
We are inoculated. We are vaccinated. Against God.
We start to think that minor, and empty, rituals are the important thing. We're doing our bit for God. Except that that isn't what God actually wants. But what *we* are doing becomes more important than finding out what God wants. These empty rituals can actually vaccinate us against having a genuine relationship with God.
Saying the right thing, but not doing the right thing is covered in Isaiah 29:13, "These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me." But the same idea goes right through to 1 Corinthians 13:3, "If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to be sacrificed so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing."
We start to recite hymns, or prayers, or creeds without truly meaning the words, or even thinking about what they say. We attend church services out of habit or obligation rather than a desire to worship or give thanks. And we can definitely use Christian jargon or clichés without truly grasping their meaning. Even the things that we do become part of the vaccine. Making hampers for the homeless becomes a coffee klatch. The men's breakfast becomes a competition about who cooks eggs or sausages best. Even Bible study becomes all about who can find the weirdest trivia about this chapter or passage, rather than what it says to us right here and right now.
Our worship, and even our works, can become another form of sin. Because sin is *anything* that separates us from God. If we get too comfortable within our little niches, being vaccinated against God can make us really good at pushing back against any of the nudges he sends us to warn us that things aren't quite right. Within us.
Now that I have escribed this, you can, of course, think of people, and even churches, that fill the bill. I'm sure that you even have specific churches in mind, that are obviously infected with the Christian vaccine. And stressing to them that they need to do what *we* are doing, rather than what *they* are doing.
And you might also wonder why I started with that passage from Amos. Well, it's in the middle of a couple of interesting chapters. If you look on a map, you will see that all the nations that God is saying he will punish form a kind of a spiral. And the threats get bigger as the spiral comes closer to home. That's pretty understandable. We tend to reserve our harshest criticism for those who are closest to us. They are close, but not quite right. The thing is, the big bombshell comes to the people the prophet, Amos, is speaking to. His neighbours. Who probably were congratulating themselves, like the pharisee in the Temple, and thanking God that they were "not like other men." But we are. Remember about vaccines being similar to the deadly virus. The closer they are, the better the vaccine works.
Are *you* innoculated against God?
Houston wasn't the only time that I babysat for my nephews. On another time, my baby sister and her husband had moved the family to Norway. And, shortly thereafter, I was slated to do a seminar in Norway. As a matter of fact, the city that I flew into was the city where they were living at the time. It was interesting to see the social structures, and various differences between what was done in Norway, and what would have been common in North America. Because the Norwegian school system starts students rather late, daycare is widely available, and cheap, and starts very early, for very young children. My youngest nephew, at the time, was barely crawling, and certainly not toddling, and the facility where he was for daycare was very interesting in terms of the stairs, which were very well designed, extremely wide, with a long and deep run, of each step, and a very slight rise for each step. Therefore, there was no danger of the children falling down the stairs and hurting themselves, even if they were still at the crawling stage.
My sister and her husband were supposed to go to a company party, but were wondering whether they should, given the price of babysitting. With the availability of daycare, babysitting is not seen as something that just anybody can do. And the charges are assessed accordingly. At that point, it was about $50 per hour per child. So, I volunteered to stay with my nephews, and they went to the party. They had a very good time, and were very glad that they went, and we figured out later that I saved them about $750.
Norway sticks in my memory for a few other reasons. The venue for the seminar was at a resort. It was a nice enough place, but I noted that the room had only a shower, and not a bathtub. I am old (and older and more arthritic now that I was then), but standing in front of a seminar for eight hours a day is somewhat trying on the knees and hips. I tried to work this off, most of the time, by wandering back and forth while presenting material. But this can only take you so far. So I tended to rely on a hot bath, at the end of the day, calm my sore and tired legs and hips.
They didn't have one. Not just there wasn't any room available with a bathtub: the entire resort had no room with a bathtub. They did have one hydrotherapy bathtub, generally used by the staff for different types of treatments. But that was the only tub in the entire facility.
