Wisdom and Rest

The following is a copy of the Thomas Question email devotional. You can subscribe to the email edition from our website and tune into our podcast.

I’d like to change the format of these email devotionals, if I might. Since this is supposed to be a quick-pass weekly thought, I’d like to shorten them and make them more specific. As always, I’m open to feedback. I Hope you enjoy…

I’ve pulled something out of one of my journal entries from last September. We’d just begun the process of settling into our new home after our cross Canada move and I was feeling inundated with the actual “lurking just beneath the surface” work of starting a church. Feeling tugged in a thousand directions while only able to move in one or two, I found myself trying to balance input and output to make sure my life wasn’t driven into the ground. These words are coming back to me as I start to feel some of the same pressures right now. Here’s what I wrote:

“Self care and self serving are two very different things though they can often look exactly the same. Self serving is it’s own end. Self care is a strategic investment so as to be able to make a contribution, again, in turn. Remember, Jesus… “withdrew from there in a boat to a secluded place by Himself…” (Matthew 14:13)”

I think it’s wise to consider something about your personality: which excess are you more prone to? Time on or time off? Giving or resting? Input or output? Caring for yourself in the context of a higher purpose is just another form of serving others. It’s different phases of the same activity, and a truly wise person knows when and how to move between them. Such a person cares for themselves so that they can care for others.

Ecclesiastes talks about how a dull ax places requires more skill. So by extension – why not sharpen it? It takes greater skill to extract the same output from a life that is gradually wearing down (so by extension… why not sharpen that?). However, pampering yourself for the sake of how it feels is an equally dysfunctional situation. So: over use is a dull ax because one never takes the time to sharpen it. The other extreme is an over-sharp ax because one has never actually used it.

Which are you?

We’re probing this and related issues in “A Guide to the Satisfied Life” on Sundays. I hope to see you there, and I hope you bring someone with you.

CSW

LAST SUNDAY
“Losing yourself in someone else’s story” as a first step to the satisfied life. After all, a need met and a need forgotten both feel exactly the same. But one is much easier to achieve than the other. You can listen through our podcast. You can listen on our podcast or visit our website.

THIS SUNDAY
Grappling with uncertainty, a case for faith and a snapshot of marriage.

THE HIDDEN PART OF EACH SUNDAY
Beneath the service and behind the scenes, every Sunday, there is a close knit team of 4 or 5 people who make the church possible. They grow closer by working together, sharing a coffee and no small amount of laughter as they set up and tear down. Don’t just go to the church – be the church. Email us at info@askthequestion.ca to join a growing community of leaders who’ve found the joy of serving.

DON'T FORGET
Tell someone about the Thomas Question, our podcast or the website. You never know.

Freedom

The following is a copy of the Thomas Question email devotional. You can subscribe to the email edition from our website and tune into our podcast.

This is a bit longer and more abstract, but worth reading (I think).

Let me start with a question. What is freedom? Is it a decision? Is free will an ability ingrained in us like moving or breathing or blinking our eyes? Can we choose it in a single step? We can make choices – or at least we feel like we can – of this there can be no doubt. It’s the idea which underpins our justice system. We hold you responsible for your choices because we believe you are responsible for them. But I wonder if this is all we need to know. After all, do you make all the choices you want to make? Is it as easy as simply deciding – and then it happens? What about the five pounds or the five bad habits you’ve chosen to be rid of at least a hundred times already?

At least twice in scripture we catch of whiff of something otherwise. In 1 Corinthians 8:9, we find out that the exercise of our freedom can be an impediment to someone else and in Galatians 5.1, we find out that certain exercises our freedom can diminish it in us. And certainly you are aware that you sometimes have more control over yourself than at other times. Freedom is starting to seem a whole lot more complicated. And I must admit that I’m fascinated with the stuff that lies beneath our personal freedom – and makes it possible.

