Flatlander Faith

Apologetics from an Anabaptist perspective

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The Emperor’s New Clothes and Donald Trump

Leave a comment Posted by on August 16, 2018

In the tale The Emperor’s New Clothes, by Hans Christian Andersen, a vain emperor is approached by two men who claim to be master weavers. They offer to make him a marvellously fine set of clothes from material that only they know how to make. This material has a unique characteristic, it is invisible to those who are unfit for office or not very intelligent.

After many days they present this new garment to the Emperor. He cannot see it, but is afraid to appear stupid or unfit for his office, so he praises its beauty. All his courtiers do likewise. A great parade is announced for the Emperor to display his marvellous new wardrobe and all the people are informed of its magical quality.

The parade begins well, the people exclaim about the beauty of the emperor’s garment. Then one little boy yells “The emperor has no clothes!” Slowly the people catch on that they have been duped; but the emperor and his courtiers, afraid to admit that they too have been duped, continue the parade, stepping more proudly than before.

This tale is an apt metaphor for the current state of our Western democracies and Donald Trump is the bratty little boy who called out the flim-flammery of our intellectual, cultural and political elites. Most media outlets are willing participants in this effort to portray the direction pursued by these elites as the only right way to think.

A photo from the Republican convention has stuck in my mind. It showed one of the attendees holding a placard that proclaims “Trump digs coal.” I think that neatly captured the appeal of Donald Trump. While the elites were talking about climate change and clean energy, they never said anything about how that might affect the livelihood of people in the coal mines and coal-fired electricity plants. Trump understood the concerns and fears of the people so casually dismissed by the elite and aimed his campaign at them.

Conrad Black writes a weekly column in the National Post, one of Canada’s national newspapers. When Trump first announced his candidacy Black was almost a lone voice in considering this to be a serious run for president, with a good chance of succeeding. Black wrote that Trump was not a buffoon, he had the understanding and skills to win, and that he would make an effective president. Now he has published a book: Donald J. Trump, A President Like No Other. The book details Donald Trump’s early life, his business career, the presidential campaign and his first year in office.

It becomes clear from the book that Trump’s bid for the presidency was not a spur of the moment decision, or just another publicity stunt. In fact, the activities of Trump that were dismissed by the elites as publicity stunts were actually a calculated plan by Trump to make his name known to ordinary Americans. This includes his TV show, his sponsorship of beauty pageants and pro wrestling and other activities that kept his name in the public eye.

He was willing to bide his time for years until the opportune time when he would have the best opportunity to win. Meanwhile, people were becoming more and more dissatisfied with the lack of direction in the country. Jobs were exported to Asia, unrealistic programs were announced to combat climate change, twelve million people were in the country illegally, governments alienated traditional allies and tried to cosy up to enemies, and no one would publicly admit that most terrorists were Islamic.

Trump is not anti-Hispanic; he just wants people to enter the country legally. He received a larger portion of the Hispanic vote than Hilary Clinton. He is not a misogynist and most women recognized that; he received more votes from white women than did Hilary Clinton. He is not anti-Muslim; he just doesn’t want to open the borders to anyone who is radicalized and a potential threat to the country.

Trump has let North Korea and Iran know that he is not going to play the diplomatic game by their rules. He is not a bully, but is not willing to let the USA be bullied by erratic and dangerous dictators.

Conrad Black does not portray Donald Trump as a thoroughly admirable person; he does not gloss over any of his past or present missteps. On the other hand, Black points out the hypocrisy of those who are opposed to Trump and are still trying to portray him as a dangerous and erratic madman. The elite is not willing to admit that they have no clothes, they still say that things would be better if people would just listen to them. Black’s conclusion about Trump is that “he is a man of his times, and his time has come.”

Something similar has happened in France, where Emmanuel Macron, who had never been elected to any political office, ran for President a year and a half ago, without the backing of any political party, and won. He then formed a new party that won a large majority in the French parliament last summer. Macron is a smoother man than Trump, but has many of the same objectives.

I am not writing to urge political activism, rather to urge Christians to avoid jumping on popular bandwagons of political correctness. Most of the programs advanced by the highly educated and sophisticated elite, in Canada and other countries, are not ways to make life better for the general population. They are simply means to convince us poor ignorant people to trust them to run things, for their own benefit. Pray for our governments, we live in treacherous times.