I tried some other means. The resort had a couple of massage chairs, on one of the floors, and I tried those out, concentrating on the massage and vibration for legs. It helped a bit, but I was still missing my hot baths. Eventually, I figured that a combination of the steam room, and the sauna, and a few cool plunges in between, made a fairly acceptable substitute.
I still don't know what Norwegians have against bathtubs.
The candidates in the seminar, of course, all spoke Norwegian. They also all spoke English, which allowed me to deliver the material I needed to deliver. However, on the basis of some prior knowledge of (mostly theological) German, towards the end of the week I was getting the hang of certain common words, particularly as they related to the fields of technology. On the last day that I was doing some review, I covered a particular section of the material, and then left the class for some reason, while the students were still working on what they needed to review. I could hear them talking, in Norwegian, behind me as I left. I could tell, from the few words that I was able to figure out, the topic that they were having trouble with. And I knew the point that they had to concentrate on, in order to resolve this difficulty. So I turned around and walked back into the room, and wrote the term that they needed on the board. Then I left again. As I was leaving, the second time, I heard one of the candidates behind me say, "Okay, *now* we're in trouble!"
Previous: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/11/mgg-546-hwyd-24-sussex-drive.html
Introduction and ToC: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/10/mgg-introduction.html
Next: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/11/mgg-549-hwyd-dc-snow.html
Sermon 41 - Plans, recidivus
Proverbs 19:21 - Many are the plans in a person’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails.
Jeremiah 29:11 - For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.
I wrote my first sermon during a whole bunch of boring sermons that I didn't really listen to over the years. I've written other, subsequent, sermons during other boring services. Recently I sat through a really, *really* boring sermon, and thought that it was so bad that I could do a better job, based on any story at all, and still come up with a better sermon. The first story I thought of was our wedding. Gloria's and mine.
So I'm going to tell you the story, or stories, of our wedding. And, don't worry. There is a point to all of this.
I had not, actually, given up on being married by the time I did get married. Mind you, there was no particular reason for me not to have given up on the idea. I have never had a girlfriend. I mean, during elementary school not many people do. But then I had never had a girlfriend in high school. I had never had a girlfriend in university. And I spent longer there than most people do. I had tried at getting girlfriends after I got out of university, and was starting into the workforce, and was always very gently turned down with the idea that we should "just be friends." So, it would have been quite logical, and reasonable, by the time I was over thirty, to think that there was no possibility of my ever getting a girlfriend, or getting married.
But, for some reason, I still saw my life as fitting into the rather normal game plan. School, get a degree, get a job, get married, have 2.6 kids. Oh, and I also believed that, as a family, we would live in a house. That we owned. And I lived in *Vancouver*. Talk about living in a fantasy world!
But, eventually, there was this woman who agreed that it wouldn't be a terrible idea to marry me. She wasn't quite what I might have had in mind in my fantasies of married life. But then, by this time, I had realized that I should probably drop certain of the requirements that I might have initially had, and was down to basically would you agree to marry me? And Gloria did agree to marry me. So the wedding was on.
I have lots of stories to tell about our courtship. I have lots of stories to tell about the preparations for our wedding. I suppose I do have to tell some of the stories about the preparation for the wedding. Mostly to do with the guest list.
I was older than most grooms. Gloria was even older than I was. When you are old, you know more people than when you are young. So, we had to choose guests from two rather large churches, a college, an island, and an entire denomination. One of my friends recounted overhearing a conversation where one person asked if the other was going to attend the denominational convention for that year. No, was the reply, but I'm going to The Wedding! The friend recounting this story told us that you could actually hear the capitalization of The Wedding, and knew instantly that The Wedding being referred to was ours.
Even when you are going to choose representatives, and not everybody that you know in all of those areas, it still comes to a pretty significant number. My guess list was no problem. I don't have an awful lot of friends. I chose twenty-five people and turned in my list. (One of our friends has always been very proud of the fact that she was on *my* list, which was a bit more exclusive than the final total of the wedding guests.) Then Gloria had to pick those people that she couldn't not invite, and *her* mother had a list, and *my* mother had a list. All together, these lists totaled 350.
