At Grace Fellowship Church we’ve been praying for something big and we’ve been praying it for quite some time. We want a meeting place of our own. It’s not that there is anything inherently wrong with the school we meet in now, but more that we can foresee how our own building would be beneficial to the church and to the community. Oh, and we want the building to be free. We’re quite a small church and the leadership (wisely, I think) is hesitant to rope the church into a long and expensive mortgage. Real estate prices being what they are in Toronto, it would realistically be a very long and undoubtedly very expensive mortgage. This would not be a good decision for our church. So we continue to pray for a building of our own, for free.

I am confident that we can pray for such a thing and am confident that God can answer our prayer in amazing and unexpected ways. And really, I’ve seen him answer such prayers in other churches and organizations. The Apostle had confidence that God was able to do things far beyond our ability to even imagine, closing his prayer for the Ephesians by praying in the name of “him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.” What seems so big to us is so small to God. Is the Creator of all the universe bound by the limitations that seem so clear to us?

It’s strange to me, then, that I can pray in such confidence that God is able to do great things and yet still pray with such a diminished sense of my prayers actually mattering to God. I am coming to realize that this is one of my great struggles in prayer. I believe in God’s sovereignty; I believe what he says in the Word is true and that he is not only able, but willing to grant what I ask in prayer. “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!” God wants to hear the prayer of his saints and as a father delights in giving good things to his son, God delights in giving good things to his children.

And yet so often I pray like it doesn’t really matter. I make it a habit to try to pray for every person in our church every week. Far too often I pray these prayers like I am praying to someone who is not eager to hear the prayers and is not eager to answer them. I pray like I am asking difficult things of a reluctant ruler. I pray like I need to beg God that he will bless these saints, like he is uninterested in hearing my requests that these people will apply to their lives the Word they heard on Sunday or that they will come to church eager to enjoy communion with him. I pray like prayer is a duty, not a delight.

But lately God has been showing me that prayer can be so much more than duty. When prayer is mere duty I see myself falling into the trap of the Gentiles that Jesus talked about in his Sermon: “And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.” My prayers can be so empty, so meaningless, little more than empty phrases heaped one upon the other. But God has been showing me that they are so much more. They are so much more to him.

So this has been my prayer in recent days—my prayer with which I begin to pray. “God, help me to have confidence that my prayers matter.” I’ve found that such a sense can transform a prayer. With such a prayer I am reminding myself of God’s truth—that He is eager to hear and answer my prayers—and I am asking him to give me a renewed and enlarged sense of this great truth. As I pray this I am reminding myself that God is no petty tyrant disinterested in what I may desire to ask him, but that he is a gracious Father who desires good things for all of his children. And I remind myself that prayer is a means, and often the means, by which he gives us those things that will bless us and bring glory to his name.

Prayer matters—my prayers matter. I fight to keep this in my mind and I fight to keep it in my heart.

In recent days I have received several emails dealing with spiritual gifts. Unfortunately, due to constraints on my time, I’ve been unable to spend a lot of time answering these. Today I want to spend just a few moments at least sharing some basic biblical teaching on the spiritual gifts. Much of this is drawn from my book The Discipline of Spiritual Discernment where I have an entire chapter dealing with gifts in general and the gift of discernment in particular.

Often when I hear people speak of spiritual gifts they do so in this manner. “I have the gift of [insert gift here] and my church has no way for me to serve in that way.” Or “I know what my gift is and I am looking for ways to use it.” To these people I would suggest that they may have an inaccurate or incomplete understanding of the way the gifts work. The way to properly exercise spiritual gifts is not to be willing only to do what you’ve determined is your gifting, but to do anything that the church needs to have done, and to do it with joy and excellence. And as you do that, you may find that God gifts and equips you for something far outside your comfort zone.

The Bible seems to indicate that Christians will typically know how they have been gifted. There is certainly nothing that would hint at the modern methods of discovering gifts through surveys or assessments. And yet, while most Christians know that the gifts of the Spirit are given to God’s people, they continue to struggle with identifying the ways in which God has gifted them.

