TREVOR'S WRITING

There was a boy named Wally, Wally was bigger than most other kids his age, and used his size to his advantage. At first it wasn't too bad, he would skip the line at the slide in the playground, or force people off the swings. As things went on, he realized he could use his size and strength to his advantage in many different ways. He had some of the smarter kids do his homework (under threat of a beating), and later on he started to steal lunches and money from the other kids at school. There were a few times when some of the kids would complain and say that is was not fair that Wally was taking advantage of them, but Wally always seemed to find out and an appropriate threat was made to silence the criticism. Eventually Wally realized that he might need some of these people as friends and couldn't make too many enemies. So, he came up with a great plan. He stole lunches from many of the kids at school, then he would pick through them and sell the good stuff to other kids....

Have you ever seen an interview with a major professional athlete, when they say something like, "I get paid to play a game that I love!" At which point I experience a bit of anger, jealousy and loath. I usually think something along the lines of, "well of course you should love to play a game and get paid millions of dollars to do it! Everybody would love that!" I guess I have to admit that the wishful thinking in me always wishes I would have pushed myself in some sort of sport, because then I surely would have been a professional athlete!!!??? Maybe that could be me saying that in an interview! "I get paid to play a game that I love!" In that moment I wish my Dad would have been more like Tiger Woods dad and spent hours and hours and hours and hours on the golf course with me...MAKING me a better golfer. Then I snap out of it...I would never have let my dad do that, I was way to lazy! So, I realize I will have to settle into being who I am, the non-...

We were at the toy store looking for some good toys for our kids and noticed a bunch of Playmobil Advent Calendars. One of them was a pirate set, you know, what says Christmas more than pirates!? Owen (our 3 year old) loves playmobil stuff and has a fascination with pirates, so we took a close look at it. Here is what we found: Many of these things seem relatively inappropriate to me but the keg near the top left hand side is my favourite. Nothing like getting a keg to remind you of Jesus. There is a story about Jesus turning water into wine in some big basins, or kegs if you will.

I am reading Jesus Wants to Save Christians by Rob Bell and Don Golden. I am only 4 chapters in but needed to throw this out there to help me process the things that he is saying. I love the way that Rob tells stories and this book is a great example of that. The authors have told basically the whole story of the Bible in these 4 chapters, weaving together the story of God and his relationship to people. How the story of the Bible is basically a story of oppression and freedom from oppression. When people call out to God they are freed from oppression, which is the ultimate meaning of Jesus life and death. Freeing us from the oppression of the law, and pointing us to grace. It is a beautiful concept and, so far, basically told as a great story. My issue is this. There is never any mention of confession or repentance. There are plenty of mentions of things like, moving from oppression to freedom, moving from light to darkness, and becoming new creations. However, it is never me...

I feel as though I am about to have a fight with a bully, I fully expect this post to be read as hurtful and condemning to many. That may be the case but here goes anyway. I have long been frustrated by coffee drinkers. I realize that probably 95% of those who are in the blogosphere are those who are regular coffee drinkers, actually *ahem* probably not regular coffee drinkers, they are people who are very particular about the coffee they drink. Most times they take one sip of coffee and declare it to be horrible, or wonderful, or somewhere in between. They do NOT drink any free coffee, especially the coffee served at churches, they do not just go to the corner store for coffee, their coffee must meet very specific requirements and standards. If they make it at home they do not just use a coffeemaker, they must use a various assortment of grinders, presses, and perhaps going as far as to roast their own beans. I know that I am not cool for criticizing coffee drinkers and their habits,...

You must check out Graham's blog , he is a good friend of mine who has just entered the blogosphere. I have always really enjoyed my conversations with Graham and I always look forward to getting together with him. When we do my thoughts are challenged and provoked and I always come away inspired to be more authentic in my own faith and push the church to do the same. Hopefully he will do the same for you in this venue.

The last 6 months or so, I have been easily moved to tears. It has lead to some interesting moments, like the time I was sitting at the church denomination I am a part of had their national conference and the general session speaker was speaking. He shared an emotional story that obviously struck a chord with me. I remember getting choked up, tears streaming down my face, but the crazy thing is, that is not where it stopped. I realized that I needed to hold back the sobs, I start looking around and realize that no one else was finding this particular story all that emotional (or at least I saw no other tears). I also realized that my sobs were becoming more evident to the people around me (as evidenced by the people looking away and pretending they were not staring at me). I began to really hope the speaker would move on to something funny, or perhaps something I could get mad about, anything but sad...finally he did. I am not really embarrassed that I cry, although I know a lot of men...

