Living in a “Keyboard Warrior” Society

A questionable photo from college days. A tweet written when in a bad mood. A Facebook rant. Careless words are nothing new.  In years gone by most people have not had ample opportunities to publish their passing thoughts for the world’s consumption. Not until social media came around. This puts us in a position to…

A Parable on Prayer

It is really cool and amazing how God send these little prompts to pray for things of great important. Whenever I hear “overseas or New Zealand”, my oldest daughter who is teaching in New Zealand comes to mind. And I’ll pray for her. Whenever I hear the words long drive or commute I will think…

The Pilgrimage

It’s almost summer in Canada. We’ve made it through a long winter, and our snow boots, winter parkas and toques are all packed away. With the warmer weather our thoughts naturally turn to holidays. Now if we decided to take a week’s holidays in June in Canada, where would we go? What would we do?…

The Lost Sheep

From my wife’s country of New Zealand there was a sheep named Shrek that became a national celebrity in 2004. Shrek was not the world’s oldest sheep in the world. He was not the fastest or strongest in the world. What made him unique was that he really, really, really did not like getting his…

The Value of a Good Name

We live in a society where our lives are under the microscope than any other time in history. In banks, in shopping malls and on street corners our images are captured on surveillance cameras. Social network companies like Facebook (which owns properties like Messenger, What’s App and Instagram) collects data on each of it’s 2…

The Rest of the Story

This Christmas season I had the privilege of attending an Ugly Sweater party. I didn’t have an actual Christmas sweater, but used a sweater my dear wife made for me 30 years ago. The host was the only person I knew at the party, and so I was a bit anxious. But there were so…

Trying to Live in a “Whatever” World

When I can find the time, one of my favourite pastimes is spending time with the older generations and allowing them to open up and share some of their life story. Growing up in rural Canada, their childhoods predated electricity, running water and the telephone. They lived their lives through multiple hardships and emerged much…

Ringing the Bells of Peace

Over the past 150 years here in Canada the penetrating, vibrant ringing of church bells have sounded in large cities right down to small villages. And for centuries in Europe, church bells have played a prominent role in the history of countries, communities, and places of worship. Church bells are the biggest and loudest musical…

It’s Fathers Day

The words “It’s Father’s Day” can conjure a lot of mental images, depending on that person’s perception of fathers. I have always struggled sharing a message on Father’s Day. It is partly because I really miss my dad who died when I was 15, so fathers day is a difficult day for me. It is…