Because gifts are given for the benefit of the body, it seems likely that where there is a need, there will be someone with the gifting to fill that need. If a church has a desperate need for a person with the gift of teaching, it seems likely that someone within the church has been given such a gift and may fill the need, at least for a season. Similarly, if a person is a member of a church where there is no opportunity to exercise a certain gift, it may be that this church needs to create opportunities for that; in extreme cases, the person needs to seek a church where his gifts can be of service to others. The leaders of churches should seek to ensure that they are providing opportunities for members to exercise the full spectrum of gifts.

Wayne Grudem writes, “Though the lists of gifts given in the New Testament are not exhaustive, they certainly provide a good starting point for churches to ask whether at least there is opportunity for these gifts to be used.”

For those who continue to struggle with identifying how they have been gifted, here are five principles that will prove helpful:

Begin with Prayer
God promises to give wisdom to any who ask for it. “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him” (James 1:5). Thus we should begin our search for gifting by asking God to make it plain to us how he has gifted us and how he desires that we serve him by serving others. We must ask for wisdom in seeing how God has gifted us and in opening our eyes to opportunities to serve him.

Look for Passion
Where God has given a gift, we can expect that he will also give passion. A good place to begin when considering spiritual gifts is to see where God has given desire and passion. A person who is passionate about having people into her home may well have a gift of hospitality; a person who loves to organize events may be gifted with a kind of leadership; a person who is passionate about the truth of God may be gifted with discernment. Those who look for their gifting should look to what interests them and what makes them feel passionate. As they look to their passions they may just find their gifts.

Ask Others
Another way of seeking gifting is to ask other believers, especially those in spiritual leadership over you. Simply ask other Christians, those who know you best and who lead and guide you, where they feel you should serve within the church. Ask them to prayerfully consider your gifting. Their wisdom and guidance may surprise you.

Try Them!
Christians should try different opportunities to serve within the church. As we attempt different things and do so in the power of the Holy Spirit, we can expect that he will reveal passion and gifting in ways we may not expect. There is a danger in doing only those things that we are comfortable with or serving only in the ways we think we are most talented. Think of Moses, a frightened and timid man being called to lead a nation, or the apostle Paul with a thorn in his flesh being called to take the gospel to all the nations. God does not always gift us in ways we are comfortable with or in ways we might expect. By attempting different gifts we can look to those where God brings blessing and success and perhaps see that we have a special gifting in these areas.

Keep Trying!
The Bible does not tell us that all spiritual gifts are given at the time of conversion or that, once given, they are given permanently. As we grow in our knowledge and love of the Lord, we should continue to seek ways of serving him. We may be surprised to find that our gifting changes along with the needs of our local church. We may find that God wishes us to emphasize different gifts now from those we emphasized in the past. So keep serving God and keep searching for his gifting in your life. If confusion continues, take heart, wait patiently for God’s wisdom and guidance, and serve him whenever and wherever possible. He will answer your prayers.

A couple of months ago I was having one of those mornings. I was in a grumpy mood to begin with and was grumbling as I headed downstairs to find that the children’s lunches remained unmade. With just a few minutes before they had to be out the door and on the school bus I set to work on one of my least favorite routine jobs. As I did so I grumbled, “It’s just not fair!” And in that very moment I had a little epiphany. Nothing’s fair. Fairness is not a concept that has any business in the Christian life. I gain nothing by focusing on fairness. I repented and got to work with a whole new attitude. The day got better. The more I’ve thought about it the more I’ve realized that there was something to my thought that day. Worrying about fairness is a spiritual and emotional dead end.

I kind of feel like I should be screaming in joy and wonder right now. Like I should just scream out “I CAN’T BELIEVE I’M DOING THIS! THIS IS AMAZING! THIS IS AWESOME! CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS?!”Just a few short hours ago I was in my home town of Toronto, on the shores of Lake Ontario. And now I am 1,000 miles to the south, rapidly approaching the Gulf of Mexico. Just moments ago I was sitting on the ground, firmly planted on terra firma. And now I’m several miles in the air. Ten minutes ago we were sitting still; now the aircraft I am traveling in is moving so fast that if I were to stick my head out the window and scream (not something I plan to do) my voice would be traveling only slightly faster than the plane. It’s incredible. If I weren’t here experiencing it now, I might be tempted not to believe that it was possible.

