Author: Paul Silcock

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When The Hype Doesn’t Live Up To Reality

It’s a major let down when the real thing doesn’t live up to the hype. Oh, and you know I’m talking about Sunday’s Superbowl game.

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It’s the biggest game in the NFL year and only one team showed up. All the advertisers showed up, with their 4 million dollar commercials. And all the celebrities showed up with their $2500 plus tickets, getting in on the hype to promo their movies or shows.

The football commentators showed up, bringing us game analysis for four hours before the game and then all the way through the game.

This game was wrapped in so much glitter, glory and glam, that even the most uninterested fan couldn’t help but want to get a little peek at what was going to be unwrapped for us.

Wow, what a disappointment! I was expecting a football game. It was more like my son, Mike playing ”Maddens Football 98” with me on our old Sony Playstation. I could never figure out what control to use to tackle his running back. He just killed me!

I had a nightmare last night that Mike was controlling the Settle Seahawks and I was at the controls of the Denver Broncos and that I lost the game for them. I should never have got that kid a gaming system.

Okay, maybe I’m thinking it was such a bad game because I was hoping for Denver to win. But, on second thought, from the first snap that went sailing by Peyton Manning’s head, I had this bad feeling in my gut that this was how it was going to be the whole game.

It would be nice if we could point a finger at someone and say it was his fault. But pretty much the whole team got in on the disaster. From fumbles, to miss tackles, and from poor throws to missed assignments, it was all working for Denver.

I even had in mind to turn the channel and watch American Idol auditions … actually, no I didn’t, but maybe something else. I had a friend who told me half way through that he was going to watch the movie, “Sleepless in Seattle” instead.

It was a dog of a game. I’m sure Seattle fans see it differently. Yes, they played well, but with the way Denver played they should have beat them by twice as much.

There was a nice run back for a touchdown and a couple other plays that were pretty good. But the best play was probably the only touchdown pass that Denver made. The catch was what you wanted to see throughout the Superbowl – spectacular!

Well, I guess I’m glad it’s over. We can all move on to the Olympics now. Poor Lily – she wishes we could take a break from sports for a while. But this year the Superbowl just paves the way for 16 non-stop days of sports over in Sochi.

Here’s the thing: Living the Christian life has to be real. It has to be getting up every day and giving it all you have, putting your life on the line for what you believe. You have to show up as a Christian every day because you don’t know who might be in the audience. You never want the hype to be greater than the real thing.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What can get in your way of bringing your best as a Christian each day? Leave your comment below.

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Sleepless In . . . Kingston!

I just had one of those nights where you find yourself wide awake at 2 am. I’m not sure if this kind of thing is contagious, but a friend of mine was telling me the day before how he had had a sleepless night.

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The very next night, like someone had sneezed right in my face, I rolled around in my bed like I was doing laps at the track.

It makes you crazy when you can’t stop thinking about something, even though you can’t solve it. It just hangs on in your mind. And even when you try to redeem the time by thinking about something else, you always come back to that unrelenting, unpleasant thought or issue.

And, after a while, you realize that unless you do something, you will not be able to sleep at all.

When I get to that stage, I just get up. I need to change my position; I need to get away from the heavy breathing of someone deep in sleep beside me.

So, the other night I got out of bed, went downstairs and started to work on my sermon for the next week. So what if it was Monday morning at 2 am? I have some of my best and most creative thoughts at that time of night.

I worked on my sermon and made great headway until about 3:30 am when I thought I’d better try to sleep. Even though I was still very awake and stimulated from my late night study time, I grabbed a blanket, laid down on the couch and turned the TV on.

If there is anything that will put me to sleep it’s the TV – not those infomercials though, they get me thinking of things I could make or buy. (I think I wrote once about the ab-dolly my son and I made after watching an infomercial.)

No, I need some kind of drama. In my flicking through the channels I came across a TV show I like, called “Castle”. It’s a detective show where a mystery writer helps the police solve crimes.

But the only crime I wanted solved was catching the guy who stole my sleep so far that night! And don’t worry, I won’t give away the show’s ending – only because I can’t … I was asleep in probably 15 minutes.

