new life – The Faith Cafe

Posted on April 24, 2026April 23, 2026 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.

Posted on April 3, 2023February 20, 2023 by Lori Cartmell

New Life From Broken Eggs

There is often great beauty in simple things. Take the egg, for instance.

Even a plain white egg is pleasingly shaped, adorably sized, and a perfect blend of form and function.

Add some decoration, and you’ve got a small masterpiece.

Countries such as Ukraine have made an art out of decorating eggs as an Easter tradition.

Eggs “decorated” by God have a beauty all their own. There’s a charm to naturally speckled bird eggs that is irresistible.

You’d like to keep them intact forever, enjoying their freckled surface and gentle colours for as long as possible.

But if the eggs perpetually remained in the same state and were never broken open, you’d miss out on an even greater joy: you’d never get to see the chick emerge.

Sometimes you have to let go of something you love to receive an ever greater blessing.

This is something the disciples had to learn at the first Easter.

Posted on October 28, 2021October 27, 2021 by Lori Cartmell

Watch the Impossible Happen

They say that it’s impossible for bumble bees to fly.

The theory goes that their weight and size are too great for their tiny wings to support, so according to the laws of aerodynamics they shouldn’t be able to get off the ground.

The only problem is, no one has told the bumble bees that.

They seem to have no difficulty in buzzing about in the air from flower to flower, collecting pollen and nectar to bring back to the hive.

So how do they do it, when physics would seem to suggest that they can’t?

For a long time, this was a mystery to us. Eventually we discovered that bumble bees actually don’t defy the laws of aviation: they simply fly in a different way than a plane or bird does.

We learned that the propeller-like way they beat their wings creates an invisible force above them, like a mini-tornado or -hurricane. This vortex actually sucks them upward, giving them lift in spite of their weight.

There was more going on than met the eye, which allowed the “impossible” to happen.

Likewise, when we believe in God, there is more going on in our lives than we’re aware of.

When God is working in your life, sometimes He will cause the impossible to happen, even when you can’t see how it could.