And yet I’m rather blase about the whole thing. I’ve done it before so many times. Already this is my second flight of the day. For the first flight I boarded the plane, quickly noted that the person seated beside me had his iPod fixed firmly in his ears and seemed to be in no mood for conversation, so promptly opened a book on the Resolutions of Jonathan Edwards. That took me part of the way to Atlanta, perhaps until I was over Pennsylvania or Virginia; when that book was finished I packed it away and continued to read a biography of John Bunyan, picking up with his writing of Pilgrim’s Progress. By the time we landed I was reading about The Holy War and by the time we finally taxied to our gate and shuffled off, I had come to his death. All that time I had been hurtling through the sky at 550 miles per hour and 6 miles up. But I scarcely noticed; I barely thought about it. It just was. I do it all the time.

I remember the first time I flew, or the first time I flew as a person old enough to remember doing it. The very fact that I remember it so vividly displays how important it was to me. My whole family was taking a long flight from Toronto, Canada to London, England. Everything was new and exciting. I remember the miniature cans our soft drinks came in; the meal we ate mid-flight, the movie that played on the screens ahead of us and the feeling in the pit of my stomach as the plane rose and fell with the turbulence. I remember that as the British Airways Boeing 747 left the ground, a poem came to my mind—a poem my father had once shown me.

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds, —and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of —Wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air…
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark or even eagle flew —
And, while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

It was so new and fresh. It was so exciting. Like the poet, I was amazed at the wonder of it all.

That was then. This is now. Now I barely think about flying except to register how boring and routine it has become and to mutter a complaint when my flight is delayed. Never mind that I’ll soon by moving 550 miles per hour 6 miles above the earth. No, never mind that at all. What’s important is that my flight is going to be fifteen minutes late. Horrors!

Life has a way of becoming routine, a way of losing its wonder. A few days ago I went out with some friends and as we sat and talked my friend Nick told me how beautiful and how smart my little girl is. And he’s right—she’s both of those things and more. I’m not sure, though, when I had last stopped to think about it. After all, I see her every day. Several months ago, my small group paused one evening to encourage my wife with some of the evidences of God’s grace they see in her life. Though I love her dearly, I was surprised at how long it had been since I had considered many of these evidences of God’s work in her. I guess I’d somehow lost the wonder.

And then there’s my faith. I know the kind of man I am. I know the lusts and the pride in my heart, the anger, the sarcasm the ungodliness. I know who I am and I know what I deserve. But. But God. But God in his goodness set me apart and gave me a gift—a wondrous gift greater than any other. He gave me what he had; he gave me what I needed; he gave me his Son; he gave me Himself. And yet sometimes it’s just like rocketing through the air with my nose buried in a book. It’s mundane; it’s expected; it’s old; it’s just the way it has been for so long that I scarcely remember (or perhaps scarcely care to remember) what it was like before.

But oh, how I long for those moments when God gives me that glimpse of just where he has taken me and what he has given me. How I long to know and to believe, to experience afresh, to rejoice in my heart, to marvel, to appreciate, to love, to feel.

Please, don’t let me lose the wonder of who you are. Don’t let me lose the wonder of what you’ve done. Please, don’t let me lose the wonder.

Some time ago I mentioned that I had been asked by a magazine to submit an answer to this question: “What is the greatest hindrance to the gospel today?” Since the magazine has now been published, I can print the answer at my site. So here goes…

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You know the oft-told story, I am sure. G.K. Chesterton, along with other prominent authors of his day, was asked by The Times to answer this question: “What’s Wrong with the World?” His answer was beautiful in its simplicity and brilliant in its profundity.

Dear Sirs,
I am.
Sincerely yours,
G. K. Chesterton

As I ponder the greatest hindrances to the gospel today, I can’t help but feel that Chesteron’s words are applicable to this question, too. And yet, at the same time, I feel as if they are wrong; dead wrong.

I Am

I, as a Christian, hinder the spread of the gospel and hinder its power in the world.

