Valentine’s Day is one-sided

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I know this will shock some of my loyal readers, but I’m going to go on an off-topic rant today.

Unless you are Lorne Green and just came in from the wilderness or you are a hermit that lives in the Himalayan mountains, you know that yesterday was Valentine’s Day.  If any of you men missed it, please refer to the article: Living in the doghouse isn’t really that bad.  Btw, that article doesn’t exist because living in the doghouse really IS that bad.  The only thing worse than being alone on Valentine’s Day is being attached and forgetting about it altogether.  Not cool.

So yesterday was the day that women everywhere look forward to some well-deserved romance and love.  They eagerly anticipate breakfast in bed, love letters, flowers, chocolates, candles, moonlight dinners, etc.  I never know which one to pick, so I choose to do 2 of each just to be sure.  You ALWAYS want to play it safe.  If momma ain’t happy, nobody’s happy.  And all the men said amen.

I almost laughed out loud yesterday when I ran into an older lady who pointed at her husband who was getting out of his truck in front of the grocery store and said, “Look at the nice truck that I let him have, and he still doesn’t get me anything for Valentine’s Day.” And all the women said amen.

At the end of my day yesterday I decided to go and pick up some flowers for my lovely wife.  As I was pulling into the parking lot, there was about 10 to 15 men walking out with flowers.  Once I got in the store, I saw that in the flower section there was about another 20 men and at least five or six women busily working to dig out more flowers, build bouquets, and wrap flowers.  It was then that I realized how one-sided Valentine’s Day really is.  I didn’t see one woman in there buying flowers for her man.  It was just us guys.
So, for the sake of equality, I decided it was time we did a list for the ladies of different gifts us men would like to receive on Valentine’s Day.    This is by no means a final list; but here is a good start.  I wouldn’t mind hearing from some of the men out there to see if there is anything they would like to add to the list.
Here goes:
1. Bouquet of wrenches
2. 1 dozen screwdrivers
3. Heart-shaped box of drill bits
4. Burritos in bed
5. Performance tires
6. Box set of assorted motor and gear oils
7. Spa day… For the truck or car ( wax, wash, lube,oil change)
8. All you can eat buffet
9. Sports car rental
10. Empty to-do list (my personal favourite)
I think if the ladies would pick a few items from off this list to surprise their special man, it would go a long way.  Let’s make Valentine’s Day more equal, one box of drill bits at a time.

Please, colour for yourself!

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Who among us doesn’t enjoy a serene Sunday ciesta?  There is a certain beauty in the simplicty of a Sunday afternoon nap.  Other days work also, but Sunday is special.  Our church started out with a service in the afternoon but I always felt like I was somehow being cheated so we recently changed it to Sunday morning.

The Bible tells us that even God rested on the seventh day after six days of mass creation.  I can hear somebody say, “Well technically the seventh day of the week is Saturday so shouldn’t we be resting then instead?”. That’s probably the same person that pulls out the dictionary during Scrabble or even calls Hasbro for a technical ruling on a word.  Just to keep things simple, we’ll keep Sunday as our day of rest.

Today, I arrived home with my 2 little ones and 1 big one from church and proceeded to fix a light lunch for them.  After, the 2 little ones and I retired upstairs to go “seepin’”.  About an hour and a half later, the only one “seepin’” was me.  In retrospect, instead of me putting them down for a nap, they put me down for a nap.  That’s where things get a little crazy and the information gets pretty unreliable.

The good news is that when my oldest son woke me up I didn’t require much backstory of the afternoon activities.  The bad news is that a picture really is worth a thousand words.  Some budding young artists decided that the house needed a makeover, toddler style.  I don’t know how they coloured that much square footage in such a short time.  They must have found the Delorian and went back in time to do it!

After much excitement and lots of elbow grease, we finally got our walls fairly clean again.  When thing settled down a bit, I got thinking of how this same event plays out in our personal lives as well.  We may have things under control and are humming along the road of life, when suddenly somebody decides to colour our walls.

