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We love Nighthawks, by Edward Hopper. And that’s why I made my own version of it, years ago, to celebrate my son Ashton.

He is on the autism spectrum, and had been playing with my digital camera, and took a few selfies, before he even knew they were a thing 😂

I was so happy to find it as a puzzle. We spent time together as a family building it. Very soon, however, we realized a piece was missing. The colour was very distinct, but I still hoped it would show up, but it never did.

Heartbroken! Especially since we had planned to frame it!

Not really knowing what to do, I decided to contact the seller. They wrote me back:

“Thanks for reaching out about your recent order from us. I’m sorry to hear about your experience. This must be frustrating. I will do everything I can to make it right as soon as possible.

Please know this is extremely rare and uncommon, but it does happen as people in our warehouses are human and can make mistakes from time to time. We will save you the hassle of returning the item back to us and issue you a refund. You’re welcome to keep, donate or dispose of it – whichever option is most appropriate and convenient for you.

Once again, please accept our apologies for this inconvenience and let me know if there is anything else I can do for you.”

Well!!! The refund is $60.oo !

So, we decided to go ahead and have it framed at “Michael’s Art’s and Crafts” and asked that they make sure the missing piece is white, for maximum visibility.

It’s kind of poetic Art piece now, about our world.

In a book I read quite some time ago, “A Hidden Wholeness” Parker Palmer wrote about something that might be hard for me to explain. It’s to honour the unknown, unresolved thing… not rushing to find the answer, not accepting some counterfeit alternative to true resolution, and to accept the lack of closure… well… what I mean is, to be ok with the fact that there’s a piece missing… maybe one day we’ll find it? Maybe we won’t… it’s a symbol of our lives right now. There’s also an aspect about it of being thankful to God for what he has given us… paying attention to the 999 pieces that ARE THERE… and trusting him in the meantime.

“We think that if we don’t feel something there can be no authenticity in doing it. But the wisdom of God says something different: that we can act ourselves into a new way of feeling much quicker than we can feel ourselves into a new way of acting. Worship is an act that develops feelings for God, not a feeling for God that is expressed in an act of worship. When we obey the command to praise God in worship, our deep, essential need to be in relationship with God is nurtured.” A Long Obedience in One Direction – Eugene Peterson

I read this quote to some friends the other day, and one of them responded saying, “But our faith isn’t about feelings.”

And that is a good clarification. My point, however, was about what to do when we are enticed.

“but each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.” ‭‭James‬ ‭1:14-15‬ ‭NIV

Advertisers tell us how their product will make us feel. They are selling the feeling, and to get that feeling we have to buy their stuff. In James 1:14-15 I read that there is an already existing desire within me, and Satan would use that to entice me. The idea that I am “dragged away” is telling me something, also. I don’t want it? not all of me wants it? There’s a battle we all know. Somewhere inside of us, we know we “ought not”.

‬‬Currently in my retirement I know he’s been leading me here. But my desire to have the tangible security I once had isn’t there anymore. What I do have is different. My feelings, now I have talked about them before as anxieties. I woke up this morning with non-specific feelings. Deciding where those feelings are coming from, and thereby assigning meaning to them is where I can get messed up. Moving forward with my day, is obedience, in the absence of feeling. I know that laying in bed all day will yield all kinds of trouble to me.

Here are my theme verses of late, the verses which God is constantly teaching me about,

“We have much to say about this, but it is hard to make it clear to you because you no longer try to understand. In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.” ‭‭Hebrews‬ ‭5:11-14‬ ‭NIV‬‬

So there is another, great work, in all of this. It is that in the same heart that feelings lay, there is a knowing. Knowing that everything is not up to me. I’m not the centre of the universe.

The next thing that comes to mind as I read this over is that any adventure brought about through following my feelings, may merely be a distraction. Something to keep me away from what God has for me. And when I’m listening to God, through his word, both in my heart and on the pages I can open, I am sometimes brought outside of myself, to actually benefit others. For my actions to be about loving those around me.

It’s a perfect picture, really. The mood is somber. A peaceful tranquillity lingers there in those hay bales. There’s a little school bus that trundles along the road there, to where I cannot go just now.

I found this photo via Google Earth Street view. Of all the networks of roads they have to leave some out, don’t they? They left out the rest of the road that leads to where they lie. This is as close as I can get, unless I make the 2200+ km trip…

Its Road 19 North. I tried driving down that road, one wintery day quite some time ago now, and had to turn back before I got to where they lay.

Goodbye Daddy

Goodbye, Mum ❤️

It would be OK to sit beside you there, we wouldn’t have to talk, we could just pass the time together, listen to the wind, feel the cold cold wind together.

I miss you, that’s all.

What a concept!

All the games I’ve ever played, I’ve lost and I’ve won. Each time is a lesson learned, for next time.

Life.

Now there’s a game we all play only one time through.

Is my perspective showing?

It really… what do I do with all this stuff I’ve learned? And what did I learn?

Shoulda Woulda Coulda but I didn’t…?

Is it humility or pride that drives my regret?

Hey! Who says I have any regrets?

Simon Peter answered Him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have words of eternal life.

John 6:68

One thing that comes to mind is, “No backup PLAN”

Much of life is about alternatives. There always seems to be choices.

But when you find that ONE, there is no place else to go.

From time to time I have allowed myself to become disconnected from from my job. As I consider other possibilities I become more and more miserable, until I let go of all the other alternatives and I find peace and contentment.

My life fell apart.

At the wedding reception for my first marriage… I will never forget giving the response to the “Toast To The Bride”

I told them how God had always given me theme scriptures throughout my life. I was all of 21!, “And,” I continued, “at this moment it is the book of 1 Peter….” I wondered outloud with them about how this beautiful bride, this wonderful lady I was marrying that day could possibly be about suffering. I didn’t have it written down a head of time… but God did. My life I mean. Oh, and the Speach, yeah, that came to me as I went along. But then again, so has my life.