Donald J. Trump, A President Like no Other, © 2018 by Conrad Black. Published by Regnery Publishing, Washington DC

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God’s way is best

2 Comments Posted by on May 30, 2018

I watched bemused as Michelle pedalled her tricycle back in forth on the sidewalk in front of our house. Then she saw a bus coming and pedalled to the bus stop at the end of the block. After a passenger or two had dismounted or mounted the bus, she lined up beside it. When the bus began to move she did too, pedalling for all she was worth to beat the bus to the other end of the block. She never quite beat it, but she could keep up.

“She’s just a little girl trying to amuse herself,” I thought. “She knows to keep out of the way of pedestrians and she never leaves our block. But I’ve got to get my family to a place where she has something better to do than drag race with a city bus.”

January 18 of 1978 was my mother’s 70th birthday. That was also the day my Dad suffered a stroke. He lived for two more days and passed away early in the morning of the 20th. Dad had been fading away for some time; after the stroke we had known the end was near. But that knowledge didn’t insulate me from the shock of him actually being gone. That shock triggered an allergy attack.

Mom’s life had centred around visiting Dad in the nursing home, but she was a resilient person adn soon settled into the new reality in her life. Circumstances made it necessary for Dennis to stop farming. I helped him for a few weeks that spring, cleaning up around the yard and getting machinery ready for the auction sale. After the sale it seemed that we were now free to leave for a congregation where we could make our home. Mom was quite capable of looking after herself and said nothing to discourage us from leaving.

But where would we go? Congregations in Western Canada were rural and there didn’t seem to be work available anywhere near them. At least not for someone with my allergy problems. When a new congregation began to form that spring at Swanson, my hopes were aroused. Some families from Linden were moving there, as well as all the members from Hague. We looked around there in May. Swanson was west of the South Saskatchewan River. There was an irrigation district on the east side with the main crop being potatoes. My hopes began to rise.

On our way home I stopped at a potato storage plant and asked the lady in the front office if they were hiring. She said yes and handed me an application form. I took it out to the car and was going to fill it out. The first question stopped me: Do you have any allergies?

A dark cloud filled the car as we began the drive home. Then an idea popped into my mind : “Why don’t you go to St Marys, Ontario?” It was ridiculous, so far away and we didn’t know anyone there. But it seemed to bring a little glimmer of light.

We talked it over in the following days. It was such a little glimmer of light, but it was all we had. We decided I would drive out there first, find work and a place to live, then Chris and Michelle would follow.

We packed everything we could into our little Toyota and June 1, 1978 I started the long eastward drive. There is a song in the Christian Hymnal entitled “God’s Way is Best.” The first line of the chorus goes “God’s way is best, I will not murmur, although the end I do not see.” That was my situation; I certainly did not have any idea what I would find or how things would turn out when I got where I was going. Yet it seemed that this was what God wanted me to do, and I went. As I travelled I sang that hymn off and on and found that I could remember all four verses.

I got to the St Marys area Sunday afternoon and drove down the road where the church was located and where some of the families lived.  I didn’t have the courage to stop but drove on into Stratford and found a motel for the night. As I sat in that room the question uppermost on my mind was “What on earth am I doing here?” A prayer before I went to bed settled my mind again that I was where God wanted me to be.

The next morning I drove down the road by the church and saw a farmer adjusting a piece of equipment in a field. It was Howard Nickel and he directed me to a place down the road where a house was being renovated to be the home of minister Robert Toews. I stopped there and that broke the ice. I spent the next couple days looking for work and found a job at an auto parts plant in Mitchell, on the northern edge of the congregation.

There was Bible Study Wednesday evening and I sat in the St Marys church for the first time. I wanted to ask for the hymn I had been singing on the trip to Ontario, but I couldn’t remeber the number. As I paged frantically through the book, someone else called out a number. My heart sank, but when I found the place in the hymnal it was the one I had been looking for. As we sang “God’s Way is Best,” a feeling washed over me that I had arrived where I was supposed to be.

