connection

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The Connection We Don’t Want To Miss Out On

Have you ever had one of those days where you just couldn’t make a connection?

the connection we don't want to miss out on

That was my morning today. I say that it was only my morning because I’m hoping that the rest of the day doesn’t go like my early morning did. I missed connection after connection. 

We’ve all had times when we missed connections. 

There was the time I was traveling from Toronto to Regina and missed my connection altogether. I had the wrong time for when my plane was leaving and I never checked my ticket. 

That was a bad one. 

Then there are the regular missed connections with our phones. 

You look at your phone and realize someone had tried to call you, but you didn’t notice because your phone was on vibrate … or you are talking to someone while driving through a dead zone and lose the connection altogether. 

Missed connections happen all the time. They are frustrating and annoying, but we have to put up with them.

I remember once going to meet up with a friend at Tim Horton’s. We said we’d connect at Tim’s on Princess Street. The problem was there were four Tim Horton’s on Princess Street and the one I thought we were going to meet at was not the one he had in mind. 

We were both waiting at different Tim Horton’s and missed our connection. 

Over the last little while we have been selling off some old furniture we didn’t want anymore. Lily has been great at posting the items and selling them on Kijiji or Facebook. We’ve connected several pieces with people. 

We still have one thing we can’t seem to make a connection on. We’ve had some bites, some interest; a few people have made some inquires. But we can’t connect this desk to a new home.

Sometimes making the right connection seems impossible.

This morning at hockey my team couldn’t make a connection for any amount of money. Passes were not getting to the player they were intended for. I made four or five passes right on the tape of players’ sticks and they bobbled the pass and the puck got away from them.

One time I just stepped on the ice and the play was right by me. Our defenseman made a good play at the blue line to check the puck off the opposing team. He then shoved at the puck to get it to me so I would have a clear breakaway.

Instead, the puck clipped the edge of a skate and deflected away from me right to a player on the other team. He took the puck in on our net and scored. 

For our team, the whole game was about missed connections. 

When I got home, I felt like I should go back to bed and get up an hour later to shake off the failed connection trend I was on. 

Here’s the thing: As some point in our lives we need to make a connection with God. We need to connect with Him in a relationship. If we don’t, we will miss that connection and end up in hell for all eternity. God wants to make a connection; all we have to do is be available. 

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What connections have you missed out on lately? Leave your comments and questions below. 

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Your Perception Of Isolation May Be Wrong

Isolation and social distancing can give the perception that contact and connection is lost.

Your Perception of Isolation May be Wrong

We fear a loss of contact and connection during this pandemic. As a pastor, a big concern of mine is that people – especially those who are more vulnerable – will feel forgotten and alone.

During this time when contact is our enemy, we want to find ways to ease the loneliness. 

I remember playing dodge ball as a kid. There were only a few rules to the game and the bottom line was if the ball made contact with you, you were out. That was it; there was no second chance. It was harsh and you sat on the sideline until a new game began. 

It also meant you had to be in good shape to stay in the game. You had to move and dodge (hence the name of the game) to avoid getting hit. The people who were the most agile, the most flexible, could jump the highest and duck the lowest were the ones who would win the game. 

But as I got older, the rules of the game changed. 

The ball could actually make contact but only if you were holding another ball and it hit that ball and not your body. Then you were safe. Also, if a ball came whizzing towards you and you caught it, you were still in the game even though there was contact made.

The game had evolved to allow some contact under certain conditions to a game that was all about no contact. The changes increased the length of the games and kept more people in the game longer. It was actually pretty good.

So this game, known for its no-contact rule, actually added a whole lot of contact. 

This past week two groups in the city that work with seniors reached out to me. They wanted to bless the seniors in our church by giving them a gift of sorts. Their problem was that they had no means of either contacting random seniors or of distributing the gifts.

Their solution was to use the churches, so our church received a number of gifts from them intended for our seniors.

My problem was that most of our more vulnerable seniors have been avoiding contact during this pandemic and are not yet coming out to church services, so I would need to find a way to distribute all these gifts.

The only thing I could think of was asking our congregation if they would help deliver the gifts to our seniors. 

At church and through our livestream, we asked for volunteers to help deliver these gift packets. It was amazing how many people stepped up to make contact and connect with those who are experiencing isolation and social distancing to a greater degree. 

In the midst of the isolation and social distancing, there is far more contact and connecting happening than we perceive. 

… And as a pastor, it is so encouraging to see!

Here’s the thing: If you are feeling isolated, if you are lacking contact and are feeling forgotten and lonely, God is trying to make contact with you right now. He wants you to know He is with you. Give Him the opportunity to bring you His love and forgiveness. Reach back to Him and connect with God in a personal way through Christ. The perception may be that you are alone but there is a lot more contact and connection right around you than you realize.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What can you do to make contact with someone today? Leave your comments and questions below.

