Jesus – Page 15 – The Faith Cafe

Posted on March 4, 2021February 27, 2021 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.

Posted on March 1, 2021February 22, 2021 by Lori Cartmell

Follow The Cat

If you have ever owned a cat (or have been owned by one), you’ll know that if you want to find the warmest, most comfortable place in your home, just follow the cat.

Cats unerringly zero in on the most comfortable spot in your house. They’re not above stealing your favourite chair or displacing you from your own bed in their quest for comfort.

Our feline friends consistently find the sunniest windowsill on which to perch or a warm heating vent in the floor over which to drape themselves. They’ll snuggle into the coziest, most protected part of the sofa, or stake out a claim on the most comfy lap.

Cats are masters at pinpointing zones of highest comfort.

But if you’re in need of comfort, reassurance, love and protection, where do you find it?

Follow the people who know the Source of all comfort.

Posted on February 25, 2021February 22, 2021 by Lori Cartmell

Faster Than The Speed of Light

Artist’s concept of Mars Perseverance Rover, Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain

Last week, NASA’s science rover “Perseverance” landed successfully on Mars, to jubilant cheers from scientists back home.

Mission managers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab near Los Angeles had been waiting anxiously for confirmation that the craft had landed safely.

Because it takes radio waves 11 minutes to reach Earth from Mars, “Perseverance” had already settled on the surface of the Red Planet by the time news of its safe arrival reached scientists back on Earth. NASA had to endure a nerve-wracking wait before they got the verification.

We encounter this time lag throughout our universe.

The light from our own Sun takes 8 minutes to reach Earth. Light from Pluto takes 5 hours. It takes 8 years for the light from the “Dog Star” Sirius to reach our planet.

This time lag means that with stars extremely distant from us, we’re actually seeing them now as they were thousands of years ago. It takes that long for their light to travel to us.

It sometimes seems as though there’s a similar “time lag” between our brains and our hearts.

Posted on February 22, 2021February 17, 2021 by Lori Cartmell · 4 Comments

The Recipe For Manna

Don’t you love recipes that are so simple that you can easily memorize them?

The ingredients list isn’t too long, and the items are probably measured in even cups or teaspoons, not fractions.

You’ve made the dish so often that the instructions are now fixed in your head. You don’t have to go rifling through your recipe box or searching your online files to find the recipe.

Even years later, you can still bring the recipe to mind and whip up the dish reliably.

You’ll never forget it.

There are things that God will never forget, either.

I heard a pastor say that “God has not forgotten the recipe for manna.”

God still remembers how to cook up whatever you need and get it to you!

Posted on February 11, 2021February 4, 2021 by Lori Cartmell

My Secret Is Finally Out!

Are you a secret cookie dough eater?

Many of us learned as youngsters that raw cookie dough can taste even better than baked cookies. As adults, some of us will sneak a spoonful or two of cookie dough when we’re baking, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

For some of us, however, our addiction to raw cookie dough is rather more extensive. We have a particular problem resisting those tubes of uncooked cookie dough that you can buy in the refrigerated sections of grocery stores.

When we were kids, our Mom would buy a tube of dough and put it in the fridge, but it would mysteriously disappear before she had a chance to bake it.

As adults, our addiction to this surreptitious habit continued. We’d sometimes eat an entire tube of dough without baking a single cookie for our families.

Last summer, the Pillsbury company finally acknowledged what many of us have known for decades: their raw cookie dough tastes darn good, and people can’t resist it. So they’ve developed a formula that is safe to eat raw.

Pillsbury Cookie Dough tubes now state on the label: “Eat or Bake.”

Fellow cookie dough eaters: our secret is finally out!

And yes, I’m admitting that I’ve been a surreptitious cookie dough eater, too. There, I’ve said it.

Frankly, it’s a relief to have it out in the open. It feels liberating to finally admit my secret “sin.”

Posted on February 8, 2021January 30, 2021 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.

Posted on February 4, 2021January 27, 2021 by Lori Cartmell · 2 Comments

What Is Your “Job One”?

Man installing seat into Ford F-150 pickup truck at the Kansas City, MO plant. Wikimedia Commons CC BY-2.0

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?

Posted on January 11, 2021January 2, 2021 by Lori Cartmell

God Will Go Ahead of You

Cow eyeing something suspiciously. Image by ArtTower from Pixabay

Do you ever get a bit anxious when faced with something completely new?

Like how to find a new job in an economy that’s unlike anything you’ve seen before? Or how to navigate a world that’s turned upside-down?

Many of us shrink from the prospect of entering uncharted territory.

And we’re not the only ones: even some animals balk when confronted with something unfamiliar.

Cows are notorious for disliking disruptions to their routines and environments. They’re particularly averse to new gates. Cows are made so nervous by new entrances and openings that they’ll stubbornly resist going through them.

This trait is so well known that it’s given rise to the phrase, “like a cow looking at a new gate.” It means to view something with bewilderment and confusion, as though to say, “Are you serious? I’m not going through that.”

Do you feel this way when faced with the uncertainties that the new year may bring? Is fear of the unknown keeping you from stepping forward in faith to realize your dreams?

Fear has a way of paralyzing us, so that we stay stuck where we are instead of trying something new.

But we needn’t be afraid.

God will go through the gate ahead of us.

Posted on December 24, 2020December 15, 2020 by Lori Cartmell · 5 Comments

Go Ahead…Open It!

What traditions does your family have when it comes to Christmas gifts?

Do some of your family members like to give “prank” gifts?

This seems to be the specialty of a lot of Dads. Kids unwrap a gift from Dad to find an iPad box, and squeal with glee. When they open the box, however, they discover that inside are a bunch of eye pads! Thanks, Dad!

Or perhaps your family likes to disguise what the gift really is by wrapping it in a way that leaves you guessing. You might receive a large box, but when you unwrap it you find that it contains a series of increasingly smaller boxes. The last one contains the real gift, which might be a tiny box with jewellery inside.

In my family, we always open our gifts on Christmas Eve, not Christmas Day itself. This tradition started when a certain little girl, who shall remain nameless, couldn’t wait until Christmas morning to see what “Santa” had brought her.

But no matter how a gift is wrapped or when it’s given, offering the gift is only half the equation.

It has to be received before the action is complete.

Posted on December 21, 2020December 8, 2020 by Lori Cartmell · 3 Comments

More Than Meets The Eye

Sometimes we don’t realize what we’re looking at, do we?

This winter solstice is a good example of that, because tonight we’ll be able to see a particularly bright “star” in the night sky.

That is, you might assume it’s a star, but you’ll actually be seeing something quite different.

This rare “Christmas star” will actually be a planetary conjunction. The planets Jupiter and Saturn will be so closely aligned tonight that they will appear to be one ultra-bright object.

At other times, a bright “star” you see might actually be a binary star system; that is, two stars orbiting each other. Or it could be the planet Venus. You’d need to study it through a telescope, adjust your focus and consult an astronomical guide to know for sure.

The truth is, sometimes we don’t really understand what we’re seeing.

That was certainly true for many of the people who saw the baby Jesus and the star which heralded His birth.