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Time to make a decision

Leave a comment Posted by on May 22, 2018

At least I thought we had exhausted all the possibilities in trying to find a church that still believed and lived the old Anabaptist faith. Could I have missed something? Or had I misunderstood something?

If I was honest with myself, I had felt more at home in congregations of the Church of God in Christ, Mennonite than anywhere else. But the fear of being deceived was holding me back from considering whether this church might be what I was looking for.

Just what does “one Lord, one faith, one baptism” (Ephesians 4:5) mean? I went alone to pray and ask God to help me see what the Bible really taught about the church. As I rose from the prayer, I felt a need to read again what Menno Simons wrote about the signs by which the true church of God could be identified. He listed six:

1. By an unadulterated, pure doctrine.
2. By a scriptural use of the sacramental signs.
3. By obedience to the Word.
4. By unfeigned brotherly love.
5. By an unreserved confession of God and Christ.
6. By oppression and tribulation for the sake of the Lord’s Word.

As I read them this time, and considered all the churches we had known, it was suddenly crystal clear that there was no other church to which even one of these signs could be applied. We had met many friendly and helpful people, they seemed from the outside to get along well together. But could it be called unfeigned brotherly love when they didn’t really trust each other? Many churches talked about the new birth, and about spiritual unity. Yet they baptized anyone who said they had been born again and had communion at appointed times, even though they were not fully at peace with one another.

These thoughts were pointing me strongly toward the Holdeman Mennonites. But what about the claim of exclusivity? Once again, I looked to see what Menno said. It wasn’t hard to find and again I understood something I had missed before. Here is what Menno wrote:

Reader, understand what I mean ; we do not dispute about whether or not there are some of the chosen one’s of God, in the before mentioned churches ; for this we, at all times, humbly leave to the just and gracious judgment of God, hoping there may be many thousands who are unknown to us, as they were to holy Elias ; but our dispute is, in regard to what kind of Spirit, doctrine, sacraments, ordinances and life, Christ has commanded us to gather unto him an abiding church, and how we should maintain it in his ways.

Menno obviously believed there were many Christians in other churches; he was not saying that there was only one church in which one could be saved. But he was concerned that other churches were offering comfort to the unsaved and not guiding and supporting those who were saved.

My heart was settled. I knew where God wanted us to be and where I wanted to be. I made several two hour trips to visit a minister in the Linden Congregation of the Church of God in Christ, Mennonite and knew that was where I wanted to be.

This was too abrupt a change in direction for Chris. She was frightened and not at all willing to make another move. She felt at home where we were and was sure that I was deceived. We hashed this over many times without getting any closer to seeing things the same way. The possibility that we might have to part ways loomed before us.

Finally we knelt together and prayed about the direction we should take. When the prayer was finished, Chris said she still felt the same apprehension about the direction I was taking, but she would go with me.

The night before we left, the bishop and his wife invited us for supper. Before we parted, he had one last warning for me. “You have expressed some misgivings in the past about the Holdeman church. I share those misgivings. We have never seen it happen that a church could drift from full obedience to the truth and recover itself. When a church has drifted, it is time to come out and start over again on the gospel ground.”

As I listened to those words, I realized the bishop understood a church to be merely a man-made entity. What he meant as a warning I took as a confirmation that God was leading me to a church where He was doing the building and the refining.

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Family heirloom

Leave a comment Posted by on May 4, 2018

Dear children, I am sending this dear old book as a Granny present. It is one of my dearest friends. I have been reading it for the last fifty years and tried to teach my children to live by its teachings and pray you may do the same by your own children. Its blessed promises are so sweet. It has helped me to bear sorrow that otherwise I’m sure I never could have borne if I had not had his strong arm to lean on.
Tis so sweet to trust in Jesus,
Just to take him at his word.
May the Heavenly Father care for you and help you is the prayer of your Mother.
Mattie Zarn

This note was written in pencil on the fly leaf of an old Bible. Only that page from the Bible has survived. Mattie Zarn was the mother of Bert Zarn, husband of Lottie (Goodnough) Zarn, my aunt. Bert and Lottie were married at Pipestone, Minnesota in 1900, the note was probably written a few years later.

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Happy birthday to my wife

4 Comments Posted by on March 28, 2018

There was once a young lady growing up in an unstable home, who was attracted to a man somewhat older, but not much more stable. They got married and soon a daughter joined the family. Time went on, they moved hither and yon. The daughter grew up and left home to work hither and yon.