I hinder the gospel when I lose confidence in the gospel—in the powerful simplicity of the good news that Jesus Christ has died to save sinners. Our age has seen more gospel innovation than any other. We have unprecedented access to programs, teachings and technologies that claim to be able to further the gospel’s spread. But how easy it is to find that my confidence is in the programs or in the teachers or in the technologies, rather than in the gospel message itself. How quick I am to prefer my own message and my own methods above those given to me by God.

I hinder the gospel when what I do fails to match what I say. When I claim to follow Christ but allow my actions to betray my words, a watching world scoffs at the gospel, and rightly so. When I claim to have been transformed by God’s grace but live as if God has made no change at all, I cause others to heap contempt on the gospel. Robert Robinson said this so eloquently in his great hymn, “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing:” “Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, Prone to leave the God I love.” Living in the constant tension of being both saint and sinner, I am prone to wander away from the One I love; prone to live as if He is nothing to me. And in this I hinder the gospel.

I Am Not

From my human perspective, I am the greatest hindrance to the gospel. But the Bible tells me to look higher. It tells me with glorious clarity that nothing, no one, is able to hinder the gospel. It tells me to place my confidence in the God whose plans cannot be stopped. My lack of confidence in the gospel, my indifference to it, and my unfaithfulness in spreading it, cannot truly hinder the work of God. God reigns supreme over all.

his dominion is an everlasting dominion,
and his kingdom endures from generation to generation;
all the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing,
and he does according to his will among the host of heaven
and among the inhabitants of the earth;
and none can stay his hand
or say to him, “What have you done?” (Daniel 4:34b-35)

Not one person who truly seeks after God will be hindered from embracing Christ as Lord and Savior. Christ, the Good Shepherd, has sent His Spirit to gather a people to himself. Christ knows his own and his own know him. He will draw them to himself and not one will be lost; not one can be lost. Far be it from me to think that I can stand in the way of God, the Creator and Sustainer of all that was and is and ever will be.

What is the greatest hindrance to the gospel today? I am, but nothing is. God reigns supreme.

Continued from yesterday…

It was almost seven years ago that I was laid off and started my own company. I began without money and without loans. Since that time we have never lacked for anything important. There have been times where we have had to be frugal to get by, but God has always provided.

It is rare, I think, to receive such a dramatic and instantaneous answer to prayer. God had clearly orchestrated that day’s events, down to the finest details of my prayer to Him, the company’s decision to cut my department, and even my friend’s schedule so that he just happened to be outside my building at the right moment. It was truly an amazing day.

In many ways I give this background information with an overwhelming sense of shame.

It was not long after all of this that I began I began to worry. Not the kind of worry where I might think the occasional thought about a dwindling bank account, but the kind of worry where I would wake up at night bathed in sweat, wondering how I could possibly make ends meet. I would suffer ravaging headaches as I worried about how I would come up with another $400 by the end of the month. Every few days I would draw up a list of all the money we had in our accounts and all the bills we had owing and feel a flutter in my heart as I saw the obvious discrepancy. I would attempt to forecast our finances over a week, month or year and would always see how we would inevitably fall short.

God gave me many reasons to trust his providence. There was never a time when we were a day or two away from needing rent money and did not have it. Never once did we have a check bounce and never once did we have to miss paying a bill (though, through lack of faith, I would sometimes allow bills to collect on my desk for a month or two before paying them). I cannot remember even having a really close call. We never borrowed money; we never had to rely on other people’s gifts.

And still I worried. It is only in more recent days that I came to see that I truly felt my worrying was somehow effectual. Effectual worrying: let me explain that term. Effectual means “Successful in bringing about a desired effect.” It means “Producing or capable of producing an intended result or having a striking effect.” I honestly believed that my worrying was somehow making the difference - that my worrying was bringing about the result of having enough money. If I were to stop worrying, I felt, the money would dry up. If I stopped making my little lists of assets and expenses, I would one day wake up to find out that our rent check had bounced. If I stopped worrying, God would surely stop providing. I truly believed that my worrying was effectual, bringing about what I desired. I had to worry, didn’t I?

Every now and then I would think back to the beginnings of my company and see how clearly God had answered prayer, and what was no doubt a faulty and selfish prayer at that, and I would feel guilty. And well I should have, for God had left me a pillar, a milestone that I could refer to that would show me just how obvious it was that He was in this with me. When I felt myself worrying I should have been able to look back to His answer to the first prayer and have confidence that He would provide.