Now, I don't know if you've quite picked up yet on the theme of plans, and expectations. Gloria's father, expecting to pay for the wedding, in the manner of the time when he grew up, was appalled at having to pay for a sit down dinner reception for 350 people. I told him not to worry about that: there was no possible way that we could have a *reception* for 350 people. We weren't even going to have a formal receiving line. Again, that was an expectation that he had for how the wedding and reception would go. Of course you would have a receiving line! I pointed out to him that if we were going to have a receiving line, it couldn't be a serial receiving line. It would have to be a *parallel* receiving line. (He knew something about computers, and the difference between serial and parallel.) That is, the guests would have to choose which person in the wedding party, complete with parents of the couple, they were going to greet, and line up for that person. There was no way we could have a standard serial receiving line. I pointed out to him that, if we did, each of the guests would have about six seconds speaking to anybody. I don't think he really believed my math, but he did understand that this wedding was going to be different from his expectations. He felt a lot better about not having to pay for plated dinners for 350 guests.
The thing was, the guest list continued to grow. So, at one point, Gloria and *her* Mum went to have a meeting with *my* Mom. They needed to trim fifteen people off the guest list. My Mom *added* twenty-five.
Gloria and her Mum became quite worried about such a large wedding. I wasn't worried. Mostly, of course, because I didn't really know anything all that much about weddings. But what I *did* know was that a large number of people were going to come, and, however we planned, things were not going to turn out the way that we planned. But I knew that First Baptist Church in Vancouver would easily hold that number of guests (and many more), and that the reception would be held in Pinder Hall, which is immediately adjacent to the sanctuary, and would also accommodate a large number of people.
In the end, it didn't really matter. As I said, Glory was only able to invite representative samples of people from West Vancouver Baptist Church, where she had attended (and done lots of volunteer work), for decades, and also Regent College, which she, essentially, ran while Carl Armerding, the Principal, ran around the world raising money for the new building. And weddings, being a kind of testimony to the general public, are public events. You don't need an invitation to go to the wedding. You may need an invitation to go to the *reception*, but, in our case, the reception was, literally, right next door. So all kinds of people who haven't been on the official invitation list came, and, when the doors to Pinder Hall were opened, everybody just came in.
There were a lot of people at our wedding. The minister who officiated (I have to mention that, because there were twenty ministers at our wedding), who knew the church well, told us that there were more than five hundred people there. Pretty much everybody came to the reception. There were people at our reception that we didn't know. As a matter of fact, the first name signed into the guest book was that of somebody that nobody in either family knew. It was one of the street people from Vancouver, who, obviously well versed in these things, marched in with everybody else in order to grab a few sandwiches.
Not all of the stories of our wedding day were really funny. One couple who was invited found, when they went out to get the wedding gift that they had brought, that the radio antenna had been broken off their car. Not only that, but the radio antenna had been bent into a kind of fish hook, and used to unlock their car, and the wedding present was now gone.
I watch *way* too many Hallmark movies. Possibly this is because of loneliness from being a grieving widower. Possibly it's just poor taste on my part. I don't know. The thing is that an awful lot of Hallmark movies involve a wedding. Oh, not necessarily the wedding of the principal characters in the movie. Usually the plot line of the story involves a wedding, and possibly one, or other, or even both, of the principal characters in the movie are involved in helping out with the wedding. And, inevitably, at some point, the bride has a meltdown because of a problem and says that she just wanted to have a perfect wedding and was that too much to ask. And I, being a physicist, and knowing how hard it is to achieve perfection in the real world, mutter, under my breath, of course it is. The characters in the movie, of course, all say that yes, they are very much in support of this bride having the absolutely perfectest wedding ever, and, no, it's not too much to ask.
Gloria used to be the wedding hostess at West Van Baptist Church for a number of years. She had dealt with a number of weddings. Some of the weddings were pretty high profile people, whose names you would probably recognize even here and now. She also faced these demands for the perfect wedding. And she always had the same response for those demands. If the wedding was perfect, nobody would ever remember it. The stories that would be told, twenty, and thirty, and forty years later, would all be about the disasters.