Actually, all I need is two things to put me to sleep: TV and being horizontal. It works every time. It works for Sunday NFL games, TV shows, and for romantic movies my wife sometime cons me into watching with her.

In the morning it was Lil who woke me up. I had slept through three alarms and never heard one of them. She came down wanting the room for her workout. So I trudged upstairs, and crawled into bed. But by then the day had started in my mind and it wasn’t long before I was up and moving.

… Maybe a little slower than normal, mind you.

Here’s the thing:  Sometimes we are awake because we’ve seen or experienced something that has shocked us. Sometimes it’s just indigestion from bad pizza late at night. But one thing you can do to redeem the time is spend it with God. In those quiet hours, when nothing is moving except your mind, take the time to talk to God. He may have something to say to you.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What can trigger a sleepless night for you? Leave your comment below.

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If A Placebo Can Change The Weather, I Want It!

This week I read an article on the placebo effect. You know, it’s when the doctor gives you a pill, you think it’s a miracle drug, but really it’s made up of nothing more than sugar.

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From what I read, it works for some people in an amazing way. Because they believe something to be true, it actually starts a chemical reaction in them that begins healing in their bodies.

I realize I’m over simplifying it but I really don’t care how it works. I’m just interested in it if it works. And if it works, we need to apply this to way more than just our health!

I wonder if we could apply this mind-over-matter to things that we don’t have control over in nature, like say, the weather.

My daughter believes she brings bad weather with her. She lived in Calgary for six years and they probably recorded the six worst winters on record. One year, she said they had snow or hail in every month of the year.

Now she’s moved back to Ontario, and I hate to tell her this, but Jonah got thrown overboard just for causing rough water for a bunch of sailers. What are we going to do with Karlie if, in fact, she’s responsible for this brutal winter weather that never seems to end?

I wonder if we could all try this placebo effect and start to get our minds to believe that we are having a warm, sunny winter here. You know, gang up on Karlie’s mindset of “I bring bad weather”.

I can’t imagine that Karlie’s the only one that is causing the extreme winter conditions we are experiencing this year. But I figure there has to be a lot of people who would be eager to apply their mind to something like this.

If we could start believing it’s warm outside, maybe we could bring back global warming to this part of the country. I would really appreciate it if the glacier in my front yard would start to recede a little right about now.

To train our minds for this we could scrap the free flu shot clinics … those scientists are so bad at predicting the strain of flu each year, they’re worse than weathermen! What we need instead is free psych clinics. If the government just paid all the sports psychologists and regular psychologists to put on free clinics, I really think we could get our minds moving in the right direction.

If this worked well, we might even be able to create a tropical winter experience right here in Ontario. Then I wouldn’t have to worry about planning a vacation to somewhere warm.

So, how about on the count of three – no, two – we all start thinking about palm trees, white sand, blue water, and sunny skies and see what happens . . .

Hey, I don’t think enough of you are doing it! – there’s still a blizzard outside my window. Or maybe my daughter’s attitude is really powerful. She was pretty strong-willed as a child.

Here’s the thing: God has created us with amazing minds that can do more than we even know. And He has created a world that has elements so powerful we have no control over them. When you think about it, there are so many mysteries around us, it only makes sense to look to God for wisdom, guidance, and help in everything.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: How has having a positive attitude changed something for you?  Leave your comments below.

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Have You Ever Got Tired Of Trying To Plan A Vacation?

I have taken a winter vacation about three times in my life. One time doesn’t count because I was in my early 20’s. At that age, you neither appreciate nor understand any benefits of a winter vacation. A great portion of your life is vacation!

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The other two winter vacations have both been in the last 14 years. One was a trip to Florida, and Disney World, near the end of a winter, and the other more recent one was a Caribbean Cruise at the beginning of a new year.

Both times I’ve told myself that this winter vacation thing is a great idea, and we should do it again. But with ten years between the first two, and four years since the last one, we really haven’t made it a habit.

There are always very good reasons why we don’t. Scheduling is a big deal. It’s not like I can just book any time and go. I have lots of arrangements to make, and then sometimes there are meetings and activities that I can’t get out of.

Money is always an issue. It would be nice to go on a winter vacation and it not affect your wallet but, no matter how cheap people say their trip was, when you start to look for a winter vacation, there are never those kinds of deals.