After many years the couple returned to a place not far from where they had started out. A young man from that place took note of the daughter and asked her to marry him. Time went on and now there are four grandchildren in the family.

Yesterday the young lady turned 65. The whole family got together to celebrate by haveing supper in a nice restaurant, paid for by the son-in-law.

How did a home begun on such a shaky foundation come to enjoy such happiness? The only answer that makes sense is that they learned to pray and every time they came to a fork in the road they asked God which way to go.

To God be the glory.

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An answered prayer

1 Comment Posted by on March 25, 2018

We had talked over our situation that night, prayed for direction and believed we had been shown a direction that we should pursue. There still remained the question of whether Dennis would need or want my help.

It didn’t take long for the answer to come. The phone rang the next morning before we had time to eat breakfast. It was Dennis. He started out as he always does: “How are you doing? How is Chris? How is Michelle?” Then he started talking about the ranch land that he and Ted were buying south of Moose Jaw and wondered if I wanted to come in as a partner. Well, maybe I wanted, but we had no money laying around for such an investment.

Then he said that looking after the pasture land would give him even less time for field work and wondered if I was available for that. “And the house on the half section is empty. It would make a nice little house for the three of you if you were interested.”

We were definitely interested. And so it happened that the spring of 1973 found us on our way back to Moose Jaw. We settled into the house and soon I was putting in long hours helping to get the machinery ready and then seeding.  Later in summer there was work like tilling the summerfallow and hauling grain to the elevator.

The main farm was 2½ sections, a mile wide and 2½ miles long, 1600 acres. The soil  started out light and stoney on the south end and got heavier as we went north. The north half section, where we lived, was Regina Plains heavy clay gumbo. There was another ¼ section a few miles further north and ½ section of cultivated land with the ranch land, 2,080 acres in total. At that time the practice was to seed 2/3 of the land each year. That meant seeding 1,380 acres, with older, smaller equipment.

To give an idea of how heavy clay gumbo soil behaves I’ll describe how we drove away from our home when it rained. Field work stopped when it was wet, so we would want to go into Moose Jaw. The east-west road south of our yard was not gravelled, therefore impassible when wet. The road north was gravelled, yet there was a slight uphill grade. As soon as we ventured up that incline the tires became coated with greasy clay. The road was greasy, despite the gravel, and it was impossible to steer in a straight line. I would let Chris drive and I would walk beside to push the car straight when it began to slip sideways. The road was that greasy that it didn’t take a lot of effort. Once we got to level ground we were OK.

The yard should have been a great place for our almost two year old daughter to play. But by midsummer we were plagued with grasshoppers. We found them annoying, Michelle found them terrifying. The grasshoppers became more than annoying when they harvested Chris’s garden.

As soon as we moved back to Saskatchewan we began to attend the one church in Moose Jaw that called itself Mennonite. I don’t wish to name any of the churches we attended over the first years of our marriage, nor their pastors or other people in the churches. I hold no animosity towards them and don’t wish to hold them up to ridicule. We met a lot of fine people and enjoyed the time we spent with them, but we were looking for a genuine Anabaptist-Mennonite church and weren’t finding it in any of these places.

I eventually began to understand what was going on. When the apostle Paul wrote: “Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ” (1 Corinthians 11:1), his intention was that we would follow him in acquiring the same faith that he had.

A true living faith will cause us to live a life that is patterned after Christ, not after the zeitgeist of the era in which we live. There is an ever present danger that Christian faith will grow lukewarm, or even cold, yet a lifestyle pattern has been established that people will follow without comprehending that this lifestyle pattern is not the faith. It is faith that creates a lifestyle, but a lifestyle has no power to create faith.

This seems to have happened to many Mennonites in past generations. The faith gradually died out, yet the lifestyle was maintained for a time, sometimes a long time. Eventually their descendants became alarmed and sought a renewing of faith, but instead of returning to the faith of their forefathers, which by now was unknown to them, they turned to pietistic protestantism. Some of them gained a genuine saving faith, but now there was no reason to retain the old patterns and they began to run as hard as they could to avoid any hint that they were living by some external rule.