Maybe they thought we were too drab and needed to be spruced up, or maybe they ran out of space on their walls and decided to migrate to ours.  Either way, we have to make sure that we clearly communicate that we will colour our own walls.

I’m not concerned what somebody else thinks of my Christian decor.  I’m trying to be modest and humble, not the talk of the town because of my cutting edge fashion choices.  The Bible says, “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.”  Somebody once said opinions are like noses.  Everybody has one and they all smell.

Sometimes, people just have issues.  They may be so full of anger that they start colouring your walls with anger.  Or they may be so full of lies that they start colouring your walls with lies.  You name it, and somebody will colour it on your wall if you let them.

We are called to be Christians and to love one another, but we have to be careful who is allowed to colour our walls.  Anytime, somebody sneaks through and starts putting graffitti on our walls, we have to be quick to clean it off before it gets a foothold and stays.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with being jealous of what we allow on our walls.  After all, if you are born again, Jesus is living there and He certainly deserves the best.  Don’t be afraid to put your foot down and say, “Please, colour for yourself!”

Your miracle doesn’t depend on man’s help

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John chapter 5 has a really intriguing story.  It tells of how Jesus was at Jerusalem and walking by the pool of Bethesda.  At this pool, there were many sick and lame people waiting for their chance at a miracle.  You see, at a certain season, an angel would come down and trouble the water.  The first person who got into the pool of Bethesda would be healed.

You could imagine the sight.  It would have looked like a homeless shelter of a soup kitchen, where everyone is just hanging around waiting for something good to happen.  Every so often the angel would arrive and some lucky soul, who had a helper, would get into the water and receive a miracle.  Everybody would rejoice or maybe be a little jealous that they had just missed it this time.  It must have been extremely boring and desperate times punctuated by short periods of excitement.

One day, Jesus was walking by and saw a man who had suffered an infirmity for 38 years.  The Bible tells of how Jesus, knowing the man had suffered a long time, asked him if he wanted to be made whole.  The man answered by telling Jesus that he couldn’t be healed because he didn’t have a man to help him get in the water fast enough.  Jesus decided to overlook the man’s excuse and commanded the man to be healed.  The man got up and was instantly healed of his infirmity, or disease.

We sometimes fall into that same rut as the man with the infirmity.  We spend so long waiting for our miracle that we lose our bearings on everything else.  By that time, you would think he would have heard about Jesus and cried out for help like the blind man did.  Instead, he was so fixated on his lack of support, or a man to help, that he almost missed a life altering miracle.

It’s sad how people will look for a man before they will look for God. The man’s problem wasn’t his lack of a man, but his lack of God.  As soon as Jesus entered the situation, the miraculous took place.

The man with the infirmity almost missed the boat because it wasn’t a man-made solution that Jesus offered.  We have to stop looking for people to move us and start reaching out to God instead.  Your miracle doesn’t depend on man’s help.

Unworked back-stock is useless!

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Backstock

Those of you who work in retail will certainly relate to today’s topic.  For the rest of you, I will lay a quick foundation.  Back-stock is a retail term for merchandise that is left over after you have fill all the shelves with products for sale.  In theory, eventually someone will replenish the store shelves with merchandise from the backroom until a new order arrives. It sounds like a smart plan doesn’t it?

German Field Marshall, Helmuth Von Moltke once said, “No plan survives contact with the enemy.”  He was a very wise man and obviously understood that plans are great until something changes and then all trouble breaks loose and we spend the next days, weeks, or heaven forbid, months, trying to keep up.

One of the marvels of planning in North America is traffic.  Sometimes we are going 100km/h (65 mph) with only a few feet separating us from the next vehicle.  The only thing keeping us from accident or injury is planning and the faith that most of the other motorists will stick to the plan.  For the most part, things go pretty smooth, considering how much traffic we have here and the high speeds that we drive at.  Compare that to some developing countries where nobody sticks to the plan and you literally take your life into your hands every time you get in a moving vehicle.