And yes, I've only told you a few of the stories about our wedding. I haven't told you about my Dad, who, having agreed to be the photographer, decided, at the last minute, that he wasn't going to be. I won't tell you about how, trying to fill in for my Dad and do my own weddings formal photography, I somehow, even though it was on the list, failed to get a picture of Gloria and her grandmother. I won't tell you about whirling, around, and around, and around, as everybody who wanted to talk to Gloria tapped her on her right shoulder and she would turn, and I would have to turn with her, and that is how we made it through the entire reception. I won't tell you how we didn't get anything to eat at our own reception, and, as we were being driven off to the airport, the only thing that people could find for us to eat was three fragments of finger sandwiches, and two cookies. But you will notice that all of these stories are about disasters, not perfection.
The point being, we have plans, and expectations. But it's God who knows what is going to happen.
In life, we often make plans and have expectations, thinking we're in control. And the Bible tells us to make plans, and make *realistic* plans, and to analyse whether our plans are likely to succeed. The Bible doesn’t condemn planning, but it puts our planning in perspective. We are called to be stewards of our time, energy, and resources. But our plans are subject to God’s will. It tells us to hold our plans lightly, because we don't know the future. God does.
Consider how often life has taken unexpected turns. A job opportunity you didn’t anticipate. I got fired from teaching, and, specifically *because* I got fired, I later was able to teach on six continents. A relationship that came out of nowhere. I didn't expect to marry Gloria. I didn't see marrying anybody *like* Gloria. If you had asked me to list qualifications, factors, and characteristics of who I was going to marry, I wouldn't have described anybody like Gloria. God led me to Gloria. Gloria got me to start writing books. She gave me grandchildren, and now great grandchildren. Gloria allowed me to pursue career paths that got me teaching on six continents.
Now that Gloria has died, I have no plans or purpose that I can see. Various outcomes of her death have started me writing sermons. Is that a good thing? I don't know. I don't know the future, and, right now, I see no purpose in my life. I hate it. But faith demands that I believe that God has a purpose even for this horrible life. So I do what is put in front of me, not knowing where it will lead, or even if it will lead anywhere.
We may chart our course, but God directs our steps. Sometimes our plans fail or take an unexpected turn. That's when we are reminded that we are not in control. God is. Rather than resisting or questioning God's sovereignty, we need to learn to surrender and trust. And that is not always easy. It's easy to say that we should embrace the beauty of God's unexpected paths and find peace in His perfect plan. But when our plans, plans that we worked on and have a vested interest in having succeed, suddenly hit a brick wall, we are probably going to be fixated on them, and will have trouble seeing another path forward.
And that is where faith comes in. *We* have trouble seeing forward. *We* have trouble seeing other paths. But that's on us. God knows the plans that He has for us. And they are plans for our good. But we may have to wait. And be patient. And listen. And have faith. Even if it is not a lot of fun right now.
see also Sermon 23 - Plans
https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/05/sermon-23-plans.html
Yup, our medical system is going down the tubes. Which is ironic, in and of itself, since I my MLA is the one who just got given the health ministry.
I live in Port Alberni, where the motto is, "if a job is worth doing, it's worth doing badly." It's not one of the major centres, so there is absolutely no reason for any competent medical personnel to come here. I've been able to get a doctor, so I'm not as badly off as others. One would think. Of course, I have never, in two years of trying, been able to get a phone call through to the doctors office. They have an answering machine, which starts off with the helpful information that, if you are, actually, sick, you should contact somebody else. The answering machine gives you no option to leave a message. When I need anything, I have to go to the office, making sure that I get there in the morning, because I've never found the door to be open after noon.
About a month ago, I was getting low on drugs. I've got three drugs dealing with life-threatening situations, and one to handle the stomach upset that the others cause. So I went to the pharmacy. The pharmacy apparently contacted the doctor, and called me to tell me that he was on holiday. Apparently the pharmacy doesn't believe in followup, and the doctors office doesn't believe in taking messages. Recently, without having heard from anyone, I completely ran out, so I went to get some more. The pharmacy hadn't done anything else, so they sent another message to the doctor. Then they told me to contact the doctor. Since I was desperate, I called, and, wonder of wonders, got through for the first time in two years! I was told to await a call, so I did. The doctor called, and said that he'd renew the prescription.