But I didn’t. I continued to worry.

I am grateful to say that in the years that followed, God helped me grow up. Through reading good books, through studying his Word, through getting to know him better, I was able to surrender all of these worries to God. This is not to say that I now lead a life completely free from worry, but that I really no longer stress about finances. We do not have a lot of extra money, yet when friends or family are in need, we have often felt blessed to be able to help them. Our prayer has been “just enough.” We ask God that He would give us “just enough” and allow Him to define “enough” as He sees fit. He continues to surprise and delight.

Worrying is a dead end. There is no benefit to worrying. Worrying does bring about all sorts of effects, but never the desired ones. Worrying brings physical and emotional stress, it damages interpersonal relationships and, for more seriously, separates us from the Lord. It brings about no benefit. I am thankful that God has helped me to see the wisdom of Job - the wisdom that opposes worry. “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” I learned to surrendered to God’s control, to God’s providence, and have found that when God is in control there is really nothing to worry about.

To be continued (and completed) tomorrow…

Continued from yesterday…

Every now and again my son decides the time is right to build a paper airplane air force. He raids my printer to get the stacks of paper he’ll need and then opens up The Dangerous Book for Boys to try out some of the designs printed in that book. But after building a few of these he inevitably wants to try some new planes—some bombers or fighters, perhaps. So he and I head to Google and go searching for new and creative ways of building paper airplanes. There are all kinds of sites that show photographs of amazing designs and give instructions on how to build them. Some of the instructions are descriptive: “fold the paper in half lengthwise and then undo the folds. Now, fold the paper from the top corner to the crease and then halfway back again. Tear a small line between the corner and the centerline and fold that new section into three equal parts.” And so it goes. We have found these instructions nearly impossible to follow. For all their best efforts, these sites cannot adequately describe how to build the planes. Far more helpful are the sites that offer videos or even animated graphic files that show the steps. This allows us to follow along, step-by-step, as the expert builds his plane and leads us with him. If you’ve ever tried to build Origami or other similar crafts you’ll undoubtedly have encountered the same limitation—telling is rarely as useful as showing.

Yesterday I wrote about the potentially tragic consequences of using the wrong measure. You’ll remember the story of the Gimli Glider, the airliner that ran out of fuel 5 miles above the earth because a fueling technician had made a simple error. He had used the wrong measure, dispatching the plane with 22,300 pounds of fuel instead of 22,300 kilograms. Only the skill of an outstanding pilot and God’s kind providences kept the situation from turning tragic.

As we evaluate our lives and as we try to live in a way that pleases God, we are constantly measuring and weighing. We are holding ourselves up against a certain standard and seeing how we compare to it. There are times—too many times—that we or I, at any rate, don’t let me speak for you, hold myself to the wrong standard. I compare myself to other people. I look to my friends or family or pastors or even complete strangers and compare myself to them. Often I come out looking pretty good. They are, after all, sinners just as I am. Their sin gives me hope and gives me peace. I may be a sinner, but at least I’ve never done that! Well, not recently, anyways. Or perhaps their godliness stirs my heart with envy. How could they be so immune to that this sin or that one? Why can’t I be free from that sin? What does it say about me that I continue to struggle with it?

There is a great danger in this habit. As I look to others and as I measure my godliness, my growth in grace by the standard of other people, I may learn to despise their godliness and to rejoice in their sin. After all, if they are my standard, their growth in grace calls into question my own. At the same time, their fall into sin will gladden me as I rejoice in not having fallen so far or so hard. I’ve looked to the wrong standard and have reached the wrong goals.

God does not call me to hold myself to the standard set by other Christians. My task is not to look to them and measure myself by that standard. No, I am always to compare myself to the measure he gave. Our measure is God himself. Our measure is perfection.

Jesus came to this earth and lived a life worthy of emulation. He lived a life that perfectly modeled God’s standard. He gave me the measure. So as I seek to evaluate my life and as I seek to understand whether I am growing in godly character, I am to compare myself to Christ. God did not merely tell me how to live in a way that pleases him, but went so far as to show me. He gave me far more than a guide book filled with instructions and more than a list of do’s and don’ts. He gave me an example to perfectly model to us the way he wants me to live.