Some back-stock can be a reasonable idea as long as everyone does there job and eventually the products get out on the sales floor to be sold.  The problem arises when we get too much stock in an already crowded backroom or cooler, as pictured above.  Then it is almost impossible to see, or work what is in there.  I have personally dug out stock that was buried for over a year before it finally made its way out and into the garbage because by that point it was out-dated. This is a viscous cycle in retail where everybody loses money and sometimes employees even get injured because of the unstable mess that is created.

If it is in the back, it doesn’t sell.  Last time I checked, customers don’t peruse the stock room for that hard to find item.  Sometimes, the customers will even ask a store clerk if an item is in stock.  If it isn’t easy to reach they will just say its sold out even though it is there.  The customer will never know the truth and another sale is lost.

Remember, back-stock is only useless when it isn’t worked.  You may be wondering what I mean by this concept.  I have watched far too many Christians languish away in the backroom just waiting for someone to work them into the sales floor.  The Bible says a gift will make room for itself, but I don’t think that is an excuse for someone to hide in the back until someone drags them out.  Do you remember the servant who hid his talent in the ground?  When the master came back he was very angry at that servant and took his talent and gave it to the guy who used his 5 talents to get 5 more talents.

A talent is a gift from God.  Maybe yours is music, singing, teaching, preaching, hospitality, cooking, cleaning, visitation, etc.  The list goes on and on.  I promise that God has given you talents.  You just need to discover them and then exercise them to the best of your ability.  Please, don’t waste away the years being frustrated because nobody has discovered you yet.  I have seen the bitterness and resentment take hold of people, and believe me it is not a pretty sight.

Put yourself out there.  Take a chance.  What have you got to lose?  Who cares what people think?  Jesus sure didn’t.

Somebody right now is saying, “But Darren, you don’t understand!  I have no special talent.  What can I do?”  To that person, I would say, “What about the 4 friends that lowered the lame man to Jesus through a rooftop?”  What they did wasn’t glamorous or even popular; but they changed a man’s life forever.  I would say that was more important than any song or sermon or award.  Wouldn’t you?

Stop blaming the pastor or the other leaders for not using you.  They may not even know what gift you have.  They may be so burned-out from working multiple departments with no help that they don’t have time to go searching through the backroom for you.  Make yourself available!  Offer to help!  Give them some ideas of how you can take a load off their shoulders.  Those 4 men didn’t wait for somebody to tell them they had the gift of tearing roofs off before they got out of the backroom.  They saw a need, had a desire to help, and made it happen!  I pray that you will make that your new motto.

Jesus wasn’t worried about the harvest.  The harvest is assured.  What the church needs is some more labourers.  Go dig up your talent and dust it off and put it to good use for the Master!

Because unworked back-stock is useless!

Don’t forget your water!

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First off, I want to establish that kidney stones are very uncool.  I believe that men are the ones that usually get them although I’m not really sure.  I don’t think any readers pay me to give highly technical medical opinions anyway.

Wait a second here.  What’s that?  Oh really….  Wow! I can’t believe this!  Apparently, I don’t get paid to write this blog.  I guess we just do this for fun.

Back to kidney stones.    In the medical field they are known as renal calculus (singular) or as renal calculi (plural).  In common everyday language, most men affectionately call them razor blades.  The very thought of “razor blades” sends a shiver down the toughest guy’s spine.  When mentioned, men everywhere involuntarily cross their legs just in case they are contagious.

Doctors say that it is one of the most painful things a man can go through.  It is also said that it is similar to the pain a woman experiences during childbirth.  If you’ve never had kidney stones, you probably think you could suck it up and soldier through, but when one of those suckers decides to roll over and block a duct, the party’s over.  Grown men have been brought to tears and doubled over in agony on the shop floor.

