Articles > General Interest

As told to Werner Peters...
A woman was shopping in a busy mall one day. She was exhausted as she pushed her full shopping cart past the food court, milling with people. The aroma of coffee grabbed her and drew her in. She bought a cup of coffee and a Kit Kat bar, then turned to find a place to rest her weary feet for awhile. The only empty seat she could find was right across from an older gentleman who himself was sipping a cup of coffee.

She asked if he minded that she sat across from him, to which he shook his head. Sitting down, she picked up the Kit Kat bar, (she just loved the combination of chocolate and coffee) and tore the wrapper off, broke off a piece and set the bar back down. To her utter amazement, the man smiled awkwardly, picked up the bar, broke off a piece and ate it. Now she is thinking, “This is odd. Maybe the guy is really hungry and can’t afford his own. I better eat another chunk before he eats it all.” She takes another piece and crams it in her mouth. Almost immediately, as if he is in competition with her, grabs another piece and sticks it in his mouth. “Well,” she thinks, “I’m not going to let him get away with this. Not even a word of thanks. How rude!” And she stuffs the rest of the bar in her mouth and walks away in a huff, not even finishing her cup of coffee.

My vegetable-oil adventure lasted about a year. I had converted a Passat Diesel to actually run on used vegetable oil. Interested people would stop and ask me questions about my experiment with renewable (and recycled) fuel. They would ask me if my exhaust smelled like French Fries. (It did!) A friend of mine (a ministry colleague) heard about the vegetable oil and actually used the filtration process that I used as an illustration in a talk he was giving to his congregation. Before we take communion, we need to ensure that “the dirt is filtered out”, and he used my process of filtering out used vegetable oil through a pair of denim blue jeans as an analogy.

One of the people listening to him that day was a student of journalism at Ryerson. The story piqued her interest and she got my contact information from him, and gave me a call.

“Do you mind if I come over and do an interview with you,” she asked?

It's early in the morning and I receive a telephone call. Someone in the hospital needs a visit from a pastor. A patient is dying. He is well past 70. I arrive thirty minutes later. He doesn't have to say anything. The questions are written all over his anxious demeanour. "Why is this happening to me? This shouldn't be happening to me! This is not the way it's supposed to be!" Yet it has happened to every member of the human race, without exception.

And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.

I think the argument of relativity and absolute truth all started the day we first heard the story of the elephant. (I admit my tongue is presently firmly pressed into my cheek.)

Col 4:6 Let your speech be alway with grace, seasoned with salt, that ye may know how ye ought to answer every man.

I hesitate to talk about a movie I haven’t seen for fear of giving it any publicity, nor will I see it. The Time magazine did an article once on the movie entitled “The Public vs. Larry Flynt”. Apparently it is the story of the Hustler publisher as he fought TV preacher Gerry Falwell in an American court of law. Hustler won. The battle cry for freedom of speech quickly becomes an emotional one. And no where is this battle cry heard as loudly as on the Internet. “I have a right to publish what I want!”

I have a small confession to make. At least once a week I went out drinking with the boys. At least once a week, maybe on a Friday morning, I would make my way across the street from my place, and meet with three or four other guys at the Deli. We drank more than our money’s worth of Java, and there we discussed the problems of the universe. Sometimes one can find valuable nuggets of wisdom while shooting the breeze with a salty cab-driver or an old-fashioned blacksmith (who swore by his wife’s health secrets while knocking back jugs of coffee). And sometimes, it got pretty banal!

I felt so foolish and humbled. I was 16 years old, and was a leader of a group of younger guys in a group called Christian Service Brigade. We were camping out at a provincial park in Manitoba, and went hiking in the woods. Of course, when you go hiking with younger lads, a good leader will take every opportunity to teach along the way. “You see where the sun is in the sky? Keep track of your shadow. See that moss there? It always grows on the north side of the tree.” I was so full of wisdom in those days.

After about 90 minutes of leading these young guys through thick and thin, they began to wonder out loud where we were going, and when were we going to get back to the camp? I regaled them with words like “When the going gets tough, the tough get going” , “we’re not quitters” and other equally innocuous clichés. We managed to squeeze in another fifteen minutes or so of huffing and bluffing, when one of the older fellows piped up, “We’re lost, aren’t we?”

Certain items have jumped out at me in the news lately.

A family is taking a chain of fast food restaurants to court, because their child eats there regularly and is now obesely overweight.

