Posted on by Lori Cartmell · 2 Comments

Label Jars, Not People

By Frank Vincentz, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0

What’s the difference between a tart and a torte?

For that matter, what’s the difference between torte-with-an-e and tort-without-an-e? Are they all edible?

Let’s see if we can straighten out the confusion.

A tart is an open pastry containing a filling. A torte is a multi-layered cake-like confection. They’re both edible (and extremely tasty—see recipe for Lemon Almond Tart below).

Tort is a legal term referring to a wrongful act or infringement of a right. You could try to eat the paper a tort was described on, but I wouldn’t recommend it!

But we’re not quite finished unpacking the meanings of these similar-sounding words.

A tart can also refer to a promiscuous woman: one who has had many sexual partners. A woman others would look down on. A woman polite society might consider to be “loose.”

But we should be careful before we slap anyone with a label such as this. We never know how God might use them.

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Posted on by Lori Cartmell · 2 Comments

Put On The Right Costume

Image by PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay

It’s amazing what a cape can do.

Ask any child who puts on a superhero costume for Halloween.

They suddenly feel braver. Their confidence gets a boost. They believe that they can achieve things that they couldn’t before.

Actors understand this. Many actors report that they can more readily get in character for their role once they don the costume associated with it.

Interestingly, some actors identify with the characters they portray so much that they become real-life action heroes.

Tom Cruise has reportedly rescued people in real life at least six times, including coming to the aid of a woman set upon by muggers in London, rescuing a family from a burning boat in France, and helping the victim of a hit-and-run in California.

Likewise, action star Harrison Ford has pulled someone out of a burning car, and has used his own helicopter to rescue a stricken hiker.

The theory behind this phenomenon is called “embodied cognition,” and it might help explain how actors and others become their roles.

In the case of action heroes, acting brave in movies may lead to actually being brave. The more you practice something, the more you become it.

The key might be in putting on a costume or adopting a set of behaviours.

I think that’s why Scripture tells us to “put on” Christ.

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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

Straight Out of Left Field

Image by Pexels from Pixabay

Have you ever had a time in your life when God did a work for you that came straight out of left field?

The blessing, provision or miracle he bestowed on you caught you off guard and astonished you. It was completely unexpected and surprising.

You never saw it coming.

God seems to like to work that way, doesn’t he?

Think of Moses in the Old Testament, when he was leading the children of Israel out of bondage in Egypt.

They found themselves in a jam: cornered at the Red Sea with the Egyptian army snapping at their heels.

Moses had faith that God would save them, but I wonder if he was racking his brains trying to figure out just how it would happen.

Maybe God would send a flotilla of boats from the other side to rescue them, Dunkirk-style? But no one knew they were coming, and at any rate, the only people on the other side were either enemies or strangers.

Maybe God would send an affable and reasonable Egyptian captain to negotiate with Moses? Not likely, since all of Egypt’s firstborn had just been killed. The Egyptians were in no mood to parley with their escaped slaves.

No matter what Moses came up with as a potential solution, he never could have expected the curveball that God threw:

God miraculously parted the waters of the Red Sea and allowed the Israelites to cross over on dry ground, then closed up the waters to drown their enemies. Moses surely didn’t see that one coming!

And that’s not the only curveball that God threw…

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Posted on by Lori Cartmell

God Always Leaves a Light On For You

Image of Border Collie by Jacqueline Galand from Pixabay

When you come home late at night, isn’t it nice when a family member has left a light on for you?

It shows they care about you, and want you to be guided safely back inside.

I was reminded of this recently when I came across a fun fact about border collies, a highly intelligent breed of dog often used to herd sheep.

The border collie usually sports a prominent white tip on its tail. This characteristic colouration is known as the “Shepherd’s Lantern.”

The white tip of the collie’s tail stands out in the dim light of dusk, allowing the shepherd to be guided home from the pasture after a long day’s work.

That got me thinking:

Our Heavenly Father gives us a “lantern,” too.

God loves us and wants to make sure we’re guided home to him.

He does this in two ways:

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Posted on by Lori Cartmell

Start As You Mean To Go

Image by morzaszum from Pixabay

Have you ever heard the phrase “start as you mean to go on”?