I was laughing out loud as I read this one... Thanks Greg for sending it! ABOUT THE WRITER Dave Barry is a Pulitzer Prize-winning humor columnist for the Miami Herald. This is from newshound Dave Barry's colonoscopy journal: I called my friend Andy Sable, a gastroenterologist, to make an appointment for a colonoscopy. A few days later, in his office, Andy showed me a color diagram of the colon, a lengthy organ that appears to go all over the place, at one point passing briefly through Minneapolis . Then Andy explained the colonoscopy procedure to me in a thorough, reassuring and patient manner. I nodded thoughtfully, but I didn't really hear anything he said, because my brain was shrieking, quote, 'HE'S GOING TO STICK A TUBE 17,000 FEET UP YOUR BEHIND!' I left Andy's office with some written instructions, and a prescription for a product called 'MoviPrep,' which comes in a box large enough to hold a microwave oven. I will discuss MoviPrep in detail l...

What keeps meat from rotting? One way to do that is to salt it, this method was widely used in Bible times. In Matthew 5:13 Jesus says to a bunch of his followers "you are the salt of the earth." In other words, the world is the meat and you are the salt, you help to keep the meat from getting rotten. Here is where I think that we have missed out on something. We (the church) keep removing ourselves from the world more and more, we look down on all the horrible things that are going on in the world and shake our head and say "tsk, tsk." There are horrible things going on in our world (sexual promiscuity, hatred, racism, oppression, drugs, alcoholism, etc.) so we withdraw ourselves from it in order to protect ourselves from these horrors. We create our "Christian bubble" and pray that no one will burst it. We make sure our kids hang out with the right crowd so that they will not be corrupted, we don't hang out in certain places so that we won't be ...

I am opposed to pink, well not really opposed, but opposed to what it stands for, when it stands for something I am against. If that makes any sense at all. When it comes to my daughter Hannah, I have always resisted when she wants to wear pink, have pink dolls, have pink shoes (or pink camouflage shoes for that matter). Now she has asked us if she can paint her room pink (the second she in this sentence refers to Nicky and I, since our 5 year old will not paint her own room). The funny thing is I have embraced pink in my life, I have a shirt that some people call pink (actually, it is more of a salmon colour), back in the 80's I remember having a flourescent pink t-shirt, flourescent pink shades and many other pink accessories. I also own a beautiful flourescent pink toque that I love to wear on youth nights (or when I was driving the tractor at camp) I guess my issue is not with the colour pink, it is with the stereotype. I don't want my little girl being taken with pink beca...

This morning I happened to check out a blog by Mark Westman . I don't know him, but he made a comment on my blog so I thought I would check him out. It so happened that on the morning I was preparing to go speak to the "captured" audience at Union Gospel Mission I read his blog about UGM and the question of when and if to preach to hungry people (should we force them to sit in a sermon before they get their food?) I really appreciated the discussion there, so go check it out here . I put in my two cents for what they are worth (probably not 2 cents).

What a great question. One that has caused me to really think and reflect on what I wrote myself. It was left as a comment under my last post. Do you hang out with the poor. I had a few thoughts on how to respond to the comment, the first was defensiveness..."of course I hang out with the poor!" after which I would go on to exaggerate the amount of time I spend with the poor. The second thought in response to this might have been, "maybe you misread what I wrote, I said ' let's go find Jesus in the poor...' I didn't say 'I have been, why aren't you?'" Therefore excusing me from having to feel guilty, since I was challenging all of us to do this - including myself. However, I realized the question could be an honest question of how I spend my time, not an accusatory question that insinuates that I don't spend my time with the poor. The fact that I became defensive bothers me, because I have a heart for people who are poor, and I t...

Today is Blog Action Day 2008 , a day when Bloggers come together to blog about the same topic. This year the topic is one that is really close to my heart, poverty . There are so many poverty statistics...like the fact that 1.2 billion people live on $1 a day or less, or the the fact that another 1.6 billion live on $2 a day or less - 2.8 billion people. People who struggle every day in order to get food to put in their bellies and the bellies of their children. Meanwhile, the United States spends 30 - 50 billion dollars every year on diets and expenses related to reducing calorie intake! What is wrong with us?! We need to do something, something that makes inroads on this situation...but you are only one person, so don't bother unless you can make a major impact...NO, you are one person that can make a small impact, but many small impacts creates a very large impact (ask anyone who has been buried by an avalanche of millions of small snowflakes). My challenge to you on Blog Actio...