Just because the duct is blocked doesn’t mean the kidneys stops working.  It’s like a traffic jam caused by a wreck during rush hour.  Everybody needs through, but now they are all desperately trying to merge into the far left lane, to no avail.  The guy pushing the shopping cart full of bottles ends up making better time than us.  Have you ever wondered if you can over fill a water balloon?  The answer is yes you can.  The water balloon can expand a bit, but eventually it will blow.  The kidneys are no different.  You can imagine all that pressure building up.  Ouch!

The reason I bring this up is because my co-worker has made it his personal mission in life to force me to drink more water.  In his opinion, Pepsi Max doesn’t count as a source of water.  He told me my lack of water intake will cause me huge issues down the road, of which kidney stones is just one.  We had a spirited debate all day long and it seemed to end in the dreaded tie.  That is, until I received a visit from the “razor blade” fairy after I got home today.  I believe my co-worker won the argument in a shoot-out.

Water is essential to help our kidneys flush out the impurities.  When water is in short supply, the impurities clump together to form stones, which in turn cause us complications.

In the Bible, water represents a cleansing, purification or a renewing.  It also is used in the context of how truth, or the Word of God, washes us.  This is stated in Ephesians 5:25-26.  Just like water helps cleanse our body, the Word of God helps cleanse our heart.

We can’t avoid using real truth to cleanse our hearts.  We can try to use something else, but we won’t be receiving the full benefits of a washing by the Word of God.  In fact, we will end up dehydrating ourselves and doing even more harm than good.  So please, don’t forget your water!  You can’t live without it.

 

It takes a lot of hard work to be an overnight success

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Last night history was made, or at least tied here in Edmonton.

Now I’m not sure how many of you follow professional sports.  Maybe you are too busy working to buy junk you don’t need, with money you don’t have, to impress people you don’t even like.  Maybe you don’t care what overpaid millionaires do for a living.  It’s quite possible, although highly unlikely, that you are checking the net every 10 seconds to hear what Ben Bernanke and David Dodge have to say about the economy.  Who knows?

I like to follow sports.  In particular hockey is my favourite.  Notice I didn’t say ice hockey.  Only our friends to the south need to add the ice before hockey just for clarification.  After all, there is table hockey, air hockey, road hockey, pond hockey, etc.  For us igloo dwelling  northerners, hockey works just like Tim’s.  We know when you say Tim’s it means unpredictable coffee and pre-baked donuts, just like hockey means sticks and a puck flying around the ice rink at Mach 2.  We all know what our pastime is even though we may not play it personally.

Any discussion of hockey is not complete, especially here in Edmonton, without mentioning the great one, Wayne Gretzky.  He holds almost every record a forward could hold in hockey. 61 in total.  He once scored 398 goals in atom hockey.  The records and accolades go on and on.  He also has an Edmonton Oiler record with Paul Coffey for most points in a game(8).

Sam Gagner, is a 22 year old centre that presently plays for the Oilers. Last night he did a remarkable thing.  He scored 4 goals and 4 assists to tie Wayne Gretzky’s Oiler record of 8 points in a game.  What is really fascinating is that Sam has played all over in the line-up and has played second fiddle all year long to basically everybody. At one point he was demoted to zamboni driver.(just kidding)  He hasn’t been having much of a year up until now and nobody would have saw this coming.  In fact, a lot of people here having been clamouring for him to be traded because he doesn’t “fit in” with the team anymore.  After last night, everyone has done a 180.

When we see people become successful, a lot of times we label them, like Sam, as an overnight success.  Really that is unfair because it suggests that they were just lucky or were in the right place at the right time.  It is a label we stick on people because we are jealous of them or because we are too lazy to work like they did to achieve success.  It also minimizes their struggles on their way to greatness.

Joseph could be put in this same category if you didn’t take the time to study his history and the struggles he went through before he ascended to greatness.  King David would also fit the mold, if you glossed over his colossal life and death struggle with Saul.