Maybe your parent or teacher taught it to you. But what exactly does it mean?

It means to begin doing something in the same manner that you intend to continue doing it: to set a consistent pattern of behaviour right from the start.

That way, everyone will know what to expect from you, and they won’t end up disappointed.

Many of us have a hard time being consistent. We start out the new year with grand resolutions about exercising more, being a better parent, or reading the Bible.

But then our enthusiasm wavers, we get busy, and our resolutions fall by the wayside.

What about Jesus? Did Jesus start as He meant to go in His earthly ministry?

Let’s take a look at His first miracle and see what we find out.

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Posted on by Lori Cartmell

Some Things Never Change

Image by mabi2000 on Flickr. by CC BY-SA 2.0

Has your head been spinning with all the changes the world has undergone in the past several years?

We stumble through one crisis, only to find another totally unexpected one emerge. We wonder if life will ever truly be the same again.

It’s at times like these that we need something that never changes, much like conifers.

During the winter, when deciduous trees are bare, I’m thankful for coniferous trees. These loyal friends, like the spruces, pines and firs, still have their mantle of green, which they’ll keep year-round. These silent sentinels might not be flashy, but we can count on them not to change.

God’s character is like that, too.

When the world seems to be in turmoil, and life is changing in ways that are distressing and unpredictable, we need something unchanging to hold on to. That something is our eternal Heavenly Father.

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Posted on by Lori Cartmell

They Walked Away Winners

Image by Arek Socha from Pixabay

What would cause you to walk away from your greatest success?

It would have to be something pretty compelling, wouldn’t it?

Because people don’t normally throw in the towel when they’ve just achieved something unimaginable, when their wildest dreams have just come true.

If your business has finally had a banner year, you’d want to build on that and grow the company even bigger, not turn your back on it.

If you’ve just won several awards for achievements in your field, that’s probably not the time you’d suddenly want to quit.

So why would someone abandon it all right after a sensational triumph?

If they’d discovered something infinitely more valuable and worthwhile.

That’s how it was for three fishermen named Peter, James, and John.

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Posted on by Lori Cartmell

Get In Tune With God

Image by Christine Morton from Pixabay

Before musicians play a piece of music, they get their instruments in tune.

But how do they know which is the true pitch to align with?

The piano might think it’s got the correct “A” note, but the violin begs to differ. Or maybe the clarinet insists that it’s the only one who truly has the right note; a mere trumpet certainly wouldn’t know.

To settle the arguments of squabbling instruments, there’s only one solution:

Use a tuning fork (or its electronic equivalent).

When struck, a traditional tuning fork vibrates at 440 Hz to produce a pure “concert A” note. Once this correct pitch has been established and sounded, all the instruments can tune to it instead of to each other.

This guarantees that the whole orchestra will be perfectly in tune.

I think there’s a little lesson that we believers can glean from this…

Too often, we want other believers to get in alignment with our viewpoint, our “pitch,” as it were. We insist that only we have the correct revelation from the Word of God about this or that matter, and everyone else needs to get on board with us.

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Posted on by Lori Cartmell

Saved By The Blood

Image of ground squirrel by Roy Buri from Pixabay

In a match between a ground squirrel and a deadly rattlesnake, whom would you bet on?

Remember, this is a ground squirrel: it can’t run up a tree to escape.

And if the squirrel needs to defend its burrow with its babies inside, it doesn’t have much choice: it has to stand its ground.

What chance does it have against a venomous rattlesnake?

More than you’d expect.

California ground squirrels have an ace up their sleeve.

When confronted by a rattlesnake, this squirrel is able to engorge its tail with extra blood. It then waves its tail back and forth vigorously, super-heating the blood.

The snake, while lethal, has relatively poor vision, so it can’t clearly see what it’s facing. It instead uses its built-in infrared sensor to detect heat.

The squirrel’s hot, blood-filled tail swishing to and fro mimics the heat signature of a much larger animal. The snake thinks twice about taking on such a formidable creature, and more often than not it slinks away, defeated.

The squirrel has been saved from its enemy by the blood.

And so are we.

On our own, we are no match for that serpent of old, Satan.

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