Lil and I decided to take a winter vacation this year to somewhere warm. At first we had big plans – some all-inclusive resort, where the beaches have white sand and the sun never stops shining.

But every place we checked looked like it would be a way more than we wanted to spend. We then had plans of using a relative’s time share, which would cut the cost down considerably. But when we looked at the dates we could go, there was nothing available.

Now things at work are changing and I may have to change my vacation dates to make it fit. I’m thinking that if we want a winter vacation it might have to involve setting up a tent in our living room for a week!

In some ways, that’s kind of Biblical. There was a festival in Israel, called the Feast of Tabernacles, where they all set up booths (tents) and lived in them for a week. Mind you, the purpose of that was to remember that God had the Israelites live in tents when they left Egypt.

I wonder if that’s where we got the idea for modern camping … where after a week of camping you begin rejoicing that you have a solid roof over your head, a bed that doesn’t stir up claustrophobic nightmares, and you can cook without lighting a match or rubbing a couple of sticks together.

Wow, I’m getting tired and fed up with trying to figure out a winter vacation. Maybe that’s the real reason we have done it so infrequently. You feel like you need another vacation from trying to plan for one.

Here’s the thing:  We often think that if God is in something, it will just fall into place. Well, sometimes things are difficult and take a lot of work, even when God is in them. Sometimes we might have doubts along the way, even when God is in it. Many times it’s not until it’s over that we can look back and say, “See, God was in it the whole time.” … Don’t give up.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What is something you had doubts about, but, in the end, saw God in it all? Leave your comment below.

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What You Do When You Have Words To Say But No Voice

I have no voice and only one day now to find it. Tomorrow I will be preaching at church and today I sound like Marlon Brando from the Godfather.

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For that movie, I understand they put cotton balls in his cheeks to help give him that sound. I don’t need the cotton, it’s all natural, listen … “I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse”.   Not bad, eh?

I know you can’t hear that but, take it from me, I sound just like Don Corleone. And that’s my problem! I need to sound like Paul Silcock by tomorrow at 10:30 am, so you can bet I will be trying all the remedies I’ve heard in the past.

I’ll be checking the internet for solutions, because I understand doctors do that, too. Today I’m going to soothe my throat with some “Fisherman’s Friends” lozenges … hourly.

I don’t really like the taste of them but they’re supposed to be great if you’re fishing in the ocean around the Bay of Fundy on a stormy day. I’ll only be trolling for amens in a warm and dry sanctuary tomorrow, so they should work there, too.

If my mother-in-law finds out what state I’m in she will be pushing echinacea on me. I had a difficult time finding the spelling for echinacea and that goes with the difficult time I have in figuring out what it actually does.

But that doesn’t matter. My mother-in-law thinks echinacea works for pretty much any ailment you might have.

I’m not one for taking medicine of any kind, but I think I might have to take a trip to the drug store and find some magic elixir that will do something to my throat to release my vocal chords from the prison they find themselves in right now.

Then there is my congregation to think about. They may enjoy a more soft spoken, gentler, mafia-sounding preacher for a change.

I think if I ended my sermon with something like “Today God’s making you an offer you can’t refuse”, I may need some help with all the people that might come forward.

I’m really glad that I live in this time period; I have so many help options to choose from. If I lived an hundred years ago, not only would I not have many solutions, I probably wouldn’t have a microphone to help magnify my voice.

One thing is for sure, I’m not putting Vicks VapoRub on my chest. My mother did that to me as a kid, and I hated it. Now I have hair on my chest; there is just no way I’m dealing with that mess!

Nor will I try my Dad’s old remedy of eating onion sandwiches. He would get those little onions and slice them up, arrange the slices on two pieces of toast and enjoy. He probably got that idea from my grandmother. I hate onions.

Well I’ll let you know what happens.

Here’s the thing: There are many things I could do to help my sore throat, and I will try some. But the thing that I’m counting on, what I’m putting my hope in, is God making my voice work tomorrow. I’m praying that He will give me a voice. That doesn’t mean I won’t try anything else, but He’s my first and main source of help for my situation.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: How do you treat a sore throat or laryngitis? Leave your comment below.

