Posted on by Lori Cartmell

Have Faith and Bring Your Umbrella!

If you’re a gardener, you know that when you plant seeds in the ground, you can expect results.

Not every seed will germinate, but a great many will. So you need to make preparations beforehand.

For instance, if you’ve planted seeds of climbing plants, you’ll need to provide something for them to cling to as they grow upward. Even if your pea or bean seeds haven’t germinated yet, you still might prepare some trellises or stakes for their eventual growth.

You wouldn’t think of not getting ready for the emergence of your seedlings and adult plants, would you? You have faith that they’re on the way.

Isn’t it funny, then, that when we pray and ask God for things, we often don’t really expect we’ll see any results?

We sometimes seem astonished when we receive a positive answer to our petitions. And it’s rare that we actually have enough faith to make preparations beforehand for answered prayer.

The early church fell victim to this lack of faith as well.

Acts 12 tells us of the time when the apostle Peter was seized and imprisoned, facing probable execution by Herod Agrippa.

The church, however, was earnestly praying to God for Peter’s safety and protection…

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Posted on by Lori Cartmell

The Beauty of Redeemed Brokenness

What’s your favourite flower?

Even though I certainly love roses, the tulip holds a special place in my heart. It’s not as showy or fragrant as a rose, but it brings such joy in spring after a long winter.

Among the many types of tulips, I especially like the variegated ones (with multicoloured petals).

But did you know that the dramatic colour combinations of variegated tulips are caused by a virus?

Gardeners had long noticed that tulip petals occasionally “broke” into unusual patterns. But it wasn’t until the late 1500s that botanists realized that the beautiful mixed colouring arising spontaneously in some tulips was actually the result of a disease.

While the tulip-breaking virus causes lovely variegated colouring, it also weakens the tulip bulb, eventually leading to the death of its genetic line.

So how is it that we can still enjoy variegated tulips today? Why didn’t they all die out?

Fortunately, botanists centuries ago learned to graft healthy tulip bulbs onto the diseased or “broken” ones, preserving their lineage. Today, we can enjoy countless cultivars in a dizzying array of colours and patterns.

Doesn’t this remind you of what God does for us?

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Posted on by Lori Cartmell

Your Spring Is On Its Way

A beautiful red cardinal has been singing heartily outside my window the past week, as though spring had already arrived.

The robins, now back from wintering in the south, can hardly get a word in edgewise.

A hawk in the nearby park has been gathering twigs for its nest.

And yet a couple days ago we had some snow flurries. This is Canada, after all, and it’s only April. It’s often still chilly enough outside to need a coat.

Doesn’t seem like spring to me.

Do the birds know something I don’t?

In fact, they do. They sense the lengthening of the days and the increased hours of sunlight, things that have escaped my notice.

They know that spring is on its way, even if I haven’t put away my winter coat just yet.

In the same way, God knows a thing or two that we don’t.

He knows when a turnaround in our situation is on its way, even if we can’t see any evidence of a change in the offing.

He knows that our “spring” is coming.

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Posted on by Lori Cartmell

The Missing Epitaph

What would you like written on your tombstone?

Maybe you’ve already given some thought as to what your epitaph should be. Perhaps you’d like a mention of your accomplishments or family ties.

You might even hope that something humorous be inscribed on your gravestone, as in the following examples:

“I told you I was sick.” (Written on the gravestone of William H. Hahn, Jr., of Princeton, New Jersey.)
“Here lies Lester Moore, Four slugs from a 44, No Les, No more.” (An actual epitaph in the Boothill Graveyard in Tombstone, Arizona.)
“There goes the neighborhood.” (Epitaph of self-deprecating comedian Rodney Dangerfield.)
“Here lies the body of Jonathan Blake. Stepped on the gas instead of the brake.” (On the tombstone of an accident victim in Unionville, Pennsylvania.)
“Here lies John Yeast. Pardon me for not rising.” (This cheeky epitaph is on a grave in Ruidoso, New Mexico.)

What was written on Christ’s tombstone? Any guesses?

Absolutely nothing.

Why?

Because He didn’t stay in the tomb for very long and isn’t there now.

Jesus was only a temporary resident in the dark chamber in which He lay.

Unlike John Yeast, Jesus did rise.

Three days after His crucifixion, He came to life again and walked out of that tomb, never to return.

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Posted on by Lori Cartmell

Your Past Doesn’t Determine Your Future

If you’ve ever invested in stocks or mutual funds, you’ll probably have come across a disclaimer like this:

“Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results.”

This phrase is meant to warn us and give us pause before we press the “Buy” button. We shouldn’t assume that an investment will continue to succeed in the future just because it’s done so in the past.

But there’s a secondary meaning that can be read into that disclaimer, too.

We shouldn’t discount or overlook an investment opportunity simply because it has performed poorly recently. It could well turn around and gain ground.

It’s this last meaning of the disclaimer that we see exemplified in several characters in the Bible. It applies to our own lives as well:

Past failures in our lives don’t mean that God can’t still use us.

They’re not a reliable indicator of our future results or success.

