Posted on by Lori Cartmell

Lest We Forget

View from D-Day Landing Craft, June 6, 1944

Each year we mark November 11th as Remembrance Day in Canada (Veterans Day in the US).

On this special day, we remember the servicemen and -women who lost their lives to ensure the freedom we cherish so deeply today.

The numbers are staggering: it’s estimated that over 400,000 U.S. military personnel lost their lives during World War II. The US National D-Day Memorial Foundation estimates that over 4,000 Allied servicemen lost their lives on June 6, 1944 (D-Day) alone.

The fatalities during World War I are equally appalling, with close to 60,000 Canadians having lost their lives in service. The best estimate of war historians is that over 140,000 Allied soldiers lost their lives during the hellish Battle of the Somme alone in 1916 (including my great-uncle Pte. Robert John Tisdale, still in his teens).

The numbers who lost their lives in the Korean War, the Gulf War, Afghanistan, and others only adds to the toll of war’s terrible cost.

But wait a minute…every sentence I just wrote contained a mistake. Did you spot it?

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Posted on by Lori Cartmell

The J-Turn

Image by Kahl Orr from Pixabay

I’ll bet that for many of us, car chases on TV shows or in films are a guilty pleasure.

There’s invariably a suspenseful moment where it looks like the bad guys have the heroes at their mercy: they’re coming at the protagonists head-on. The good guys are forced to throw their car into reverse to escape their pursuers.

It seems like the baddies have the upper hand, because our heroes are at the disadvantage of driving backwards.

But then comes the thrilling moment when the good guys make a 180-degree reverse turn, spin their car around, and peel off facing forwards without losing any speed. The bad guys are left in the dust.

Our heroes have just performed a “J-turn.”

This evasive driving technique is a staple of almost every action film with a car-chase scene. It was made famous in the old detective show “The Rockford Files,” in which it was Jim Rockford’s signature maneuver. The J-turn is also called the “reverse 180” or simply “The Rockford Turn.”

The master of J-turns in the Bible was none other than Jesus.

Although he never drove a car, Jesus was adept at rescuing people by suddenly reversing their situation.

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Posted on by Lori Cartmell

Check In To The Grace Hotel

Image by Andrea Piacquadio via Pexels.

As any traveller knows, hotel staff can make or break your stay.

Especially the staff at the front desk, because they set the tone immediately. Within minutes, you get the sense of whether your hotel stay will be a happy or problematic one.

Case in point: when I was very young, my family spent some time travelling in Europe.

We stayed in a beautiful country where the people happened to be sticklers for rules and regulations. While we enjoyed our time in this nation, dealing with officials who insisted on strict adherence to protocols and procedures, even for tourists, became a bit tiresome.

Then we landed up in the south of France.

We arrived at a hotel late at night, exhausted, and trudged up to the front desk. My father introduced himself and mentioned to the clerk what country we’d just arrived from. He then began fishing out the documentation he needed to register for our stay.

The desk clerk took one look at two weary travellers with a cranky toddler in tow (me!), and said,

“Relax. You’re not in that country anymore. Here’s your room key. Go get some sleep and we’ll deal with the paperwork in the morning.”

I think my Dad almost cried out of gratitude and relief.

Although we settled the bill with the hotel when we left, my Dad doesn’t remember us ever properly registering with them!

Isn’t that what God’s grace is like?

God accepts us before we’ve proven ourselves or filled out all the forms or ticked off all the boxes.

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Posted on by Lori Cartmell

Thirteen By Any Other Name…Is Still Thirteen

Image by Manfred Antranias Zimmer from Pixabay

I recently realized that I wasn’t living in the house that I thought I was.

Last summer I moved into a house bearing the number 15. I love everything about it: the house itself, the neighbours, and the area’s community spirit.

It wasn’t until some months later that I realized that I didn’t actually live at #15: I live at #13. The house next door is #11, and opposite my house is #12. Counting from the bottom of the street, mine is the thirteenth house.

So why didn’t the city call it #13 when it was assigning street numbers to the houses?

In many countries, the number 13 has unlucky connotations. Why? One reason is that there were thirteen present at the Last Supper, including Judas, who would betray Jesus.

Some people are superstitious about this number, and try to avoid its “bad luck” by keeping away from anything labelled 13. There’s even a word for the fear of the number thirteen: triskaidekaphobia.

The result is that many companies and cities fudge their numbering to avoid 13. This is why many hotels and tall buildings seem to lack a thirteenth floor: the elevator buttons skip from floor 12 to 14.

The thirteenth floor continues to exist, as does the thirteenth house on a street: we haven’t erased them. But we just call them by other names. We simply pretend that they’re actually the fourteenth floor or the fifteenth house. Everyone goes along with this fiction because it means we don’t have to face reality. We’re deluding ourselves, of course, but it seems we prefer to live in denial.

We do the same with sin, don’t we?

We call it by other names so we don’t have to face up to the reality of what it really is.

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Posted on by Lori Cartmell

You Were Meant to Soar

Image of European swift by Kev from Pixabay

What is the ultimate flying machine?

The Concorde? A high-tech fighter jet?

I’d suggest to you that the holder of this title belongs to the common swift.