Except, he didn't. So, the pharmacy will do nothing, and I can't do anything.
But, this is a self-resolving problem. One of the issues is depression, and I'm on antidepressants. I'm suicidal, so, given the runaround and impossibility of my situation, soon I'll be ready to cut my throat, and it's all good, right?
In doing some more research into how well the various genAI tools work, I've found that Meta AI seems to have a preference for quoting some of the lesser-known and used translations of the Bible, and particularly those that are more paraphrases than translations.
Interesting. Evidence of bias of some sort? ...
ChatGPT seems to stick with the NIV. Although, interestingly, it will sometimes trim the verse to fit the point being made. Claude also seems to prefer the NIV.
I would not suggest that any of them can produce anything like a decent sermon or even a devotion. But, while Claude is the most banal, and ChatGPT runs it a close second, Meta AI produced something that, at least, prompted some further ideas that I could use.
So, I was in the bathtub when the fan went off.
The lights, too.
Very quiet and peaceful. Since I have the second best view in Port Alberni, I could see that everything north of Dry Creek was without power.
The computer was out, of course. And my old phones rely on wifi, so they weren't going to get anything. But the new cell has some data on the contract, so I was able to confirm that, yes, Emergency Support Services had been activated. Not for the power outage as much as the fact that Highway 4 was closed. A tree had fallen on a logging truck. ("Revenge! Revenge!")
So I found some clothes, grabbed a number of flashlight type tools, and one of my ESS colleagues kindly picked me up and we headed for Echo Centre (as usual). The usual bedlam ensued, but we were ready for the crowds in short order. The Powers-That-Be determined that we had more than enough volunteers on hand, so I was among those tapped to go home and get ready for a midnight shift. As we were leaving, there was a woman in a car who sounded rather desperate and wanted to know when it would be open. We told her that the doors would be opening up in a few minutes.
Mind you, we also noted that there was a tremendously strong smell of marijuana smoke from the car ...
It was also evident that a lot of people (and companies) had *no* preparation for *any* kind of emergency. (Come and join us as volunteers! You get training! On how to get you and your family ready!)
Midnight shift never came. Nobody showed up (including our pothead), and the site was deactivated around 11 pm.
As mentioned, I didn't get to do much in terms of tourist stuff, since the tourist type attractions were only open during the hours that I was actually in front of a seminar. So about the only thing that I could do in terms of seeing the sites around the different places where I was conducting seminars, was at night. As it happened, I could not sleep properly when I was out doing the seminars. I know, because it happened even when I was teaching in California, or Calgary, that it wasn't jet lag that made me unable to sleep. I have always theorized that I wasn't able to sleep when I wasn't in the same bed with Gloria. I would generally get about two hours sleep per night, while I was doing the seminars. I do remember one particular seminar where I know that I got a total of two hours sleep for the entire *week*. Most of the time, conducting the seminars, I was running on adrenaline. But this did mean that I had plenty of time in the middle of the night if there was anything nearby that I could walk to. So I would walk around things. I could not go into museums or famous buildings, but I could look *at* the famous buildings, and sometimes parks or other natural features of beauty. When I was teaching in Sydney, Australia, I pretty much mapped out all of the trails and roads on North Head.
I did scare the pants off the Prime Minister's security detail at 24 Sussex Drive. I had taken a picture of the stone gate posts, illustrating the fact that they no longer had the 24 Sussex Drive address displayed on them, when I became aware of a rustling in the bushes. I bid the officer a good morning, and he bid me a good morning back.
I had other experiences wandering around looking at famous buildings. It was interesting, in Washington, DC, to see the number of homeless people who had semi-permanent encampments. One of them, and seemingly one of the largest, most organized, and most prepared for the cold weather at the time when I was wondering around, was right across the street from the Treasury Building, which I found highly ironic. I wandered around the Parliamentary precincts, in Ottawa, although I knew that the security detail for Parliament Hill had a very sophisticated video surveillance system. This was one of the places where I set up my camera, which had a self timer on it, to catch the buildings, with myself peeking in one corner. As noted elsewhere, this was the origin of Gloria noting that I looked very gnome-like in these pictures. I think that was mostly because of the garden gnome that traveled around with pictures of him in various tourist locations, slightly prior to, but around the time that I was teaching doing the seminars.
