Passion Vs. Routine

A Good Chance to Visit
(Back in Canada!)

Through a gift from my sister and a friend in the US, it is going to be possible to take the whole family home this February to western Canada for 5 weeks from Feb 1 to March 6^th.  We really want to connect with as a many people as possible, some of you we have already started to try to organize dates.  So if you want to see us for any extended time, or if you have a group of friends that you feel we should get together with, please send us an email or Facebook message. 

We have chosen not to have formal dates to get together this year as important relationships are hard to build on at these events.  Instead we are planning on using more of our time face to face.  Below are a rough list of dates we will be in various cities.  If it doesn’t fit exactly let me know as we can still change them a few days either way to accommodate.

Feb 1 to Feb 4        Calgary

Feb 5 to Feb 9        Kelowna

Feb 10 to 12           Vancouver
                               lower mainland

Feb 13 to 17           Victoria

Feb 18 to 26           Kelowna

Feb 27 to Mar 6      Calgary
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Passion Vs. Routine

It is a new year, and once again we are faced with ‘a new beginning’ and the pressure is on to embrace new pledges to change either weight or discipline or even social interaction.  However, no matter who we are, as the years roll by, we are faced with the every tempering effect of aging.  Like the erosion of a cement statue in a coal burning city.  The pollution of time takes the edges off our soul.  We can all sense it if we look back, the passion of our first year as a believer, the wonder of our first child, the excitement or the fear in our first job or first day of school.  And we all seem so far away from the overwhelming wonder of life Robert Fulgham spoke of, like the seed in the Styrofoam cup in primary school that grows but we don’t know why. 

I am not sure if there is an official date when the wonder and excitement of life leaves.  I am not sure if it is when we make the same noises sitting down as standing up from the sofa.  Or when we no longer want to attend a New Year’s Eve party, but choose instead a reflective time at home in front of the TV. .. But it seems to leave and routine creeps in as passion creeps out. 

As a believer in Christ we would hope the wonder of life is still there.  After all, we have an eternity ahead of us, and if the 70 +/- years we face here are dragging, eternity will seem all that and more….

So why the slide, why the tempering..  I can’t speak for everyone, but for me, it is when I focus on my self too much and on the world around me too little.  My life becomes mundane, monotonous, mediocre.  Slip into the comforts of self too much, and like being too long in a warm bath, it will drain the life from us.  Even if we have all the creature comforts.  And the scary thing about this state of life is that so many live here.  We jump through the hoops, but fail to embrace the reality of now and the importance of every moment of life.

In Mark 1:22 it is written of Jesus ‘²² The people were amazed at his teaching, because he taught them as one who had authority, not as the teachers of the law.’

What was different about Jesus? 

I think it was that he was focused on a task, committed to its completion and 100% invested in the need of others.  Because of that He translated even speaking in the synagogue from a task to a reality.

My prayer for myself, and for all of those in my world, is that we wake up, forget what is behind and move on towards what we have been called too. 

In Him,
Bill