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Why Projects Always Take Longer Than You Plan For

Maybe it’s just me, but any project I take on turns out to be more than I bargained for. It doesn’t matter what it is, nothing is as simple as I think it’s going to be. Something I think will take 10 minutes will take a half hour.

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The other day I decided to fix a broken standing pole lamp that Lily really liked.

I took some measurements and headed to the hardware store. I was hoping for an all-in-one-fix-your-standing-pole-lamp-diy kit, but though I looked everywhere, I couldn’t find one.

I scoured the electrical section and found wire that I needed. There were two gauges to choose from; I picked the heavier gauge. I grabbed a switch and a socket that looked about the same as the original ones and headed home.

So I purchased three items and, as it turned out, all of them were different that the original items in the lamp. But for some reason, I figured they would work just fine … and that’s all Lily cared about. She wanted the lamp to work.

It’s like the instruction sheet mentality, where you think, “Who needs instructions? Just do it and don’t worry about spare parts; it will all work out.”

Well, my first problem was in replacing the wire. The opening in the pole was tight; I should have bought the lighter gauged wire. But I was going to make it work! So I forced it in and, yes, it probably took 3X longer than I thought, but I got it done.

I was surprised that the socket went on really quickly. That should have concerned me. When something is that easy, it usually means I forgot to do something. But I was on a roll and moved on to the switch.

I realized that I bought an on/off switch when the original had been a dimmer switch. At that point I didn’t really care. Lily was going to have light, and when you have light, why in the world would you ever want to dim that?!

With the switch in place, I plugged the lamp in and flicked that switch. Voila, it worked! I thought this was one of the easiest projects I’d done in a long time.

That’s when I went to put the lamp shade on and realized why the old socket was different from the new one. It was used to secure the shade to the lamp.

I had to take off the socket and use the old one, and that required me to use solder. … I can’t solder worth a darn and it took me forever to make the change.

When my project was finally complete, I didn’t stand back and think, “Great job, Paul. You did it again.”

I placed the lamp stand in the living room, turned my back to it and walked away thinking, “I don’t want to look at that lamp for the rest of the night.”

Here’s the thing: Sometimes we want to fix our problems in life with ideas we’ve tried before or recycled approaches from some self-help source. The best approach, however, is to seek God for a fresh solution to your problem. Ask Him to apply His power to the problem at hand. He will use the right materials for the job.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What gives you the greatest frustration in problems or projects you have?  Leave your comment below.

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Why The Older You Get The Harder It Gets To Keep Going

This morning I played hockey at 6:30 am and, as I reflect on it, I am feeling old. Both my elbows are sore. I’m not sure whether I have tennis elbow or some other injury, but I think I just have to live with it, if I want to keep playing.

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This was my first game since before Christmas so I’m still a little winded right now, lounging on my couch in our family room writing this blog. I haven’t done anything active for a while (except shovel snow) so I wasn’t at the top of my game.

There were younger guys playing who had lots of energy. I used to have energy, loved to skate hard and could go forever. Now my hips get tired if I go for too long, so I have to coast a bit or go back on defence.

I notice I’m playing defence a lot more these days. I used to hate being a rear guard, working behind the play, throwing the puck up to the forwards and watching the play develop.

I was always in the middle of the action. I was quick to break out and always went to the net. I still play with that sense and urge, except now I don’t mind taking a turn initiating the play and watching it unfold as I coast up the ice catching my breath.

Don’t get me wrong, I would never want to be a full-time defenceman – that’s not me. It’s just that I need a change of pace from skating hard and crashing the net.

I was a little surprised this morning that my knee felt pretty good. I wear a custom-made carbon fibre brace on my left knee, to give it support because of a torn ACL. I’ve been wearing this brace and it’s predecessor for the past 23 years.

This thing has been a lifesaver. With it, I’ve been able to play baseball, hockey, snow ski, and water ski. Without it, I doubt I would have been able to do any of those things.

But even with my brace, in the last while my knee has not felt as stable. It feels like it is deteriorating a bit and I may need to have it scoped again some time.

Being a pastor, I’ve done my fare share of visiting people in the hospital who’ve had hip replacements, knee replacements, and open heart surgery, and their stories stick with me. I hope I won’t be in their place one day.