Then the pietistic faith itself became a pattern that their descendants tried to maintain. By now many of the current generation has little idea of what constitutes genuine Christianity. This was where we came in and it wasn’t at all what we were looking for.

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And then we were three

2 Comments Posted by on February 27, 2018

“Herb and Hilda are applying to adopt a baby,” Chris announced one day. Herb and Hilda were a young couple around our age in the Lowe Farm church. That simple bit of news started wheels turning in our minds. We wanted a family and so far there was no sign of that happening. Adoption had never entered our minds, but now that it had it began to grow on us.

The first turn of the wheel was to find out where to apply. We filled out the initial application and were invited to attend orientation sessions in Portage la Prairie. I believe there were three or four evening sessions, one per week.

My understanding had been that adoption was all about finding a child to match the parents. The first thing we learned was that the Children’s Aid Society of Central Manitoba didn’t think that was a good idea. “When children are born into a home they vary in size, eye colour, personality and so on. Why should we try to do better than what nature does?”

They told us it was best if we didn’t know too much about the adoptive child’s background. “If you know all about the father and mother, uncles and aunts, when the child misbehaves you are apt to think he is just like his uncle and feel that there is nothing you can do about it. You need to feel that the child you adopt is your child and it is up to you to deal with any problems that arise.” This was a whole new thought to us, but they had research to back it up and it made sense.

One evening the topic was interracial adoptions. Some parents asked “But won’t a child of a different skin colour have a hard time adapting to living among white people?” The social worker answered “Are you concerned about the child or yourself? A child of a different skin colour is going to be surrounded by mostly white people, no matter who her parents are.”

After attending those meetings we had to fill out the official application to adopt. This required information about income, the size of our home, and also asked for references. One question on that application was cause for soul searching. It asked what our racial preference was. We looked at that question and felt we needed to pray before answering it. After the prayer we knew that the only answer that we could feel at peace about was to check the box that said “no preference.”

Once the application was accepted we had a home visit by a social worker. We were told that the waiting list was several months long, but we should start getting together the things that we would need to care for a baby in our home.

One of the things we would need was a crib and there was a used crib available in a town not far away. When Chris was in the process of buying the crib, another lady came along just a bit too late. The other lady was obviously nearing the point where the crib would be a necessity. Chris presented no such appearance, but we really would be needing that crib before the other lady.

The call came far sooner than we had anticipated. There was a baby girl available, were we interested? We were ready. We didn’t know what changes a child would bring to our lives, or how we were going to cope, but we were ready to embark on that adventure.

We drove to Portage la Prairie. The social worker told us the girl was part Scandinavian and about one eighth indigenous (back then they said Indian) ancestry and we were the only applicants who had indicated that we would accept a child who was not 100% white. Then she led us into a small room, brought in the baby and left us alone with her. She was sound asleep, wrapped up in a blanket. All we could see was her face, short dark hair on her head and her tiny hands. We took turns holding her. When the social worker came back to ask what we had decided, we knew that we did not want to hand her back.

There were a few more papers for us to sign and then the three of us were on our way home, our lives forever changed. We named our daughter Michelle Marie. She was 15 days old when she came into our home.

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No longer alone

Leave a comment Posted by on February 9, 2018

It was a small wedding, just a few of our family and friends. I remember that we barely made it to the church on time and I remember when we signed our marriage certificate. My meory doesn’t seem to have recorded anything else, but that’s the important stuff anyway – we were there and we got married. Later that afternoon we left to spend our honeymoon at Lake Waskesiu in Prince Albert National Park. In the middle of our first night together Chris woke up, startled and a little disoriented, saying, “I just dreamed that we were married!.”

We’ve been living that dream for almost 48 years now. Like most dreams, it has had twists and turns when we wondered how it would turn out. Now we’re old folks and still together.

They tell you that two become one when you marry. They don’t tell you (or maybe I just wasn’t listening when it was told) how hard it will be to change the old habits of singlehood. As a bachelor, I had washed dishes when I had nothing left to cook with or eat from. Socks and shirts stayed where they dropped when I took them off. Every couple weeks I would go round the house, gather my dirty clothes and take them to the laundromat. I kind of knew my bride wouldn’t be charmed by those old habits,  but they died hard.

