Taking an icy dip!
One of my favorite podcasts is the video podcast from TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design). I find the different topics and ideas presented to be incredibly stimulating, and I love learning how to be a better presenter from some of the incredible communicators that show up at the TED conference.
This past weekend I was watching some of the latest postings to the podcast and came across a fascinating talk by a guy named Lewis Pugh. Lewis Pugh had a concern. He watched as the polar ice cap kept creeping back and how the ice at the North Pole kept getting thinner and thinner and he decided to do something about it. He wanted to do something that would grab the business and political leaders of the world by their “collars and shake them” to make them aware of the problem of climate change. So, what Lewis did is arrange to take a little dip, only he decided that he would take his short, twenty minute, one kilometer swim at the North Pole. Read more…
Why Worry?
I woke up last night at about 4:00 am with my head spinning. You see I’m the pastor of a small church here in Barrie, but we’re a small church with BIG dreams. The problem is that BIG dreams often take BIG money, and that’s not something we have in abundance. The down turn in the economy has definitely been felt by our congregation and we’ve seen a few of our family lose their jobs in the last few months. This is worrisome. Don’t get me wrong. For such a small congregation, we are very sacrificial givers, especially when it means helping someone else out of a tight spot. What has been keeping me up is how we’re going to be able to really move forward and see some of our BIG dreams come to fruition. So I worry.
I guess I’ve also found myself thinking about whether or not I will be enough as a leader to see our BIG dreams happen? Do I have the skills it will take? Do I have the confidence, the wisdom, the energy it will take? These are all questions that I worry about.
So today I opened up my bible and turned to Matthew chapter six and started reading. For ten verses Jesus goes on to talk about the foolishness of worry, culminating in a rather blunt statement:
“Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”
I guess the truth is, all my worrying doesn’t accomplish much at all really, except to make me tired today. Sometimes I wonder if this isn’t exactly the kind of place that God likes to keep us just so we always remember that it’s God who does the work anyways. Yesterday I was reading the book, “Plan B” by Anne Lamott and she says, “that God loves to use the impossible because it requires the miraculous.” Well, if that’s the case, then God is going to love using me.