We need to learn to persevere and stop trying to take the easy way out all the time.  Stop telling yourself other people have it easier than you and get serious about your goals.  If over the long haul, you do the right things with the right attitude, you will become an “overnight success” also.

False starts rot!

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For the last 6 months I have been trying to transfer between departments at my company.  When I started my career with them I was told that when you wanted to switch, they would do it.  They said they wanted people to progress in the company.  Well progressing there is sort of like navigating a corn maze, blindfolded, fee tied together, handcuffed, with a large piece of luggage strapped to your back.  You go talk to a supervisor who refers you to a manager, who points you to the HR department, who steers you back to another manager and so on.  I didn’t even know we had that much management.  Actually, I believe the managers out number us workers by 50 to 1.

After much trial and error and 3 pairs of shoes later, my file finally landed on the right desk.  I was called in for an interview.  The interview wasn’t what you would think.  Instead, it was an assessment where the managers give you a paper with all the numbers on it and ask you to talk them into placing a special rack in their store.  It was pretty easy as they gave me all the answers.  It was essentially an open book test.  In fact, it was so easy that I think a cardboard cutout once passed the test and was sent out to the sales field only to fall a little flat.

My change was scheduled 2 weeks in advance and I was eager to get started.  I even had a hard time sleeping the night before my first day of training.  On second thought, maybe that was due to the 3 Pepsi Max bottles I drank the night before.  Let’s see, double the caffeine times 3, divided by pii, multiplied by the coefficient of friction of pop equals an all-nighter.  Yeah, that sounds about right.

Monday morning started out great and all signs looked positive.  Then a half hour into our first sales call, my Delivery Supervisor called, and I had to come back to the shop and cover another driver who had called in sick.

Are you kidding me?  Get real!  I ran the equivalent of a marathon trying to get a shot at a new career here and now I get recalled back to drive?  What a mess!  How many times will this happen?

I wonder how many times we, as leaders, have spent months in preparation to launch a new department or ministry only to have it stumble out of the gate.  Or maybe you thought you were finally going to get a shot to start your personal ministry in a new position or location only to have to wait a little longer.  It doesn’t seem fair does it?    Everybody is picking on you.  (sniff).  As Dave Ramsey says, “Why don’t you just call yourself a wambulance?”. There’s nothing like a party crasher.  Especially a pitty party crasher.

Joseph went through this same battle at least 3 times that we know of. Just when he thought he was about to launch, God let him get set back down.  Eventually, Joseph was allowed to launch and he did it with style.  He helped save the Isrealites and Egypt from famine.

There’s no question that false starts rot, but if you keep a good attitude like Joseph did, your gift will make room for itself.  After all, God gave it to you and He has a plan for you to use it for His Kingdom.

Sometimes moving is a good thing

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Today I had the pleasure of helping a lady, from our church, and her son move into a new basement suite.  It took only 4 hours total, but it will go a long way toward making their life better.  It wasn’t very hard either.  It just took a little muscle, which is good because that’s all I have available.  The Bible says that little is much when God is in it.

Just for fun I have listed our moves.  The first 4 were all in Miramichi city, NB.

1. Bachelor suite – We hung out here for a few months.

2. Howard Street – There was a spider and aphid problem.  Not cool.

3. Isaiah Drive – Not a bad spot.  We decided to buy a house instead.

4. Searle Road – Our first house.  Mortgage was $253 a month.  Those were the days.  My Father and did lots of reno work on it.

5. Cap-de-la-Madeleine, Quebec – We moved here with our daughters.  We met the Vezinas here.  They are good people.

6. Granby, Quebec – The company I worked for went bankrupt.  Our son Kyler was born here.  They have a really cool zoo.

7. Pierrefonds, Quebec – We moved to island of Montreal to be closer to West Island Church and Pastor Bill Price.

8. St.Marthe-sur-le-lac, Quebec – We bought a house north of Montreal to have more room.

9. Tilley Road, NB – We moved back to NB to start a French church.  Our son Keshan was born.  We learned a lot of what not to do here.

