Oh Lord, this is a serious request!

Kevin Glenn got injured tonight...
the world needs to pray that God's teams' quarterback get's better...

God, I recognize my need for you.
I recognize my need for you.

In the prayer room: September 12, 2007

I feel as though prayer in this room has not given me any kind of blatant yes, no, or wait answers... And for that I am grateful, for it spared me from taking the answer in my pocket and going on my way, alone. God has, rather, left me in nowhere, but he is here with me in nowhere...prodding me to "continue praying, my child..." as it seems to be his way of saying, "continue walking and learning with me, my child." I do not know where I am, but knowing who I am with has given me an unexplainable peace...

This is the grace of God to me today...Thanks be to Him.

Lose to someone classy...

Finally...after almost 6 agonizing months of looking at an ugly minivan that we had bought out west in order to sell here, we got rid of it!

It truly is a glorious day. Actually, we ended up losing money on the ordeal, but it turned out o.k. The person(s) that we sold it to were the right people to lose money on. They were Filipino folks from the North End of our city. The guy who was buying it, get this,wasn't even gonna drive or technically own the van... He was the god-father of a 29 year old family man who just moved to Winnipeg a month ago from the Philippines, and he decided to welcome him here by buying him a $9000.00 vehicle. What's truly amazing about that is that he himself drove a van that was a piece, way worse than the one he bought for his god-son, our van.

So, I'm truly o.k. with losing money on our van experience to some classy, classy folks, whom we could probably learn a lot from.

I'm thankful for that.

sick of being sick...

for some reason I don't just get the 24 hour flu. My 24 hour flu turns into the 2.4 day flu, or more.
It's been interesting (and it always is when I'm sick) how you realize the extent you take health for granted.
I need to remember things like good health as part of God's provision for me.

Saturday morning Starbucks kaibosch

it's about 7:15am on Saturday morning. Some may be wondering why I'm up this early on a Saturday. Well I start work at 6:30am Saturday mornings. Some may be wondering how I am blogging while I'm at...oh the light just came on.

Yeah I totally turned off my alarm and slept through it all. I can't even say it was an accident because somewhere in my psyche something said, "turn that wreched noise off, I don't need that this early!"

The worst part about it all is that on Saturdays I'm only available until 1pm, which means that he (my manager...whom I was supposed to open with...yeah bad time to be late) had to wake some poor soul up to cover for my sorry keister, then try and fill shifts accordingly. So, basically, because I turned off my alarm, 7 other people's days are messed up.

I'm being hard on myself because I just hate being late. It bothers me, and especially these kinds of things where you really screw some others over because of your tardiness. I definately know that I wouldn't want to be the one getting the early morning call on Saturday.

At any rate, now I'm waiting to hear whether he even wants me in today or not because of my availability on Saturday, or lack there of... not being able to cover for a shift later in the day.

So if anyone of my Starbucks homie's who work Saturday are reading this...sorry.

really?

there is a middle aged fellow who, quite regularly, comes into the Starbucks I work at. Every time he comes in he's talking about job prospects out in the rich west; be it working on an oilfield, or as a truck driver somewhere, or whatever. In fact, he left Winnipeg a couple months ago and headed for B.C. for a big money job, but was misled as to what he was actually going to be paid. So he returned.

Last night he came in for a coffee, and once again he was talking about the money to be had out west. He was talking about some position in Alberta, I'm sure on an oilfield, where 18 year olds are making $15,000/week...(which I hardly believe), and he said something interesting as he finished talking about that and was leaving, "That's what I need."

really?

Immideately my mind had flash images of mom's and dad's, children, and grandparents in our third world contries who can only wish for $15.00 a week, and that would be incredible for them. By the way, most of the world lives on less than $1.00 a day...Which if you do the math is $7.00 a week...Not quite $15,000/wk. My soul was filled with grief as I realized the kind of trickery and false hope that has gripped so many of us North Americans.

Now I know that we live in North America, and nobody could live on $1.00 a day here, but let's think about it; What do we really need?

It's been blowing my mind to read about Jesus these days in light of all this, because Jesus definately was not shooting for $thousands of dollars per week. In fact Jesus says, "don't even make that your primary concern...what should be primal in you (if you are my true disciple) is my Kingdom...a kingdom that worries about the hungry, the thirsty, the broken, the down and out...these are to be your concerns. If you seek this out first, then you will be fine in these other things you so easily worry about." Jesus tells us, the smartest creatures on earth, to take a lesson from ordinary sparrows..."Look at the birds of the air, they do not stockpile in barns or store away just in case things might run out...they know they will be fed, they know they will be okay... If you only knew how much more important you are to me than sparrows, you'd realize how silly it is to spend all your time worrying about money things."

Now, if I think back to the man that comes into starbcuks always worried about money, I could say; "now here's a perfect example of the opposite of what Jesus is saying, a man that lacks trust, a man that focuses on all the wrong things..."

I am that man so often, and I need help to make the Kingdom of God my primary desire over any other thing this world could ever offer me...

Help me to trust your better way of living.

"Aim at Heaven, and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth, and you will get neither."
-C.S. Lewis