Consider what you’d be like after a week without food and shelter. Consider what you’d be like at the end of any period of extreme deprivation. What would it do to your constitution? Your appetites would rule you in a way that left your freedom completely drowned out – at least for the moment. So it seems that some choices leave us with less freedom at the end of them. Like a choice to go for a whole week without food.

On the other hand, at moments when most of our needs are met and our minds are uncluttered with heavy compulsions, we can exercise great clarity of thought and have a high degree of control over ourselves. Large choices can come easily to us in an atmosphere like that. 30 minutes after I get out of bed, I feel like I can take on the whole world. So clearly some choices – those that meet our basic needs – can lead to greater personal freedom.

So maybe freedom is a state – like health is a state. It’s a condition affected by many choices. So it’s not so much any one thing you do, but it’s the effect of many things you do averaged over time. I can think of a single choice you can make which would diminish your health (any sport involving the word “extreme” as a qualifier as an example), but I can’t think of a matching single choice that could multiply your health (unless it was a pill you needed to address a specific condition – like high blood pressure or a single choice to have a daily habit – but that’s not one choice, is it?).

No, it seems that the state of our health is decided by many individual choices made over longer periods of time. So I wonder if the level of our personal freedom – the state of being able to make larger choices and more of them – is somehow just like that. Clearly the “satisfied life” has more benefits than just what it makes you feel in any given moment.

This Sunday we’re starting a whole new series entitled, “A Guide to the Satisfied Life” and we’ll start by taking a look at personal freedom. I hope to see you there and I hope you bring someone with you.

CSW

COMMUNION
Monica and I did it last week – and we highly recommend it. Communion didn’t start out as a small part of a church service involving plastic cups and plastic tasting wafers. It started as a meal with friends that became a symbol of a Kingdom. So we had some people for dinner, left a chair at the table empty (we’ll tell you why on Sunday) and experienced the thing Jesus chose as a symbol of heaven. Try it this fall at The Thomas Question.

LAST SUNDAY
The Problem with a Dream. You can listen on our podcast or visit our website.

THIS SUNDAY
A Guide to the Satisfied Life: The Thing About Freedom.

NEXT SUNDAY
A Guide to the Satisfied Life: The Things to use your Freedom For.

DON'T FORGET
Tell someone about the Thomas Question, our podcast or the website. You never know.

The History of Licorice - Or Things Like It

The following is a copy of the Thomas Question email devotional. You can subscribe to the email edition from our website.

There’s a fascinating chapter in Eric Schlosser’s book, Fast Food Nation that talks about the little known heartland of the flavor industry which is responsible for making most of what you taste, taste like it tastes (see “Why the Fries Taste so Good” starting on p. 111). You may be interested to know that “the aroma of food can be responsible for as much as 90 percent of it’s flavor” and “a nose can detect aromas present in quantities of a few parts per trillion – an amount equivalent to 0.000000000003 percent.” And how about this, “The chemical that provides the dominant flavor of bell pepper can be tasted in amounts as low as 0.02 parts per billion; one drop is sufficient to add flavor to five average size swimming pools.” Shocking. Truly.

Taste – our experience of flavor – is a form of direct stimulation from which we can derive pleasure. Obviously. We can only assume it was intended to be a compliment to nutrition – to give us a tactile motive for eating. So far so good. But candy – and in particular, for me, red licorice – is a means of attempting manufacture bite sized explosions of flavor for the sake of flavor alone. They are engineered to be irresistible, and to send a signal to our brains, “this is good” when in fact, it’s really anything but. It’s a chemical lie! And I wonder – what is the effect of “unlinking” taste from nutrition so that we crave a level of flavor you just don’t find in nature?

In fact, it begs a whole series of questions related to “things meant to be taken in lock step with each other”. Think interlocking gears. For example: sex in step with love, inhaling matched to exhaling, death control (ie extended health care) matching birth control (ie to prevent a population explosion). And what about material abundance matching spiritual significance (so it leads to generosity not just wild consumption), and investments made in the environment to match the constant withdrawals we are making with smoke stacks and exhaust pipes? Or repentance matched with forgiveness so it doesn’t lead to license; and finally, dreams matched with action so it doesn’t lead to distraction.