However, with all my aches and pains, I can’t rule that out. I never saw myself as having parts that would wear out. Now I wonder about that.

My right elbow has regressed, it feels like it did about two weeks ago. It hurts to even bring my hand up to my face. Oh well, I’ll play again on Monday and try to get myself back in shape. Once I start playing I don’t really think about my aches and pains.

There’s something about being in the action that dulls all those twinges of discomfort.

Here’s the thing: It’s easy to let little annoyances and pains stop you from doing activities that are good for you. They can become a great excuse, and justify giving up. You find the same thing in your spiritual growth. Little things will try to keep you from continuing on the path of growth. Don’t give in, keep growing.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What do you find gets in the way of you growing spiritually? Leave your comment below.

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A Restaurant Service Disaster

I am wondering if there was a restaurant servers’ work slowdown last Sunday and no one made it public. It seemed like just another Sunday to me, that is, until my wife, Lily, and I went out for lunch after church.

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We had a busy afternoon ahead of us, with some hospital visiting, so we thought we would grab something to eat at a restaurant rather than going home first.

In deciding where to eat, we didn’t really want fast food, but we didn’t really want to be a long time in a restaurant, either. We were kind of in a hurry. So where do you go when you want an upgrade from burger and fries but don’t want to wait half an hour for your food? Swiss Chalet, of course.

So we got in the car and headed right there. Swiss Chalet was a perfect choice because you know what you are going to order before you enter the restaurant (at least one of us does).

When I was growing up, their entire menu could be boiled down to three options: You could order a quarter chicken white meat, or a quarter chicken dark meat. And if you were really hungry, you could order a half chicken meal.

Now they’ve added a number of other items like ribs and salads and a few others that my eyes kind of gloss over when I look at the menu.

So, when we pulled open the doors to the restaurant, I was ready to tell my waitress exactly what I wanted on my plate. Except when we got through the doors, we realized there were several other people waiting to be seated.

I was a little surprised at this because it was after 1:00 pm, so the noon rush should have been over by then. But I thought, “This is no problem; it’s Swiss Chalet. This line will clear out in no time.”

And sure enough, we didn’t wait more than about 5 minutes before we were shown to our table.  However, on our way to our table, I noticed there was a whole section that was empty, and in the back of my mind I wondered why we had to wait to be seated.

We sat down and I did my usual thing of turning the pages of the menu, not really looking at anything, and then closing it again … because, of course, I already knew what I was going to order.

It was about then that I noticed a few things. There were no waitresses in sight. No one came to ask us if we wanted something to drink. I started to get a bad feeling that if we stayed we would be there all afternoon.

We actually decided to try another restaurant. Others stayed, but we left – no waitress had noticed us come in anyway. The crazy thing was, on our way out there was another line up of people by the entrance waiting to be seated.

If only they knew there was just a hostess working that day, and there wouldn’t be anyone to take their order.

Here’s the thing: We can get conditioned to just accept things in our lives, even things that are wrong in God’s eyes. Don’t just accept those sins as things you can’t do anything about.  Recognize they are wrong and make a move to get rid of them.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What is something that you have just put up with in your life?  Leave your comment below.

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How Your Purchases Make An Impact

Have you ever thought how much we consumers are getting ripped off in our purchases? I know everyone has to make a living, and demand will drive the price of a product, but I hate paying more than I have to.

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Recently, I purchased an optical audio cable through Amazon. The price was unbelievable at $2.99 so I had to order it. I should have ordered 100 and gone into business. The same cable at Best Buy or Future Shop would have cost me between $25 and $35.

How can I possibly get that cable at such a low price unless someone is making about 90% profit on it or there is some factory worker in China making about $.50 a day?

I can see it all happening … Some guy wakes up at about 4 am, rolls up his sleeping matt in his thatched roof home that’s on stilts in the country. He gets on his bicycle and rides down dirt roads, past flooded rice fields, and arrives at a huge factory at about 6 am.

He puts on his uniform and joins an assembly line of people putting together wires they have never seen before, have no idea what they are for, and have no use for them themselves.

He then repeats that ritual six days per week to provide for his family.