I wanted a Christian home, but had little idea what that might involve. The first night after we settled into our home in Sperling, Chris told me she wanted us to read the Bible and pray together. That is, she wanted me to take the lead in doing it. I resisted, she insisted. Once begun it became a practice that has continued to this day.

Chris had finished Grade 11 when living at Kelliher with her uncle. Now she enrolled in Grade 12 in Carman, the second town west of Sperling and caught the school bus early each morning.  That didn’t last long. Being a newcomer and the only married person in the class left her out of the social whirl of school. She decided that she had more important things to do at home.

Before we were married, I tried teaching her to drive my pickup truck. It had a standard transmission with the shift lever on the steering column. We drove out of Belle Plaine onto Highway Number One, the Trans-Canada, and I sat close beside her to coach. This was easier back in the days before seat belts and bucket seats. An RCMP officer stopped us and asked what was happening. Chris showed her learner’s permit and I my driver’s license and explained that I was trying to coach a driver who was unfamiliar with manual transmissions. He was a nice guy, he didn’t snicker or give us a ticket, just suggested that Chris might manage better if I didn’t sit so close.

Now that we were settled down, she enrolled in Driver’s Ed in Carman. I had traded the pickup for a car with automatic transmission and soon she was able to do the grocery shopping while I was at work.

Chris had never heard of Mennonites before she met me, but decided that if I wanted to be a Mennonite she did too. There were Mennonite churches of various kinds within a 15 or 20 minute drive from Sperling. I didn’t know much about any of them and stalled at trying to find out. One day I came home from work and my young bride informed me that she had talked to a minister at Lowe Farm, a town straight south of us, and we had an invitation to go and visit him and his wife.

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Life takes some unexpected turns

1 Comment Posted by on February 3, 2018

Alcohol had once enabled me to admit my interest in some day becoming a Mennonite, but the three other people who heard that statement didn’t take it seriously and never again mentioned it. My two trips into Regina to attend a Mennonite church had gone completely unnoticed by those who knew me. I was quite content to leave it that way as I still at a stage where I had no desire to be identified as someone with any interest in Christianity.

Nevertheless, I wanted to have a Bible when I left for Manitoba. There was no way I was going to openly show that desire by going out and buying one. There was another way. My parents had a stack of worn out Bibles in a cupboard; they never threw one out. They would have gladly given me one if I had asked, but that would have been too embarrassing. Before I left, I went to that cupboard, found one that hadn’t quite fallen apart yet, and stashed it in my luggage.

The elevator at Sperling was much bigger and much busier than the one at Belle Plaine. The office was much bigger too. To start with I was provided with a roll away bed in the office for night and got my meals in the home of the former manager.

I settled into a routine, started to get to know the farmers and the people in town. The people in the community were of English, French, Danish, German and other backgrounds. Among the farmers there were members of four different Mennonite denominations. One was a group I had never heard of before, the Church of God in Christ, Mennonite. The men of this group wore beards.

I made monthly trips back to Saskatchewan to see my parents and Chris. Chris and I would often visit until midnight Sunday and then I would drive the 400 miles back to Sperling, open the elevator at eight o’clock in the morning. In the summer of 1969 Chris’s Uncle moved to Kelliher, Saskatchewan to run his sister’s café and Chris went with him. Her aunt stayed in Belle Plaine to run the café there. My once a month trips became more complicated.

After several months the former manager retired for health reasons. I was given the job and UGG rented a house in town and paid to move my belongings. The former manager and his family were given time to find a new home and then the UGG carpenter crew went to work on the house.

I had left all my drinking buddies behind in Saskatchewan and didn’t make any new ones in Manitoba. I often had beer in the refrigerator but no incentive for serious drinking by myself.

There was lots of time to read the Bible and I started randomly reading here and there. I began with the belief that the Bible was a man-made book that might contain parts that were inspired by a God that I didn’t know and hardly knew if I believed in. But I was convinced that most of the book was not to be believed or trusted. As I read, a different picture began to impress itself on me. This appeared to be one book, with every part of it connected to every other part. Many things that I didn’t want to believe were quoted by Jesus. It began to sink in to me that I could not choose to believe some parts and reject the rest; it was either all true, or all false.

