kinnon.tv

I Confess...

...I kinda like the thought of a God who gets pissed with certain things and decides to give'em a little wake up call - a tornado here, an earthquake there, a little calamity to express His point.

Of course, it helps when God and I agree on what things / people / ideas He should be pissed with. I'm rather with cartooned Calvin, though. God keeps forgetting to consult with me, first.

Now I need to state that I believe the Holy Spirit is alive and well and still messing with His creation. More clearly, I am a believer in the continuation of the gifts of the Spirit and the active engagement of the Spirit in our lives in ways we can barely understand.

It helps that I experienced total and complete freedom from a smoking habit I couldn't beat after three friends prayed for me (six months after I was married, and a year after I began lying to Imbi about having quit - part of the freedom came in me having to ask her to forgive me for lying to her - things were a little frosty for more than a few hours).

I also experienced my neck being healed from damage that occurred when I was hit by a car as a kid. This after small group prayer during a church service - where all I wanted was freedom from the constant pain when whiplash exacerbated the damage. (Before and after x-rays do exist somewhere - I wasn't smart enough to get copies at the time. There's a lot more to this story if you are ever interested - just to note that when I was 26, a resident at St. Michael's Hospital, a certain Dr. Mah told me I had degenerative disk disease and would be in a wheel chair by today.)

But.

I've also experienced a gazillion times more apparently negative answers to requests for temporal intervention into the lives of acquaintances, friends, family and yes, even more requests from me, for me.

So. Thursday morning. I'm j-keying thru Google Reader. I think it was Challies who pointed to John Piper's commentary on tornados in Minneapolis providing attempted input into the ELCA convention. Based on my history here, you're probably thinking my first thought was, "Now, how stupid was that!" But no. Not even close. (My opinion on the ELCA issue(s) would be quite similar to that of my friend, Jared Wilson - a blog topic for another time.)

If you've had nothing better to do this week and have been following along with Darryl Dash et moi, you know we've been having a blog conversation about the Sovereignty of God. (Apparently, I started it with my recent Piper I35 comments and Darryl decided to get serious about it - joined by others like Jason Coker, Jamie Arpin-Ricci, and two of my favourite Reformed-leaning pastors, Ken Davis & Dan MacDonald.) Its been a good conversation (which isn't yet over as Triple D has more posts coming up. Posts are here, here, here and here.)

Darryl and I are good friends - even if I'm Arminian Wesleyan prevenient gracian apparently semi-pelagian a Greg Boyd fan a heretic and he's Reformed. Early that morning, after the Challies link, I dropped him a note with other examples of where I thought God might have decided to make a point - I won't embarrass myself further here by citing them. I was siding with JP on this one. And. I was wrong.

My iPastor, the iMonk and Greg Boyd effectively convicted me of how stupid I am. (Not a shock to a certain segment of blogdom who occasionally drop by to remind me of that.)

Well, they and the weather system that decided to do significant damage to Southern Ontario. This whilst the dog and I were alone at our cottage on an Island in Lake Simcoe. (And yes, I was doing a lot of repenting. So anything that happened was the dog's fault - all she was doing was cuddling tightly to me - although at one point I was pretty sure she was praying - eyes closed, paws crossed, head bowed - well, okay, she was sleeping... but still.)

Now. It's quite possible God is ticked with us here in Ontario. He knows there's plenty of reason to be - heck, in my life alone.

But scripture does tells us that it rains on the just and the unjust. Jesus, in the Luke passage Pastor Piper quotes, says, "...those eighteen in Jerusalem the other day, the ones crushed and killed when the Tower of Siloam collapsed and fell on them, do you think they were worse citizens than all other Jerusalemites? Not at all. Unless you turn to God, you, too, will die."

The point of this post - we, like the cartoon Calvin, want a God who intervenes where we want Him to intervene. Well, at least I seem to - I shouldn't speak for the rest of you. I do believe He intervenes where He chooses. I also believe that He created a natural order in the cosmos, that was fundamentally disturbed by the Fall - the consequence - broken people, living in a broken world - that yes, God is Sovereign over - but not the instigator of every calamity that befalls us - tornadoes or no tornadoes.

And yes, we all must repent for the end is near. The end of this post, that is.

