Yearly Archives: 2006

You’ve probably heard of the deep sleep –  REM sleep.  Generally we enter into 1 1/2 hour periods of rest, awaken and fall immediately back to sleep.  When we our sleep is fulfilled, we awake refreshed.

Now, you’ve heard of the Einstein syndrome, where you sleep for 15 minutes and awaken refreshed (based on the “cat naps” the Albert Einstein supposedly took during his daily routine).  There was a pastor who used to close his door, tell his secretary he was busy, and drop off for a few minutes.  I’m not sure how refreshed he was afterwards, but he claimed he was.

So today, I came home and lay down for 20 minutes.  I usually turn on talk radio — when I’m tired that immediately puts me to sleep.  As the 20 minutes came to an end, I heard the news just beginning. 
Great alarm clock.  At the same time the phone rang and I jumped from bed.

I felt very refreshed.  Of course, you have to put the day in context.  I had pulled in front of one car, couldn’t quite get the car to park properly, and somehow my mind was wandering.  All signs that the sleep battery is slowing down.

Now, if I hit the sack at 11:00, I’ll awaken at 12:30, 2:00, 3:30, 5:00, 6:30 and 8:00.  Of course, I usually get up at 3:00/3:30 for about an hour — read the Bible, journal and pray — so that sets the schedule off by an hour. 

When all is said and done, it takes more brain power to figure out the sleep schedule than to just do it! 

Maybe that’s why most people could never be accountants  — most of us are more interested in spending the money than in figuring out how much we have to spend.

Maybe that’s why we need more accountants — at least we wouldn’t be quite as broke!!

Often, when we are in the midst of life, there is nothing to be said.  You just continue on, stepping where there are rocks underfoot, and trusting that you won’t be blown off the path.

For me, these are the times that I enjoy the most.  A risk is taken and a project undertaken.  Once you are on the path, the refreshment is in the work itself.

So, yesterday and today I have not a lot to say about where we are headed as a group of people called the Kindersley Alliance church.  I’ve been checking things out (I prefer to call it “research” — sounds important).  I’ve been following up on phone calls.  And I’ve been letting God try and break through as I listen (maybe not as much as I should, but sometimes a sense of direction is coming).  Others I talk to also contribute there loonies worth (things are no longer two cents worth, but I’m not sure I want to call some of the ideas “loonies”).

What can I say?  Not much — let’s just see where things go!

I’ve been told just an hour down the road is a town with lower house prices.  Turns out it’s true!!

My wife, Jill, went with my sister to Rosetown today.  They snapped pictures.  They viewed four houses.  They compared perspectives.

In the end, Jill found a place we would have loved.  For $50,000 cheaper than in Kindersley. 

We’re not moving!  But if we were . . . a cheaper house is just down the road.

As one Edmontonian proclaims — “Saskatchewan is the great undiscovered country!”

And imagine, in the great undiscovered country there are even places that are even more undiscovered!

Can I summarize the things that we as a board are sensing God is calling us to for the coming year  (a most awkward sentence — but you get the idea)?

Our year’s motto?  “The year of the impossible”  

For each of us around the table Saturday, this past year has been one where God has been molding us.  Our lives need more than we can possibly do for ourselves.  We were once again impressed to realize that a full life is truly impossible — without God!!  But with God, this can be the year of the impossible!  A year where we step out and expect God to be there, where God will do above and beyond what we can ask or even think, or even dream.

Faith in action is risky. 

One of the areas we need to attack this year is understanding the needs of people in order to reach out to them with the love of Jesus.  We need to look around us and understand where people are at.  That means by April of next year we would like to do some “surveying” to be sure we are on the same page — on the same page as our neighbours, our friends, community people and work place acquaintances.  We need to understand our own stories so that we can speak to people about how God has touched our lives in ways that will relate to their own situations. 

We need to speak to them of the hope they can find in God through Jesus. 

We need to be in such a place that our actions of love will create a buzz of talk about God. 

We need to be In such a place that as people see what God is doing — the things that can only be “God things” — they will be pushing in to see what God can do for them.

An impossible order!

So be it.  Let’s see it!!