What character trait could I want that was not already perfectly modeled by Christ? As he laid aside his glory and took on human flesh, he modeled sympathy, becoming what we are. As he washed the feet of his disciples, Christ modeled humility. As he prayed for his accusers, he modeled forgiveness. As he taught his followers he modeled patient, kind, servant leadership. As he died for those who had turned their backs on him, he modeled love. In all these ways he showed us how we are to live.

And so my life is to be a life lived by looking constantly to Christ. Am I seeking to grow in humility? I need to look to Christ! Am I wondering if I’ve been growing in my love for my brothers and sisters in Christ? I must look to Christ! Do I seek to grow in my ability to lead my family? I must follow the example of Christ!

He is the measure. He is the standard. He has modeled for me all that I need to be and do. He has not just told me, but has shown me. He has not merely given the standard, but has lived it and been it. And this frees me to live a life that looks to the right standard and the best standard—a life free from the bitter jealously and agonizing defeat that would come by comparing myself as a sinner to sinners. I look to his perfect measure, knowing that I cannot perfectly attain it, but trusting that the same power that enabled him to be perfect is the power in me that is helping me fight sin and that will some day free me from it altogether. It is the power that helps me look forward to that great day when sin will be no more.

On July 23, 1983, Flight 143, an Air Canada Boeing 767, lifted off from Montreal’s Montreal-Dorval International Airport on its way to Edmonton, Alberta. On board were 69 passengers and crew. Sometime around the flight’s halfway mark, while over the tiny community of Red Lake, Ontario, near the border of Manitoba, an alarm sounded in the cockpit, indicating that there was a problem with the fuel pressure on one side of the aircraft. The pilots, assuming that a fuel pump had failed, took corrective action and determined that the flight could continue. But just moments later, they received a similar warning from the other side of the aircraft. Immediately one of the engines failed and the pilots prepared to make an immediate landing at Winnipeg’s airport, the closest airport with a runway of sufficient length for a wide body jet. At this point there was no great emergency, for modern aircraft are designed to fly on just one engine. However, as the pilots spoke to the air traffic controllers in Winnipeg, they heard a new alarm, one neither man could remember hearing before. It was an alarm indicating that both engines were failing. Within seconds, many of the cockpit’s instruments went blank and an eerie silence settled over the plane as the second engine ground to a halt. Flight 143 had run out of fuel 28,000 feet above the ground.

Captain Bob Pearson and First Officer Maurice Quintal were faced with a nearly impossible task. They had to land a modern airliner, a 300,000 pound glider, without engines, without power, without most of their instruments. This event was nearly unprecedented in aviation history and neither their training nor their flight manuals had prepared them for such an event. Quick calculations showed that they would not be able to glide all the way to Manitoba. Captain Pearson suggested they try to land at his old air force base at Gimli, Manitoba. He was unaware that the air strip at Gimli had since been decommissioned and had become a drag strip. The runway had been divided into two lanes with a guard rail running along the middle. That very day was “Family Day” at the races and the area surrounding the runway was covered in cars and campers while racing fans enjoyed the day’s events. The pilots turned their plane toward Gimli, unaware of all of this.

As the aircraft approached Gimli, the skill of the pilots was tested to the extreme. Captain Pearson was an avid glider pilot and knew many of the tricks of the trade. He used one of these, executing an incredible forward slip maneuver to slow the plane and reduce altitude just before landing. Amazingly, he managed to put the plane down on the runway and to bring it to a halt without careening into the crowds. There had been insufficient power to drop the nose wheel and it collapsed as the plane touched down. This was the only major damage sustained by the aircraft. All 69 passengers and crew escaped unharmed. The 767 was quickly repaired and remained in service for almost 25 years more before being retired on January 1 of 2008. Both pilots were awarded the Fdration Aronautique Internationale Diploma for Outstanding Airmanship.