InternetMonk, John Piper, Michael Spencer, stupid Kinnon stories, Greg Boyd, Toronto tornados

Promises, promises

Imbi grabbed this shot earlier this month. It's taken from the kitchen window over the sink in our loft. You can see the remains of the 2nd rainbow (to the left) that was much brighter before she found her camera.

The building the rainbow(s) appear to be empowering is a church where folk like Imbi, Al Roxburgh and myself were once leaders (back in the '80's and 90's). The story of that church in light of the neighbourhood is touched on in this video that I shot with A-Rox back in '06.

double rainbow, no floods, The Danforth, Random Pix

In the immortal words...

...of a Monty Python character, "I'm not dead yet!" Even though the weather is surely trying.

Fall Leaving

It was one of those odd fall days in Toronto. Temps were mid-Septemberish rather than first week of Novemberish. Today's high in Toronto hitting 66ºF.

In spite of the weather, and without going into details, I confess that for the last 48 hours I've felt as if run over by a steamroller - flat, crushed and of no use to anyone.

And then I saw these gorgeous leaves whilst out for a walk with the dog. They reminded me of the inherent goodness of God's creation - in the midst of all the brokenness in this world.

Challies likes Global Warming

Reporting from the Ligonier Conference in Florida (which I always find odd since Ligonier is in the mountains of Pennsylvania), Tim Challies says this about the weather,

For those who come from northern states or provinces, it certainly doesn’t hurt any that the weather in Florida this time of year is just beautiful and a full seventy or eighty degrees higher than what we’re experiencing at home.

Good grief. His home is within twenty miles of mine. Today's forecast is 41ºF. Which means Florida temps are between 111 and 121ºF. Normal for this time of year is around 75. And Challies thinks this is good!?

OK. I'm having a little fun at Tim's expense. He, like our mutual friend Triple D, is a product of the Canadian conversion from the Imperial System to Metric. They think in centimeters and degrees centigrade. Fahrenheit (German for "the proper way to measure temperature"), a far superior system, confuses these people. (It certainly makes sense that water boils at 212ºF - rather than only 100ºC. And that it freezes at 32ºF, rather than the ridiculously cold 0ºC. And, anyway, wasn't it the French who gave us the metric system. Need I say more.) Unfortunately, only the US, Liberia and Myanmar are smart enough to still keep using the Imperial system.

Snow Day

I'm taking a snow day. The weather outside is frightful. Just got back in from shoveling. So, I won't bother to shovel anything here today.

Vancouver Weather Report - Day Three

Rain. With the chance of rain. And then...rain.

Momentary, tantalizing, rare glimpses of faded blue sky. Only to prepare one for more...rain.

Ahhh, the Pacific Northwest. At least the coffee is good out here.

Vancouver Weather Report

Rain. Simply shocking.

Fun with August Lake Winds

The winds have howled across Lake Simcoe today. Waves were ocean-like. Five of us had a blast bouncing in the surf. Kaili and Thomas used one of the kayaks and had lots of fun. Here are a couple of shots Susan took. That's Imbi and me in the shot with Thomas. (BTW - Susan is a Kiwi - so this kind of fits with the previous post, eh!)

Back @ the Lake

My flight from Vancouver was delayed slightly but I was out of the Toronto Airport at 8:55pm last night. I was picked up by good friends of ours who were in transit from Pittsburgh to our cottage.

Nearing the Lake, George informed me that he'd read on-line that we could expect 40 Knot winds on Lake Simcoe. (The plane delay had been weather based as we were forced to wait 30 minutes before landing.) Mild panic enveloped me as we are on the windy side of the island. I called Imbi who informed me that the waves were picking up.

We arrived at the marina as I heard our boat struggling its way across from the island. We loaded up quickly and were underway with our well trained boat pilot, Rylan at the helm. (Rylan is a water taxi driver all summer long. He's the best boat handler of the bunch of us.) Increasingly rough water only mildly hampered him getting us to our dock - and we quickly unloaded the boat as we were pulling it up and out of the water.

Had we been delayed by another 30 minutes - we would have been staying on the mainland. The winds howled for most of the night and continue only slightly less force-filled today. We are off to wander the inner roads of the island.

I will have something substantive to say from my week with missional theologians, leaders and practitioners - as well as from my Missional Shampoo post. It may be as late as Monday before I get the opportunity to write it.