My life is full of programs that I have thought up, ministries that I lead. I believe in them, I think they do good things, exciting things, probably even God-ordained things. I also try to do great things with my family, fun things, family-building things, even things that intend to lead them to see a picture of what Jesus looks like. Is it possible that even these things are vanity? Is it possible that the things I hold most dear are like a vapour? I listened to two sermons on the way home from Boissevain yesterday. Both of them were from the Youth Specialties convention - NYWC last year. I have had them on my iPod for almost a year now without listening to them. Interestingly enough, after all this time they both really hit me at an appropriate time. I have been really struggling with the idea of just focusing on seemingly small things and both these sermons (one by Francis Chan and one by Phil Vischer) talked about how the only thing that really matters is that we are comple...

It's three o'clock in the morning, when I am roused from my bed. There is a loud bang that came from the deck. At first I think nothing of it, but a few minutes later there is some more shuffling and a bit more sound. Nicky and I are both sitting up in bed. "There is definitely someone there," I say. I climb out of bed, my heart racing, is someone really trying to break into our house while we are here? I look behind the bedroom door for any sort of weapon to take with me (the right to bear arms has not been an excuse for us to buy a gun), thankfully I find a crow bar there. It feels like it could do some damage. I slowly walk through the living room to the kitchen and towards the back door where the sound had come from. I can't see a thing outside since it is pitch dark...I clutch the crow bar and flick on the outside light and swing open the door simultaneously prepared to attack. There, standing about 2 feet away from me is the bandit...a raccoon...dig...

Almost 24 years ago I started waking up in the morning and telling my Mom I had headaches. I missed a lot of school that year (Grade 5) because of the headaches. I missed so much school that my report card for the middle term of grade 5 does not have any grades listed on it. I had headaches all through school and eventually, when I was 16 I dropped out of school. For a few years I tried working and various ways of going to school. I did not graduate from High School. When I was 19 I went to Winkler Bible Institute - I spoke to the Admissions guy 5 days before school started, I told him, "I don't have a high school diploma, I don't have any money, can I come to your school?" He said, "sure, we will work things out." During that year I still had headaches...I also met Nicky there, and we married 2 1/2 years later. She always cared for me and supported me when I had headaches. My headaches caused me to miss a lot of classes and get incompletes in a number of ...

Today I started something that I have been talking about for years. It all began when I was a youngster. I remember looking at my uncle and noticing a funny shaped round belly on an otherwise very skinny frame. To me it reminded me of a skinny pregnant woman. I remember realizing that I have a similar build and I remember hoping that I would never wind up with that crazy shape. I am 34 now, and though I would probably still be considered tall and skinny, I am starting to lose the skinny part of that distinction. People used to often say things like, "how do you eat so much, and stay so thin?" Now they say, "how do you eat so much?" I have noticed that I am starting to get the round belly that my uncle had, and horror of horrors I am starting to grow two things on my chest that only belong on women. Yes, man-boobs! The breaking point came this weekend, when I was at a Vikings game in Minneapolis (they won, woohoo ), I realized that when I was climbing the stairs at t...

"The Event" happened in our family and it forced us to think about greed. I won't tell you what "The Event" was, but let's just say that one of our kids did something that will be regretted for a long time. However, this action has lead us to consider what we are teaching our children about greed. The first thing we thought of was all the things that we allow our kids to do. We let them play Webkinz, where the whole idea is making money to spend on stuff...we let them stare at the Sears Wishbook for hours on end so they can drool over all the things they want...we let them look at websites online that basically exist to sell them things...we take them to stores just to look at toys...we buy them things. All these things, we decided, encourage greed, so we thought it best to put a stop to many of these things. We told our children that we would not be buying them anything for a while (at least until they are "ungreedy" as one of the kids put it). Wh...

This has got to be the best thing since sliced bread. Amazing! I found this on my friend Phil's blog.

This weekend we had a BBQ at our church. We invited some friends that we know because of Ben's school. It was interesting to bring them into that world (you know...the church world), but what struck me is that we have lived here in Winnipeg (Windsor Park specifically) for 4 1/2 years and this is the first time we have actually invited any adult friends to anything at our church. I have noticed lately that we are now starting to feel comfortable in our community, when we go to school with our kids we know a lot of the kids and their parents, when we go to sports events with our kids we are getting to know a bunch of the families there as well. 4 1/2 years seems like such a long time for us (this is a record for us living in one place) but we are really just starting to build really good relationships with people. I am reminded of a couple things...when we moved to Winnipeg I remember our Real Estate Agent saying that on average people live in the same house for 2 years...also, ...