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We Want To Know and Be Known

Have you ever known you know someone, but you didn’t know them all at the same time?

to know and be known

I’m sure this happens to every one of us and it happened to me the other day. 

I greeted someone in our church and, as I shook his hand, I knew that we had some kind of connection. There was something familiar about him but I didn’t know what. 

There was one time I was in a mall and spied a person from my church. I went up to him and said “hi”. And though he said “hi” back to me, I could tell he didn’t know who I was. 

This man had been in our church for years!  

Later I found out that he didn’t recognize me because he had only ever seen me at church and in a suit. The context was all wrong for him and, though he knew me, it just didn’t compute with him at the time. 

Well, it was a similar kind of setting for me the other day. I could tell by looking at this man’s eyes that this was not the first time we had met. He recognized me, but right then and there I just had no idea who he was.

What made it worse was that there was no time at that particular moment to try to explore our previous relationship. I just had to go back to my seat to wonder and ponder who this man might be. 

Nothing came to me. 

Then I got up to preach and, every time I looked his way, there was something familiar about him, but I couldn’t figure it out. 

My brain was working like one of those TV crime show identification computers. You know the scene: they get a picture of a suspect, pinpoint some markers on his or her face and then run it through their database. All the faces flash repeatedly on the screen until they get a hit and they identify the criminal. 

That’s what was happening to me on the platform, only there was no hit. The computer wasn’t turning up any useful information on this guy. 

My only hope was to do investigative work the old fashioned way. 

After the service I saw him standing in the foyer with his son. I went to shake his hand again. This time I could tell he knew that I didn’t know who he was, so he mercifully told me his name. 

And then the computer in my brain got a hit and all his information came rushing into my memory banks. 

… I really need to get my old computer checked out; it should work a little better than that. 

What made it more embarrassing to me was that ours was not a quick meeting or greeting that we had had once upon a time – I’ve had this man speak in our church on two occasions! 

But once the connection was made, it was amazing how familiar he seemed and how our conversation flowed because we knew each other. 

Here’s the thing: In a world of 7.5 billion people, you might expect that you are not much more than a number to God, that God really doesn’t know you that well. In reality, God knows everything about you. And you can be sure that He will never have a time when He knows He knows you but doesn’t know you at the same time. God knows you right down to the hairs on your head; He knows you intimately. Make sure you know Him in the same way. 

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What can you do to become more familiar with God? Leave your comments and questions below.

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You Have More Connections Than You Know

I’ve met people who seem to have connections with everyone, but we’re all pretty connected. What I mean is we all know people who know others who we know.

human-connections

You don’t go too long before you bump into people you know, or who know someone you know. Every time Lily, my wife, goes shopping it seems she meets people she knows.

What is really amazing is finding you have a common connection with someone who lives on the other side of the country.

With travel being so easy and available, it’s hard not to find connections between people. Still,  it’s not like you can go up to someone who lives in California and say ‘I know a guy who lives in LA. Do you know him?”

We chuckle at that kind of thinking, but seriously, we can run into people in far away places and find that we have a connection …

On our trip to Mexico, I ran into high school friends at the airport. We live in different cities, been out of high school for 40 years, and have not consciously made contact or kept in touch over that time.

Yet there we were, flying on the same airline to the same destination, staying at the same resort for the same length of time. Wow, that was freaky!

Yet even more far out than that was a couple Lily and I met while waiting for a shuttle bus to take us from our resort to a nearby town to go shopping.

We were waiting for the shuttle when a couple came up to us and asked if we were going into Playa del Carmen. After we said yes, the husband asked where we were from.

I told him we were from Kingston, Ontario, and then to be polite to these total strangers, I asked where they were from.

Their reply was, “Edmonton, Alberta”, but then they corrected themselves by saying, “actually, we live in Sherwood Park”.

Since Lily and I had lived in Edmonton for eleven years, we told them we knew exactly where that was.

I mentioned that I had been a pastor at Beulah Alliance Church in Edmonton, and that we have a sister church, Sherwood Park Alliance Church, in their area. … Beulah and Sherwood Park are both large churches so I figured even if they didn’t go to church they might have heard of one or both of these churches.

Their response was very interesting. Their children attended the school that was associated with Sherwood Park Alliance.

To that I responded, “Oh, I think I used to know the principal of that school; I played soccer in college with him,” and then uttered his name.

Their eyes got all big and they said they knew him very well.

So there we were at a resort near Playa del Carmen, Mexico, by chance meeting people who lived on the other side of Canada from us, and we both knew the same person.

How’s that for a connection?

Here’s the thing: In life there are many connections just waiting to be uncovered. Spiritually, God wants to reveal His connection to us through His Son, Jesus. Don’t be shy about uncovering or developing that connection with Christ Jesus.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What has been your most amazing connection with someone? Leave your comment below.