The swift holds the record for the fastest confirmed level flight of any bird: 111.5 km/h (69.3 mph). (Birds like falcons can fly faster, but only when diving down through the air to catch prey.)

Swifts also spend most of their lives on the wing, landing only to nest. Some individuals can spend up to ten months in continuous flight. In a single year a common swift can cover at least 200,000 km. No other bird spends as much of its life in the sky.

They are truly astonishing creatures.

A funny thing about swifts, though: they don’t do very well on the ground.

Their small, weak legs, which are placed far back on their bodies, are really only good for clinging to vertical surfaces like cliffs. They never voluntarily settle on the ground, where they’d be vulnerable to predation. Although swifts are capable of taking flight from level ground, they prefer to “fall” into the air from a high point.

Simply put, swifts were meant to soar.

And so were you.

But oftentimes there are things inhibiting our flight…

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Posted on by Lori Cartmell

You CAN Get There From Here!

Image by sdmacdonaldmiller from Pixabay

Have you ever heard the phrase, “You can’t get there from here?”

Said to have originated in the US state of Maine, it’s used humorously when describing a distant location that can’t be accessed without extensive, complicated directions.

The place might be difficult to get to from your current location, and the route may be very hard to describe. People simply throw up their hands rather than try.

This phrase is now used more generally to describe a problem that can’t be solved:

You simply can’t get there from here.

…or can you?

There may be things in your life that you think are impossible to solve.

But with God in the driver’s seat, you’d be surprised at where you may end up.

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Posted on by Lori Cartmell

Are You On The Naughty Or Nice List?

Image by Jill Wellington from Pixabay

Are you on Santa’s “Naughty” list or his “Nice” list?

Sometimes it’s hard to know, isn’t it?

You shovelled the snow off your elderly neighbour’s walkway, so that counts as nice.

But on the other hand, you greedily ate half a pan of freshly baked brownies before sharing them with your family. Not so nice.

You made up for that by running errands for a sick friend, and volunteering to work late at the office to help finish a project. Definitely heading well into “nice” territory!

But then you lost your temper at your spouse, fibbed to get out of visiting your mother-in-law, and illegally parked your car in a disabled space while you dashed into the store to buy milk. Uh-oh! Looks like you’re squarely back on the naughty list.

With Santa, it’s hard to know where you stand on the naughty/nice spectrum.

That’s why it’s good to know that, if you’re a believer in Jesus, there’s only one list:

Forgiven.

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Posted on by Lori Cartmell

The Law of the Universe

Newton’s cradle, a device which illustrates conservation of momentum and conservation of energy. Image by 3D Animation Production Company from Pixabay

If you were paying attention during physics class in high school, you’ll know that there are certain laws that the natural world abides by.

The Law of Gravity, for instance. Legend has it that this principle was discovered by a young Isaac Newton when he was hit on the head by an apple which fell from the tree he was sitting under.

Or the Law of Inertia, which states that an object at rest or in motion will continue in that state unless acted upon by an external force. So when I’m sitting in my easy chair and don’t want to get up to do any housework, I’m not being lazy. I’m simply obeying the law of inertia.

I recently heard a wag rephrase Newton’s Third Law of Motion (“For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction”). He dubbed it the Law of Emotion: for every male action there is a female overreaction!

Then there’s the Law of Conservation of Energy, which says that energy can’t be created or destroyed, but can be altered from one form to another. For instance, our bodies transform the chemical energy in food into kinetic energy to help us move around.

I think sin has a principle attached to it which is similar to the Law of Conservation of Energy.

Sin can’t just disappear. It has to be dealt with in some way.

But it can be transformed.

As author Dorothy Sayers said, “There is only one real law—the law of the universe. It may be fulfilled either by way of judgement or by the way of grace, but it must be fulfilled one way or the other.”

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Posted on by Lori Cartmell

What Makes A Garden?

Japanese garden. Image by Drobekpetr from Pixabay

If something doesn’t fit your idea of a garden, is it still a garden?

I must confess to having trouble warming up to Japanese gardens. They often feature distinctive elements such as conifers and moss, gravel raked to suggest waves in water, stone lanterns or water basins, and perhaps a bridge.

But to me, a garden isn’t really a garden unless its primary focus is an abundance of colourful flowers.

So are Japanese gardens still gardens? Very much so!

They still celebrate nature, even if some elements are suggested rather than incorporated literally. They still reflect the beauty that God has placed on this Earth. They still have the essentials down pat.

I guess I need to expand my idea of what a garden is.

We shouldn’t look askance at the way others have created their gardens. God smiles on them all.

Perhaps this is a lesson we can apply to the Christian life, too.

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Posted on by Lori Cartmell · 1 Comment

Behind Enemy Lines

Image by Defence-Imagery from Pixabay

We all love stories of rescues from behind enemy lines, don’t we?

There’s something thrilling about the courage of soldiers who risk their lives penetrating hostile territory for the sole aim of retrieving a fellow soldier who is trapped there.

Perhaps you’ve seen movies like “Behind Enemy Lines” or “Saving Private Ryan,” both of which feature storylines of military units launching search and rescue missions into enemy territory to retrieve one of their own soldiers.

We admire the willingness of soldiers to potentially sacrifice their own lives to save another’s. They deserve our utmost respect.

But did you know that God goes “behind enemy lines” to save people, too?

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