A subsequent investigation quickly discovered what had gone wrong with the plane now referred to as the Gimli Glider. At that time Canada was in the process of converting from the imperial to the metric system of measurements. The pilot had correctly calculated the amount of fuel that would be needed to fly from Montreal to Edmonton. However, the technician responsible for fueling had incorrectly factored the conversion from metric to imperial. Flight 143 left Montreal not with 22,300 kilograms of fuel as it needed, but with 22,300 pounds, just over half of the amount necessary for that long flight. It was a simple case of looking to the wrong standard, the wrong measure, and it nearly led to tragic consequences.

I thought of this story yesterday as I pondered my tendency to adhere to wrong standards. I thought about that part of my heart, that awful depraved part, that loves to hear about the faults, the sins, the depravity of others. It is this part of my heart that holds me up to an easy standard and a wrong standard—the standard of other people. I love to measure my heart, my faith by comparing myself to others. And inevitably I often look good in comparison. We are, after all, a sinful bunch who constantly find new and creative ways of sinning against God.

There is a better measure.

To be continued tomorrow…

You’ll have to excuse me for re-posting today. It was a tough night dealing with a sick kid and then this morning I had to take the kids to school and then shovel out after a pretty good snowfall. As I was shoveling this morning I thought of a post from last winter and thought I’d post it again. I hope you don’t mind.

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Elizabeth is a public nuisance. Her status is not official yet, but it will be soon. The local police have encouraged the families in this neighborhood to fill out the paperwork that will fulfill the legal requirements. It’s probably the best thing to do. When that paperwork is complete the police will no longer be forced to respond to her every call. And she calls a lot. When a car parks a little too far into the road, she calls the police. When she believes someone has trespassed on her property, she calls the police. When the children are playing outdoors and a ball rolls into her yard, she calls the police. She has the reputation of a person who must sit by the window with phone in hand. Nine and one are already pushed and she’s just waiting for a reason to hit the one again. She was one of the first people we were told about when we moved to this neighborhood. “You’re going to have to watch out for Elizabeth…”

Everyone in the neighborhood knows who she is. Her yard is easy to spot as it’s the one that is completely overgrown. In most cases people who do not care for their yards have it cut by city hall and receive a bill in the mail. In her case she’s managed to convince them that this chaos is a gardening style. Her house is over an aquifier she says, one of the few in the area, and that is why the trees grow so well and why they remain so dense. She’s the one who hands out apples or oranges on Halloween. She’s the one who has lived in the neighborhood since before many of the rest of us were even born and long before the other houses were built.

One morning last winter Aileen came into the house and told me that Elizabeth was out shoveling her own driveway. She is definitely too old to be doing this. So I put my coat on, grabbed my shovel, and walked up the street to her home. She had propped herself up with a crutch under her one arm and was holding a broom in the other, trying to sweep the snow away. We had seen a good ten centimeters fall and it was wet, heavy snow. A broom wasn’t going to cut it, and particularly so along the edge of the driveway where the plows had pushed it into hard piles at least a couple of feet high. I asked if I could help her and she hesitatingly agreed. She gave me a few pointers on how to best shovel and told me she’d be pleased if I’d just deal with the big piles close to the road. She asked if I would like to be paid and I said, “Absolutely not.”

I got to work while she headed indoors. I cleaned up the piles and then got to work on the rest of the drive. A few minutes later she emerged from the house to chat. She told me that the driveway had been widened many years before and they were able to fit at least eight cars in it. That explained why I was winded. She told me about her broken leg and then about her sons, both of whom live in the area, I believe, and both of whom seem quite well-to-do. She seemed perfectly pleasant, even for a public nuisance. She was grateful that she was going to be able to get out of her driveway that day, because she had a schedule with a physical therapist. When the job was done I told her to get in touch with me anytime and headed home.

Since that day we had several snowstorms and learned that we were in the midst of the snowiest winter in years. At that point we had seen 142 centimeters and that was three storms ago. We were in the midst of another one that day. The schools were canceled and it was as good a day as any to just stay off the roads.

Whenever the snow begins to accumulate, I cross the ditch and shovel her out. There was one time that I somehow forgot but she called a neighbor (she didn’t have my phone number) and asked him to come and knock on the door. He passed along the message and I hurried right over. By my count there are at least twelve or fifteen neighbors who are closer to her home than I am. They drive by while I’m shoveling or they use snow blowers to get the snow off their drives at the same time. But none of them help her. I don’t know if she has burned all of those bridges or if this is just a symptom of the times we live in. Even the neighbor who came to knock on my door didn’t offer to help.