10. Slave Lake, Alberta – We came out west to start over.  Our baby Kira was born.  We met some great friends in our district.

11. Beaumont, Alberta – We were asked to move to Edmonton to assist a local pastor and now we have started a new church here in South Edmonton.

Having moved 11 times since we got married, my wife and I are definitely veterans in this area.  Notice I didn’t say we are experts.  You’ll see why in a minute.  We were almost packed for our second trip when we realized that we had forgotten to pack a heavy metal bench.  I never was known for my great planning skills and have been called impulsive by way too many people to count.  So we had to unload and repack almost everything.  We finally got it all in our minivan and left for the new place across town.

It was neat to see how excited they were to have a new home.  It reminded me of how a new convert is when they finally hear about how Jesus loves them and how they can be free from sin and shame.

Sometimes a move is a good thing because it enables a fresh start.  It may open new doors of opportunity and close other doors of distraction.  Just remember, when you move, your not running away from anything, but rather, you a moving toward something better.

The worlds greatest invention

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When we talk about some of the worlds greatest inventions, what comes to mind?

1.Wheel – It’s hard to believe there ever was a time before the wheel.  What did they do?   Maybe they started off using triangles and then progressed to squares and then pentagons and so forth.  I’m not really sure.

2.Flight – I wonder who was the first person to think, “Man it’s really boring hanging out here on Earth walking around in relative safety.  Hey!  Wouldn’t it be cool to soar through the air at breakneck speeds in a metal boat with wings?”

3.Parachute – You know this flying thing is cool but man I wish we could jump out of a perfectly fine airplane with only a bottomless balloon to save us from certain death.

There are so many great inventions you couldn’t name them all.  For every great invention there are countless useless ones as well.

In my humble opinion, the most awesome extraodinary invention on the face of the Earth is… wait for it… The snooze button.  As a champion sleeper, I fully grasp the importance of the under-stated snooze button.  The alarm gets all the attention and glory.  The snooze button is like the frumpy, spinster bridesmaid in that puffy lime green dress.  The snooze button knows that the alarm has sounded and there is something important to do but It isn’t quite ready for a real commitment just yet.

The Bible tells us the sad story of King Agrippa in Acts 26.  Paul had just finished sounding the alarm but Agrippa was stuck in the land of almost and not quite ready to make a firm commitment to serve Christ.  So he took the easy was out and hit the snooze button.

Snooze buttons are great for lazy Saturday mornings but they are the first steps to spiritual death in the life of a Christian.

Are you are an ambassador?

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Today I was busy working with a customer when I received the best compliment I could ask for.  This is the same customer that a fellow employee told me was hard to get along with and had a bone to pick with our company.

For the last 3 weeks I have been working in an area with some major issues that I have no control over.  On one trip I think I brought more product back than I actually delivered.  It’s basically been a 3 ring circus all month long with Murphy as the announcer.  You know who Murphy is right?  Murphy’s law states, “Anything that can happen will happen”.  For the last 3 weeks I’ve done more damage control than Bill Clinton during the Lewinsky scandal.

We were chatting and I mentioned quickly that they would have a different driver next week but he would probably do just as good a job.   That’s when the customer said that nobody does as good a job as me. That doesn’t speak well of our company but personally it’s nice to hear.

The reason it was nice to hear has absolutely nothing to do with my ego and everything to do with my fulfilling my position of ambassador for the Kingdom of God.  We represent more than just ourselves or our companies.  If you are a Christian, you represent God himself.  If you blend in, then your salt has lost its savour just like Jesus warned in Luke 14:34.  You need to jealously guard your savour.  If you lose your savour, then you’ve lost the Saviour.

I could be wrong, but I believe that a Christian should never blend in.  He or she should be the best worker with the best attitude in the company.  After all, we don’t represent just our companies or ourselves.  II Corinthians 5:20 reminds us that we are ambassadors for Christ.