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.

Read more
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.

Read more
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.

Read more
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?

Read more
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?

Read more
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.

Read more
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.

Read more
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)
Read more
Posted on by Lori Cartmell

Your New Favourite Number

What’s your favourite number?

There’s a good chance you’ll pick the number 7.

In global polls, seven consistently ranks as the most popular favourite number.

With good reason, too.

There are seven days in the week, seven colours in the rainbow, seven continents, and seven seas. The number seven has significance in several major religions. It’s considered a “lucky” number.

But may I suggest you consider making the number 8 a favourite, too?

The number eight has a lot going for it. It’s especially rich in Biblical symbolism.

In the Scriptures, eight often represents a new beginning:

Circumcision occurs on the eighth day, marking entrance into covenant: a new life of belonging to God.

In the process of consecrating priests in the Old Testament, the eighth day heralded a new phase of ministry and access to God.

Eight people were saved in Noah’s ark, a picture of rebirth through water.

Read more
Posted on by Lori Cartmell

The Most Astounding Thing About Christmas

What’s the most astounding thing about Christmas to you?

The amount of electricity used in powering all the Christmas lights on people’s homes?

The credit card bill you’re racking up to buy gifts for family, friends, and coworkers?

The way your Uncle Louie consistently manages to buy you the most inappropriate gift imaginable, every single year?

The ugly Christmas sweater said uncle wears to every holiday event, even formal ones?

No, the most astounding thing about Christmas is that the Creator of the Universe, Almighty God, came down to earth and was born as a baby.

God Himself, the perfect and holy One, entered our messy, sinful world in the form of Jesus and dwelt with us for 33 years. Then He died on a Cross for our sins. All this was done out of immense love for us.

The theological term for God coming to us in this fashion is the Incarnation, which literally means “God made flesh.”

The Incarnation features heavily in my favourite Christmas carol, “Hark the Herald Angels Sing.”

Its writer, Charles Wesley, seems to have been so astounded by the fact of the Incarnation that he sprinkled this hymn with at least 10 references to it. See if you can spot them:

Read more