A undercover cop is assigned to go into an illegal gambling establishment to do some sleuthing. In the process, he gets addicted to gambling, and loses not only the cash float he is given, but steals and loses over $100K. Now there is a question of whose responsibility this is, and should he take the police department to court and sue them for his losses?

A student stabs her vice principal with a letter opener. Her defense is PMS.

In a recent religious forum discussion, one of the participants raised the issue of paradoxes in the Bible. He used the story of Abraham and Isaac as an irrational paradox that invites us to respond with a faith that leaves reason behind in the dust, so to speak. Abraham was commanded by God to sacrifice Isaac, his son of promise in his old age. So far so good. Often we are asked to obey directives we do not understand. But the claim being made here is that the Christian faith is something that should NOT be given a rational basis at all; that our faith is (and ought to be) a blind leap of faith. The assertion is that Christians should not waste so much energy attempting to ‘prove’ anything about their faith, because faith and reason are antithetical. “If you can prove it, it can’t be faith”, seems to be a prevailing sentiment, particularly among the post modern crowds. Mark Twain apparently said, “Faith is believing something you know ain’t so!”

As a student, I was working at a summer job in a farm machinery factory in Winnipeg, Manitoba. We were in the lunch room, and I had an opportunity to discuss my faith with another worker who was a couple of years older than I was. After I shared what was on my heart, he responded: "I have a lot of admiration for you!"

My heart leapt at the thought that maybe I had found a kindred spirit. "Why?" I asked. "Are you a believer?"

"Oh, no!" he responded, " I just think that it's great that you have such a strong faith. Whatever you believe, man, that's your reality! And we all need something to believe in. Doesn't matter what it is."

I drove in the streets of the city of London several years ago. What an new and exciting experience! My biggest fear during those days was climbing into the car and entering traffic on the right side of the road instead of the left, and meeting with disaster. It would have been so easy to do. The only way I avoided that was to be constantly alert and conscious of the British rules of the road. It is difficult to learn new habits when old ones run at a deep instinctive level.

Our lifestyle habits are like that. And when Jesus Christ becomes our Lord and Sovereign through the process of conversion, we suddenly become aware of a whole new set of “traffic rules” to live by.

In meeting with various individuals, I am learning that one question is being asked more than any other.

“If God loves me so much, why doesn't He make the pain go away?"

I don't know the immediate answer to that question. But, if God is good, then I must believe that any trial that comes my way has a bigger purpose than I realize.

I know that it is becoming harder all the time for people to accept the fact that intelligent 20th century people can actually still be “Bible-believers”. Some of the incredulity that I face in our age and society is the fault of the many bad examples that exist in the form of TV evangelists. Faith healers and fund raisers in white suits cry crocodile tears over the poverty of orphans in Haiti while driving Cadillacs to their TV studios and wearing diamond rings on their pinky fingers. It reminds me of the country song, “Would Jesus wear a Rolex on His TV Show?” This cause for unbelief is deserved and justifiable, and if that is all Christianity had, I would be the first to “eat, drink and party, for tomorrow we die.”

Using the language of heaven inadvertently betrays the skeptic

While watching the news today (June 19), the commentator was reporting on a tragic event in the U.S. A fire had claimed the lives of 9 firefighters. These firemen had wives, children, siblings, parents and other loved ones. The loss and the grief that surrounds this event is immeasurable.

My wife and I were at home getting ready for Christmas Eve about seven years ago. It was cold in the Leeburn valley late that afternoon and the snow hung heavy on the trees that surrounded our place.

A knock came at the door. The sun had already set. We hadn't heard a car come up the driveway, and it was very unusual for someone to walk to our place from anywhere, particularly in cold weather. A man we had never met before stood in our doorway. He was hardly able to express himself. We brought him in, and it became obvious that he was incoherent not just from overexposure to the elements. He was befuddled mentally. It took me about an hour to understand from him what his particular needs were and we gladly took care of them.

(written a few weeks before the US / Iraq war began)

I haven't thought much about it. And that makes me feel guilty. What do I believe about war? Is war ever justified? Can I as a Christian support a war, if the cause is a righteous cause? Is there such a thing as a righteous cause to go to war?

I drove in the streets of the city of London several years ago. What a new and exciting experience! My biggest fear during those days was climbing into the car and entering traffic on the right side of the road instead of the left, and meeting with disaster. It would have been so easy to do. The only way I avoided that was to be constantly alert and conscious of the British rules of the road. It is difficult to learn new habits when old ones run at a deep instinctive level.