Fare thee well

Today is Adrian’s last day of work here.  Tomorrow we leave and start our 3000 km journey to our new home.

I don’t want to go, but I know we have to.  We are called to move.  While we deliberated the call, it was easy to see how God was calling us onward, yet when we said yes, it suddenly became a much bigger deal.

Though I have moved 9 times in my life (4 of which were large, either across Canada or to Australia), I find this place harder to leave.  It has become my home.  Maybe it’s because we started our marriage here, or because our three sons were born here.  Maybe it’s the stage of life.  Maybe it’s the beauty of this place or the people who live here.  Maybe it’s the memories that crowded the empty house we cleaned yesterday.

All I know is that it is time to say goodbye, or rather “farewell”.

Fare well, my beautiful town with your lovely, pristine beaches. Fare well, first house of our marriage – the place where our children grew, where I painted a tree on the wall, where we played and danced and sang, cooked and cleaned and worked.  Fare well to the place that was sometimes unbearable for me – the distance away from nearly everything like when I couldn’t even contemplate going to my grandmother’s funeral.  Fare well to silly poetic thoughts of the glorious and terrifying ocean.  Fare well to friends met and made by all of us.  Fare well to two lovely congregations who have cared for us and challenged us.  Fare well to some of the best coffee.  Fare well to shops where the keepers know me (and the children) by sight and ask after them if they are not with me.  Fare well to windy days and middle of the night towel banks by the front windows in rough rain. 

Fare well to long drives north and west.  Roads known so well, filled with conversations and silly things.  Fare well to walks in the bush and on the beach, around the neighbourhood and over rocks.  Fare well familiar sights and smells.   Farewell lovely people whom I will miss.  Fare well habits and schedules, birds and trees.

Fare well to dreams unfinished, hopes unrealized and plans undone.

I love you, my little house of dreams; goodbye. May God bless this place and these wonderful congregations that made this place home.  We pray God will bless you with a faithful pastor.

Hello to the future, to not knowing what’s around the corner but going boldly where God has called us.  With our home in our hearts (and future vacation plans) we go forward to new dreams, new hopes, new plans. 

Farewell.

Good Friday

Today has been a very difficult day for me.  From a mishap before the grocery store this morning and large frustration afterward to little boys acting up in church and being rough so that they were disruptive through service this morning to spew in my hair, it's just been a full on, hard day.  As I sat in church with my head in my hands, wondering if all this congregation will remember of me is this moment where I feel like the most useless parent, a new thought strikes me.

No matter how hard this day gets for me, it is Good Friday.

The Good is mine.  The Good is done.  The Good was because this was Jesus' worst day ever.  As I sit with the weight of three little boys wrestling in my lap on and off, he had the weight of the world on his shoulders.

Have you ever had a sin weigh on you?  You know you did something wrong and you can feel that weight pressing you down?  Jesus had that sin on him.  All of the sins of all eternity, of every person, he took on all the guilt, the shame, the wretchedness, the pain and suffering of all and he broke it.

He died and took to death all of that sin.  He was crushed for our iniquities.  By his stripes we are healed.  It is finished.  He has died for the sins of the world.  The sins of a world that does not acknowledge him, a world that constantly mocks him - he even bore that sin.

And he did it uncomplainingly.  He did it because he is love.

And you know what else? He is risen.

As I tucked my boys into bed at nap, my anger and frustration were gone.  Jesus' love and sacrifice has healed my soul, not through any deserving of mine, but because of love.

Let us love one another.  Not be tolerant or stupid, but actually love.  Care for, build up, encourage each other to go the right way.  Not the way of the world, but the way of our Saviour.  Trusting in his mercy, holding fast to his promise to never leave us or forsake us, clinging to the cross.

Come Lord Jesus, come into this weary world.  Oh, how we long for you to come, Lord, come.

Themes taken from Isaiah 53, 1 John 3 and a song by Robin Mann.

A Song

Jesus, I Will Ponder Now
--Sigismund von Birken


Jesus, I will ponder now on your holy Passion; with your Spirit me endow for such meditation.  Grant that I in love and faith may the image cherish of your suffering, pain, and death that I may not perish.

Make me see your great distress, anguish, and affliction, bonds and stripes and wretchedness and your crucifixion; make me see how scourge and rod, pear and nails did wound you, how you died for those, O God, who with thorns had crowned you.

Yet, O Lord, not thus alone make me see your Passion; but its cause to me make known and its termination.  For I also and my sin brought your deep affliction; this the shameful cause has been of your crucifixion.

If my sins give me alarm and my conscience grieve me, let your cross my fear disarm, peace and pardon give me.  Grant that I may trust in you and your holy Passion; if his Son forgives anew, God must have compassion.

Jesus, Lord, my heart renew, let me bear my crosses, learning humbleness from you, peace despite my losses.  May I give you love for love!  Hear me, O my Savior, that I may in heaven above sing your praise forever.


Tune: Jesu Kreuz, Leiden Und Pein (Melchior Vulpius)
1^st Published in: 1646

Aware

I've tried to start this post about 10 times and every start just isn't right.  Too pithy or silly or whatever.

I was asked to promote this site on my blog.  Please check it out.  Sure, the official week has passed but we all need to be made aware of things in life.  Be careful.  And help get rid of dangerous things.

http://www.mesothelioma.com/heather/awareness/