Little did I know… but God knew.

His voice would come to me at just the right moments in time… to guide me, reassure me, and comfort me.

Like that day in Salmon Arm. In the Rain. In the park. Under the play structure, with all four of my children. I had them from 7 am to 7 pm each Saturday. She’d taken them 4 hour’s drive away from me, Life had I mean, my soon to be Ex-wife played her part, and God was playing his part… but nevertheless… somehow between visits they’d grown to hate me, especially the oldest two, so the beginning of each visit was cold and distant, were their hearts broken? Confused? Indoctrinated by their mother!?!? Now now.

And then that Saturday… we’d been out and about… I didn’t want to take them home. But it had started to rain, hard.

So we went under the bridges and ladders, and slides of the playground structure, and I took out my little micro recorder – the one my lawyer told me to buy – and we took turns telling a random story… cuz they were mine again. They knew they loved me, and that I loved them. All the pain and confusion of the days before fled in the path of the outpouring rain of God’s love, the cloud burst release of our love. And in that moment as we were giggling at our own silly story, God whispered to me… this is how it will be. At the end of a very long day, they will be yours again. Little did I know how long a day it would be! Little did I know how much I would need that promise, that assurance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Hey, that’s Faith!

Not too long after that a sort of suicide’s desire came courting. The message was to just give up. But His Spirit whispered in the depths of me, “be all you can be, become all you can become, when they need you, be ready”

At some point in time I’ll have to tell the story of how the Greek word, ετοιμάζω (he-toy-mad-zoe ) would come to me… I’d taken one year of Koine Greek – one of the original languages that the bible was written in – but my college hopes had forever been interrupted by marriage, and children… but I digress a bit, but then again you gotta know why a word from an ancient language would pop into my mind!

Well, I thought it meant “I Marvel” because it would always come to mind in moments of awe. But some ten years later, as I shared this with repeated experience with my Bible Scholar Brother John, he said, “No, Laurence, that means, I Prepare.” Tears welled up inside of me… Yes, indeed God prepares! A flash back of all those years gushed out before me with each of those tears.

Yes, God takes the sinful, broken, naive young man Laurence… and leads him throughout his life, through valleys and heights, and on the other side… God’s promises shine as he wonders how he ever got through to here I am now.

You read that right. No edit required. I wonder how I ever got to Here I Am Now.

Fast forward a bit, I’m remarried by now, and this son from my second marriage is 14 years old, and we finally get the answer to the question everyone’d been asking, is included. Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Well, I’ll wait here while you react. What would you do? What if that’s me, my child?

I was excited! But a little confused. I’d worked years ago as a child psychiatric worker at Health Sciences Centre in Winnipeg, where I grew up. And my speciality was Autism. Long story, I wasn’t anything more than “boots on the ground” front line intervention co-strategist… but still, it was the only THING I knew … I asked God, like, “you had me back then learning how to care for a child I’d have way up after then… and then he said, “yes, I prepared Ashton’s father ahead of time…”

It’s kind of like when a long fuse gets lit, and you see the sparks whipping along the ground… headed for the stockpile of explosives…

“You did it on purpose!” You created Ashton, Autistic, on purpose!”

And… I might add, he did my life on purpose as well.

Hidden in those verses was and is my life’s purpose, the life he did in purpose, both mine and yours…

“…for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls.”

“In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls.”

1 Peter 1:6-9

“‘In that day each of you will invite your neighbor to sit under your vine and fig tree,’ declares the Lord Almighty.”

Zechariah 3:10

Hospitality, simple and pure.

Nothing fancy.

Any and all are welcome

None need feel their lives don’t add up by comparison.

Wasting time with one another

No Agenda

I’ve found a couple of articles online about The Vine and Fig Tree… <-click the link “Under their vine and fig tree” is a phrase quoted in the Hebrew Scriptures in three different places: Micah 4:4, 1 Kings 4:25, and Zechariah 3:10. George Washington used this phrase multiple times in correspondence throughout his life, and one can find Washington reference it almost fifty times.”

Another article about The Vine and The Fig Tree, <-click the link “It describes the freedom and independence God’s people enjoy under His rule.” and “Under His rule, everyone will be free from tyranny and oppression”, Chris Rappazini, Moody Bible Institute

I’m too old to be this excited about my life!

I’d lost my ambition long ago.

I’d let go of all those expectations

Mine and their’s

Hey! I thought this was going to be an upbeat post!

But then , just today, as I was sharing most recent events with a new friend those words dropped out of my pocket and hit the floor

It reminds me of that country song,

Then he opened up his billfold and threw a twenty down,

And a faded photograph fell out and hit the ground.

I Hate Everything, George Strait

My friend’s reaction was an emphatic,

“Why?!?”

“I’m too old to be this excited about my life!”

Then her emphatic rebuke!

It was a verbal slap on the shoulder

LOL

“This is your life…” My whole life I’ve fell for the same old fear, “its too late !”

A gentle sigh is now upon my heart, as I ponder the peace of knowing He’s had me all along… I feel ready for the challenges and delightfully surprised!

Be Governed by one another’s strengths not by one another’s weaknesses.

Ponder that idea.

But before we go there, ever heard the expression,

“Who’s wearing the pants in your family?”

Well, let’s pause and ponder that for a moment…

I don’t wanna talk about it.

Marriage, members of a Board of Directors, Teams of any kind really.

Who’s in charge?

The objective is to destroy the marriage, you, your mate, Darn it, your kids too!

I would like to propose that another word for ‘weakness’ is ‘vulnerability’, are you ok with that?