March 5th of 2008 was my son’s eighth birthday. Eight years ago we had brought him home from the hospital and we were wearing shorts and t-shirts. But this day it was well below 0, we had already seen 15 centimeters of snow, and it continued to fall. “In like a lion, out like a lamb” is what they say about March. I was hoping that old adage proved true that month. The last thing I wanted to do was shovel out a long driveway covered in 15 centimeters of heavy snow. I grumbled to Aileen, saying “I picked quite the year to start helping Elizabeth, didn’t I?” She lovingly scolded me and I went on my way. Though it was his birthday, I told Nick to come along and to help me out. He did so quite willingly, despite having some new toys and games to play with and Super Mario Galaxy for the Wii demanding his attention. And off I went, perhaps a bit resigned to my fate.

We got to work, chipping away at the driveway. After a few minutes of hard work Nick piped up. “Daddy, this is what the Bible says, isn’t it? That anyone who has a need is our neighbor?” And he was right—that’s exactly what the Bible says. But Scripture also makes it clear that any good things I do are utterly worthless when I do them with a grumbling spirit. In that moment I saw that I had been going about this all wrong. My little boy (who really isn’t so little anymore) ministered to me that morning as we cleared the driveway of our neighborhood’s public nuisance. My boy is a blessing to me in more ways than he knows.

The fifth chapter of John presents us with a pitiful scene. It is the Sabbath day and in Jerusalem, gathered around a pool by the Sheep Gate, is a great multitude of men and women. Some of them are lying on the ground, stricken with sores. Others are paralyzed or have shriveled limbs. Still others are blind or lame. All of these people are waiting by the edge of this little pool, for they believe that every now and again an angel stirs the water and immediately afterward the first person to step into the pool receives instant healing. History does not tell us if there is some foundation to this practice or if it is mere rumor. Either way, many wretched souls wait day after day by the edge of this pool, desperate for healing.

Jesus enters the city on this day and surveys the scene before Him. Moved with compassion, he approaches a certain man—just one man in a sea of faces—a man who has been an invalid for thirty-eight long years. We do not know why he chooses this one person out of the crowd. What we do know is that Jesus asks him a simple question; an obvious question and one which is answered by the man’s mere presence. Jesus asks “Do you want to be made well?” The man, who is sick and nearly immobile, answers that of course he wanted to be made well! He would not be spending his days waiting by the edge of this pool if he were not holding out hope that he could be made well. The problem, of course, is that he is helpless, and whenever the waters stir and he has the opportunity to be healed, another person with greater mobility beats him in. He is unable to help himself; he must be bitter, depressed. While others are claiming their healing, this man lays helplessly, missing chance after chance.

The Lord has pity on Him. To this one man he says “Rise, take up your bed and walk.” And in that very instant the man is healed. His legs, useless for thirty-eight years, are suddenly and completely strengthened and healed. He rises up, takes his bed with him and walks away. In this brief instant, Jesus performs one of the thousands of miracles designed to prove that he is the very Son of God.

Is Jesus unjust to heal this man? Is it wrong for Him to do so? Of course not! It is an act of great mercy. Jesus has pity on a poor, helpless man and takes away his infirmity. He turns to a man who has no hope and gives him exactly what he needed. He gives him a new chance at life!

Is Jesus unjust to heal only this man? Is it wrong for him to heal that one person and leave the others still waiting for their miracle? No! Jesus is able to choose the person to whom he will extend an act of such grace. No one can say it is unjust for Jesus to heal just one man. He has mercy on whom he chooses to have mercy.

There is a beautiful parallel between this story and the Father’s work in choosing some for eternal life. In the same way that Jesus was able to choose those whom he would heal, God is able to choose the ones whom he will forgive. He is not unjust to choose one and not another. All are equally helpless before him. God tells us “I will have mercy on whomever I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whomever I will have compassion.” And for some reason his mercy extends to me—He has picked my face out of this crowd of sick, desperate people who are looking everywhere but at him and has given me new life. I thank God that his compassion extends even to a sinner like me.