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The Lord is very patient but great in power; He makes sure that the guilty are always punished.
If you look closely, it's not photoshopped, and it's not a lesson in camouflage. It's easy to miss things in plain sight. This has sleeping room for at least a dozen, plus a common or cooking area, and possibly a wind barrier (or possibly laundry). It's quite extensive.
Once upon a time, a long time ago, a photographer from National Geographic was sent to Antarctica to photograph leopard seals.
You may think of seals as cute, and possibly even cuddly. Leopard seals are much larger than Harbour seals, Harp seals, or even Pacific sea lions. Leopard seals are one of the alpha predators of the Antarctic seas, possibly only topped by orcas. Therefore, the photographer was somewhat nervous about getting into the water with these massive predators. He describes the leopard seal's head as being twice as wide as that of a grizzly bear. And I would imagine he would know.
So, he gets into the water. And a leopard seal immediately comes up, and, in a threat display, opens its jaws wide. And completely surrounds his camera. He got an excellent picture of the inside of its mouth and throat.
Rather than attacking, the seal then swam away and came back with a penguin in its jaws. It then released the penguin, very near the photographer. The penguin swam away. And, of course, the photographer, not being interested in penguin activity, didn't pursue it. The seal swam away, came back with another penguin, and, again, released it. This went on for some time. And then the seal started catching penguins, and shaking and tiring them until, when the seal released them near the photographer, the penguin swam away much more slowly. The photographer still wasn't interested in the penguins. The seal kept us up for a while, and then eventually started actually drowning the penguins before it came back and presented them to the photographer. The seal actually placed dead penguins on the photographer's camera or head. (Some of the seal's actions seemed to indicate that it might have seen the camera *as* the photographer's head. It's intriguing the the seal was taking this much trouble for an entity it couldn't even identify, let alone be familiar with. It doesn't Understand What this thing in the water is. It's difficult to understand, and dangerous to anthropomorphize, what the seal might have been thinking. But it's fairly obvious that it wanted to ensure that the photographer was fed, and even trained in terms of how to hunt penguins, and that penguins were an important food source.)
At one point, the seal started to make threat displays, and the photographer was a bit worried that the seal was getting exasperated with him. But when he looked around, he found that *another* leopard seal was behind him, and obviously the first seal was threatening the second seal, and warning the second seal not to attack the photographer.
Because the seal kept coming back with penguins, it actually did help the photoshoot to a certain extent, and the principle photography was completed in only two days. However, an awful lot of the pictures would have been of the same seal bringing and releasing penguins to the photographer. This probably had very little value in terms of the original magazine assignment. The seal was behaving somewhat abnormally (at least, in terms of the assignment), and therefore an awful lot of the pictures that were taken could not be used in the commissioned article.
As I say, this happened some years back. Recently, because of reposting on social media, the story has gone viral. (I found a version of it on Instagram, and tracked down an article closer to the original at National Geographic.) Many people have seen it, and many people have commented on the various postings and repostings based upon this story and the visuals from it. A lot of people think that the story is cute.
And it is cute. Here is a photographer who is afraid of being attacked by this alpha predator. And instead, the alpha predator attempts to teach the photographer to hunt and eat penguins.
Not only was the story cute, but it's also rather sweet. Here is a "vicious" alpha predator, taking time and energy away from its constant need to feed itself (partly to maintain the level of energy necessary for pursuing this constant hunting behaviour, but also to maintain the level of calories necessary to survive such a cold environment).
So, yes. The story is both sweet and cute. And it's nice to see that people appreciate that. But there is another lesson here, which nobody seems to have noticed.
How often do we, in our pursuit of solving or fixing a problem, fail to understand what the problem or the situation actually is? How often do we, in our attempts to solve a problem, sometimes on someone else's behalf, have the humility to recognise that we may not have the right solution, and may not even have identified the right problem.