Meanwhile, I’m waiting about 4-6 weeks (feels like 46 weeks) for this piece of wire to arrive in the mail. I’m happy that I finally have it now, but I was really tempted about two weeks in to just break down and purchase the cable at full price.

I’d also be okay paying $25 for the cable if I knew that someone in perhaps Aylmer, Ontario was in his garage hand-making these cables, one at a time. But my suspicion tells me that all these cables are made in China by the same guy who’s making $.50 per day.

I guess I shouldn’t be too quick to make these assumptions; I haven’t even tried the cable out yet. What if my 3 buck audio cord doesn’t even work? I didn’t by it from a store where I can take it back. I can’t call up the factory worker in China who made the thing; he may not even have electricity in his hut, for all I know.

One comforting thing is that, for the amount of time it took for my package to arrive, it shows that their postal service is as bad or worse than ours. And there was some saving in the packaging.

The cable in the store was all packaged in a box, with a see-through window to view the product. It was attractive and gave all kinds of information about the product, probably including where it was made. My product came in a small knock-off ziplock bag, inside a 4×6 bubble pack envelope.

There was no product information, but the bag was clear plastic so I could see the entire product. I’m happy that I only paid a fraction of what it would have cost me in the store … I’m just saying there’s a rip-off going on somewhere!

Here’s the thing:  Regardless of what cable I purchase, I’m making an impact on someone. The difference is in the kind of impact I’m going to make. And you can live in such a way that your faith shows up very little in your life or you can live in a way that your faith is very prominent in your life. You will have an impact on people, either way. What kind of an impact do you want to make?

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What kind of impact does your life make on others? Leave your comment below.

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How Shovelling Snow Is Good For You

The opening line from a 1970 song by Led Zeppelin goes, “We come from the land of the ice and snow”. They wrote that song after a concert in Reykjavik, Iceland, but they could have written it if they had played in Kingston a week ago!

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It’s not that ice and snow are unfamiliar to us here in Eastern Ontario, it’s the amount of time I’ve spent in the last three days breaking up ice and snow from my driveway and sidewalk.

I’ve done the excavation work and we have several layers that have been discovered below the surface that we are driving on. I haven’t uncovered any fossils or dinosaur bones yet, but I still have more to unearth as I seek to reach the pavement.

Most people just have one property they need to consider when removing the snow and ice, but I have two. Sunday morning I spent over an hour and a half before our service breaking up the ice and snow on the walkway at church.

That’s the glamorous part of being a pastor! Thankfully, I was saved from total exhaustion by my associate, and a few other congregants who came to my assistance.

Then, after church, during what is normally my “NFL nap time”, I continued to work like an archeologist on my driveway for an hour or so.

Things were melting, which made my work a little easier, but also urgent because the cold weather was coming back and I really needed to make headway before everything froze up again.

At one point, my neighbour drove home and stopped in front of our house for a moment and just pointed to his place. I said to him, “I’ll get on it right away.” Then he parked his vehicle and yelled over to me, “That’ll give you a heart attack!”

I didn’t really need the reminder that I’ve already had one of those, but it did get me thinking that I better not overdue it. Hospitals see a higher volume of heart attacks after a snowfall. It’s all that heavy pushing and lifting, and then immediately afterwards lying on a couch for a rest, that’s hard on your heart.

Normally, I get to the end of January before I’m sick of the snow, but I think I’m pretty much sick of it now. When is spring, anyway? We’ve passed the shortest day of the year, the sunlight will be with us longer and longer now. If only the clouds would leave us.

In Led Zeppelin’s song, they sing, “Our only goal will be the western shore”, but for me, at this moment in time, a southern destination is the only thing on my mind.

Enough of this digging up ice and snow, enough looking for buried treasure (asphalt and cement). What I really need is a beach somewhere, where the only thing I’m digging is my feet into the sand at the water’s edge!

Here’s the thing: Often when we find ourselves in the midst of something that is difficult, and maybe unpleasant, we seek some kind of relief from it. We want to escape from the difficulty into something pleasant, something enjoyable. Instead of seeking escape, seek God to help you through the difficulty you find yourself in. You will learn more from God by going through something than escaping from it.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What do you find difficult and unpleasant that you would like to escape from?  Leave your comment below.