Our way of thinking often involves something called “recency bias”: the idea that the way things have been going recently are the way they’ll continue to go in the future. If we’ve failed once, we assume that we’ll continue to underperform and disappoint.

But when God is working in our lives, He changes the equation.

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Posted on by Lori Cartmell

What is Your “Job One”?

Sometimes we need a reminder of what we’re really here for, don’t we?

Many companies know this. Their employees can get so focussed on the little details of their tasks that they lose sight of what their main goal is.

That’s why for many years the auto manufacturer Ford put a large sign on the walls of its factories:

“Quality is Job One.”

An employee might have been helping to assemble the engine, working on the upholstery of the seats, or perfecting the paint finish on the vehicle.

But no matter what their specific task, the sign reminded the workers that their overarching goal was to produce a quality product.

Perhaps we as Christians sometimes need to be reminded what our primary function here on earth is?

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Posted on by Lori Cartmell

Write This Out 100 Times

When you misbehaved in school, did your teacher make you write out lines on the blackboard a hundred times?

Maybe you recall having to write lines such as these over and over:

“I will not talk in class.”

“I will not run in the corridors.”

Or this famous blackboard gag from the TV show “The Simpsons”:

“I will not waste chalk” (while wasting chalk to write it).

Of course, our teachers made us do this as punishment, but there may have been method in their madness.

Science has found that writing things down—specifically by hand—significantly improves memory retention. When we write by hand, the information is “baked” into our neural pathways better than if we type the same information. And the more often we write a certain thing down, the more likely we are to remember it long-term.

I wonder if we can use these findings to help us remember God’s Word better?

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Posted on by Lori Cartmell

Do You Abhor a Vacuum?

Aristotle said that “nature abhors a vacuum.”

So do I, frankly. Perhaps I should simply stop vacuuming? After all, who am I to argue with Aristotle?

Seriously, though, what that phrase suggests is that empty spaces are unnatural, and somehow or other nature will seek to fill them.

I encountered a dramatic example of this truism through a friend of my late father.

This friend had developed a disorder called Charles Bonnet Syndrome. Macular degeneration had left voids or blank spots in his field of vision. The brain finds these empty spaces to be disturbing, so in Charles Bonnet Syndrome it fills in the blank areas with patterns or random images from its memory bank.

The result was that my father’s friend would “see” people or animals that weren’t actually there. His wife would have to tell him that, no, there wasn’t really a stranger sitting on their couch, or a cow in their backyard. The hallucinations he experienced were just his brain attempting to paper over the upsetting voids in his visual field.

It seems that human nature abhors a vacuum, too.

We all have voids or empty spaces in our lives that we seek to fill: areas of dissatisfaction, lack of love, or absence of validation. These blank areas make us uneasy, so we try to fill them up.

The problem is that we often choose things to fill our voids that don’t truly satisfy us in the end: alcohol, sex, money, shopping, busyness, or worldly acclaim. Despite all our efforts to paper over our pain, we can still find ourselves as empty as we were before.

What’s the solution? How do we find a lasting source of love and validation?

We need to fill the empty spaces in our lives by inviting God into them.

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Posted on by Lori Cartmell

Trinitometry 101

The Shield of the Trinity, a traditional way of depicting that the three Persons of the Trinity are different and yet are co-equally God.

No, there’s not a typo in the title. I didn’t mean to write “Trigonometry.”

So don’t fear that we’ll be discussing math in this post!

I’m referring instead to the Trinity, a concept that can leave some people scratching their heads.

Do Christians worship three gods?

How does the “three-in-one” idea even work?

Over the centuries people have come up with different analogies to explain the idea that God exists in three distinct Persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

St. Patrick famously employed a shamrock as a visual metaphor to explain the Trinity to the Irish. He used the shamrock’s three leaves growing from a single stem to illustrate how the three Persons of the Trinity are distinct yet one.

But here we risk leaving the impression that each member is only one third of God, instead of each being 100% God. So the luck of the Irish fails us in finding the perfect analogy in a shamrock.

Some compare the Trinity to an egg, which also has three parts. The shell, the white, and the yolk together make up one egg. But this analogy has its flaws, too, and leaves the concept rather scrambled.

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Posted on by Lori Cartmell

Your Guardian Lion

For over a century, two marble lions have guarded the main branch of the New York Public Library at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street in Manhattan.

These majestic stone creatures flank the entrance to the building, keeping careful watch over all who enter.

During the 1930s the library lions were officially named “Patience” and “Fortitude” by then-mayor Fiorello LaGuardia. He felt that those names embodied the qualities that New Yorkers would need to survive the Great Depression of that era.

Truth be told, our need for patience and fortitude has never waned. Whether in pandemics, wars, or economic disruptions, we still need guardians.

Who is the “lion” guarding your door?

Scripture says that God guards and protects those who trust in Him.

“He guards the paths of the just and protects those who are faithful to him.” (Proverbs 2:8)
“God guards you from every evil,
 he guards your very life.
He guards you when you leave and when you return,
 he guards you now, he guards you always.” (Psalm 121:7-8, The Message)
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