(For example, we may be so fixated on getting a photoshoot of vicious leopard seals that we fail to notice the importance of documenting altruistic behaviour on the part of a loepard seal. But I digress.)
We are very proud of our political systems; business, commercial, and financial systems; our science, our technology, our analytical superiority. Our ability to fix problems. To identify problems and come up with solutions. And how often is it that we don't understand the situation, or the problem, at all? In this story of the seal and the photographer, the real issue was that the photographer did not need lunch, but close range examples of leopard seals actual behaviour in the wild. The seal had absolutely no understanding of the situation and the requirements. And was solving a problem that was not a problem at all.
How often are we doing the same thing? How often do we think that we are solving a problem, only to solve the *wrong* problem, or a problem which isn't a problem at all? How often do we not have the humility to realize that our answer to the problem is completely wrong, based on our ridiculously limited understanding of the problem and situation?
Mark 3:5
Jesus was angry as he looked around at them, but at the same time he felt sorry for them, because they were so stubborn and wrong. Then he said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and it became well again.
How often does God regard us in this same way? That what we are doing, and thinking that we are helping God, that we are supporting What God wants us to do, when we don't understand the situation at all? We are solving the wrong problem. We are helping God when God doesn't need our help in that way.
We think that we are supporting God. And God is looking at us in the same way that all of those Internet viewers are seeing these repostings. God must be thinking that we are kind of cute. But He must be somewhat bemused, and maybe a little frustrated, that we insist on helping in our own way. That we have decided what help God needs. That political thought, or business thought, or financial thought, or scientific thought, or discoveries, or technologies, or systems are what God needs.
Sometimes we even think that we are protecting God from attack. When God needs no protection at all.
Do we have the humility to accept that, maybe, what we are doing is just not that important. That what we really need to do is to sit and, for once, just listen to God. To just be with God. To be in relationship with God. Just to be with God *before* we decide what it is that God needs.
Otherwise, what we are doing to help God? Maybe nothing that God actually needs. And maybe what we are doing for God is actually hindering. And even possibly annoying. When He is the one who actually understands what the real issues and problems are.
Podcast version: https://open.spotify.com/episode/20PoVjMG9PvTG1vRn4mQTQ
He's a colleague in the virus research community, and we've known each other for years. He is annoying because he thinks he knows everything. What's even *more* annoying is that he's generally correct: he does know pretty much everything there is to know about malware. And when he challenges you on a point, he's usually right. And you're usually wrong. I have only ever won one argument with him.
As Windows was becoming more dominant, and the Windows Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) file format was becoming more important, I made the statement that it was trivially easy to embed a virus in any Windows OLE format file. (I don't know that it's as much an actual file format as the way that Windows itself deals with files. And there's a difference between linking and embedding. But that's tech stuff.) In any case, I said it was trivially easy. He said it wasn't.
Other people joined the argument. He stuck to his guns. And then he disappeared from the argument. When he disappears from an argument, that's the time to worry. Because he is going away, researching the topic, and when he comes back he is going to nail your hide to the wall. Eventually, he came back. And said, "It is trivially easy to embed a virus in any OLE file." And provided an example to prove the point. So I won that one. (Even though he never admitted that I won :-) But it was a great relief to finally not be wrong in an argument with him.
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And you [...] say, "What the Lord does isn't right." You think my way isn't right, do you? It is your way that isn't right.
So, I was doing a seminar in Singapore, and I had various friends who had taught or presented in Singapore. All of them said not to bothere with the restaurant in the hotel for meals, or any restaurants for that matter, just go the street vendors and eat there. So, of course, I asked where or what were good street vendors, or how you could tell who the good street vendors were.
Oh, they said, it doesn't matter. Just go to any street vendor. They're *all* terrific!
So I went to Singapore, and, the first night out, I went out onto the streets and found a street vendor and it was really terrible.
So, upon my return, I tasked my insistent friends about this. Oh, they said, well you have to know which ones to go to ...
(With friends like these ...)
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