Now that I was officially the elevator manager, I began looking through the records and found that a number of farmers had bills outstanding for farm supplies, so I sent out reminders. I soon had irate farmers showing up in my office with receipts showing that they had paid those bills. I accepted that, but UGG had never seen those payments. Those farmers seemed to suspect me of trying to pull a fast one and get paid twice, but the people in town understood the situation. The former manage had always seemed to be in need of more money for his family and different episodes were told me of how he had gotten into a bind and money had disappeared. No doubt he had intentions of making it all right, perhaps the stress of it all led to his heart attack.

Some of my farming customers were members of the Church of God in Christ, Mennonite, from the congregation at Rosenort, about 15 minutes away. They were friendly and often stayed to visit. One day, one of them came into my office to apologize for something he had said a few days earlier. He was afraid I might have misunderstood his remarks and taken offence at them. I was completely caught off guard. There had been no misunderstanding, no offence taken, but now I was almost offended at him for making a special effort to come and clear up such an insignificant thing. They way I looked at my life, I was leading as decent and upright a life as was possible under the circumstances and this guy had come along and kicked that support out from under me.

Early in 1970 Chris told me that she was getting cold feet and wasn’t sure that she wanted to get married. Life looked bleak, many of the farmers were looking at me with suspicion, I hadn’t made any close friends in this community and now my fiancée wanted to back out of our marriage plans.

By the spring of 1970 I had moved into the renovated house. The wall between the kitchen and dining room had been replaced by a counter and new cabinets installed. Flooding was happening around Carman to the west of us, with the threat of it coming our way. One Saturday I took a drive around to look at the situation, but my mind was churning with troubled thoughts. I wanted to just give up and disappear, but I had tried that once and it hadn’t turned out well.

I returned home and opened my Bible at random. My eyes fell on Revelation 3:16: “So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.” The picture was vivid and shocking – could it be that my life was so distasteful to God that He just had to get that taste out of His mouth? I had never thought of myself as a sinner, but now the weight of sin bore down on me.

I knelt down and admitted to God: “All this trouble I’m in, I did it all by myself, nobody helped me get into this mess.” I asked Him to forgive me and promised that if He would help me now I would serve Him the rest of my life. When I got up from that prayer I had a determination to do whatever I could to work my way through my problems.

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Can there be peace in Babylon?

Leave a comment Posted by on November 14, 2017

Jerusalem had been destroyed and the Jewish people carried away as captives to Babylon. There were prophets among them telling them that God was soon going to set things right, punish the horrible people of Babylon and bring them back to their own land. Jeremiah sent a letter to the Jews in Babylon, saying essentially, “Not so fast. You are going to be there a while. Build houses, plant gardens, raise families and just make the best of it.”

Then he added this shocking admonition: “And seek the peace of the city whither I have caused you to be carried away captives, and pray unto the LORD for it: for in the peace thereof shall ye have peace.”

Well, here we are in the 21st Century, smack dab in the middle of Babylon. There are prophets, from the political, ecological, sociological and religious spheres, loudly and incessantly warning us of impending doom if we don’t implement their solutions right here and now. And there is is truth in all that is being said.

Two thoughts lead me to believe it would be wise to ignore those prophets:

  1. Didn’t we get into this mess in the first place by believing them?
  2.  Won’t their solutions squeeze out the good that yet remains in Babylon?

Jeremiah’s admonition offers direction for us today. Why don’t we just ignore all the doom and gloom talk and look for the good that remains around us? Let’s open our eyes to all that is good and beautiful, talk about it, encourage it. It may be that there are many people around us who would blossom into influences for good with just a little encouragement. The more that we can encourage peace in our own neighbourhood, the more we will be able to live in peace.

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me bring love.
Where there is offense, let me bring forgiveness.
Where there is discord, let me bring unity.
Where there is error, let me bring truth.
Where there is doubt, let me bring faith.
Where there is despair, let me bring hope.
Where there is darkness, let me bring your light.
Where there is sadness, let me bring joy.
O Master, let me not seek as much
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love,
for it is in giving that one receives,
it is in self-forgetting that one finds,
it is in forgiving that one is forgiven,
it is in dying that one is raised to eternal life.

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