I suppose, given the option, who wouldn’t choose to simply feel good by a shorter and shorter route. But at a certain point, eventually, that would just lead to a narcotic, wouldn’t it? Clearly we were made for something more than just taste. What about substance?

Last Sunday I began a two part series on dreams, purpose and passion with “The Power of a Dream”. This Sunday, I’d like to present the other half of what you need to know about building an authentic adventure instead of just chasing fantasies with “The Problem of a dream.” Are your dreams all “taste”? Or are they substance, too?

If you missed this past Sunday, you can visit our website. and catch up on this or any other message.

I hope to see you there, and I hope you bring someone with you,

CSW

LAST SUNDAY
The Power of a Dream. You can listen on our podcast or visit our website.

THIS SUNDAY
The Problem With a Dream.

NEXT SUNDAY
A whole new series: "A Guide to the Satisfied Life".

COMMUNION A BIT DIFFERENT
The first communion was dinner in a home among friends and Jesus said He’d never do it that way again until we were all back together again. We’re challenging you to have communion this fall in your homes. Invite someone you know and someone you don’t – and leave a chair empty to remind you of how it all began. More details available on Sundays.

DON'T FORGET
Tell someone about the Thomas Question, our podcast or the website. You never know.

She Actually Honestly Tries

The following is a copy of the Thomas Question email devotional. You can subscribe to the email edition from our website.

Forgive the writer if this is a bit more personal and an anecdotal than usual, but I think it serves the point well. When my 2 year old daughter sees something of interest high in the sky, be it a cluster of balloons or a helicopter or a passing jet, she actually tries to reach it – and I find that endlessly remarkable. Clearly she has no sense of space and distance. It puts her in a state where she’s completely unhindered by fact, and as a result, she really believes she might be able to reach them. And she doesn’t just believe it a little, extending her arms as part of some long shot gesture that was never really expected to work. Instead, with great enthusiasm and a glint in her eye, she’ll stretch with her fingers and toes extended – at times straining with effort. Sometimes she’ll ask me to help her get the last inch or two she thinks she needs to close the distance. I was with her once when she actually tried to touch the moon.

What a thing it must be to be able to believe on such a scale – and believe deeply enough that it makes you try with great enthusiasm. You may think it a fanciful waste of time, and in some ways it is (at least when it comes to reaching the moon with your finger tips). But on the other hand it can have great value to be caught up in simple enthusiasm for something you see just beyond your reach. After all, who knows?

We have to remember that childhood is a special state – and it’s a condition endorsed by God. “These kids get a lot of things right,” He says in my own translation of Mark 10.14. After all, let’s consider our own lives over the last 10 or 15 years. When you were 5, you could sing, and dance, and draw and play any kind of sport along with just about anything else your teachers and parents would let you try. Now have you added to that list or taken away from it?

So when I see Gracie reaching for something which is clearly hundreds if not thousands of feet away, I quietly cheer her on. Sure it’s preposterous. But in it’s own way, it’s also a powerful thing. Oh to believe on that scale because that belief pushes her to try. At this stage of her life, her default posture is to try things first and be proven wrong later – and she has so little baggage to get in the way that she’s game for almost anything. She can believe. Have you added to that state or lost it completely? Growing up can often feel like a process of giving up. Is that what it’s become?

This Sunday, I’m going to start a new series on the power of a dream and a transforming vision. I’d love to see you there – and it would be great if you could bring someone with you.

CSW

LAST SUNDAY
The last in our series on 8 sentences to begin your next step. You can listen to the whole series on our podcast or visit our website.

THIS SUNDAY
The power of a dream.

NEXT SUNDAY
The problem with a dream.

DON'T FORGET
We’ve worked hard to create a church that creates value for the people you live and work beside. Let them know we exist and let us know how we can do it better.