Provision

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Blowing with the wind

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Blowing with the wind

The wind was blowing right down from the Arctic this week. The Americans said it came from Canada, but the Canadians reported it came from Russia.

And we were experiencing extraordinary variations in the weather. One morning I was driving in to a breakfast appointment in minus 28 degrees Celsius (minus 18 F). It was so cold schools, government offices and many businesses just shut down. The day before, it never got above minus 26 the whole day. We had some frozen pipes at our place, but thankfully jacking the heat up managed to thaw them out.

Fast forward a couple of days, the wind had changed direction, and it was above freezing and sunny. We left our coats in the car when shopping, and turned the heat back down.

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Lynette Carpenter: The Promise

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Lynette Carpenter: The Promise

Stepping into a promise is sometimes easier said than done.

In 2016, my husband, Tim, and I were one year away from turning forty, reaching our twentieth anniversary milestone and celebrating our oldest son’s graduation.

It was a great season of life.

We were raising our four children on our family farm while serving as youth leaders at our church. Life was comfortable. Good. Happy. No need to rock our proverbial boat.

No one knew it, but we had began discussing the idea of starting a new business. The idea was nerve wracking, scary and borderline dumb - at least in my opinion. But through a series of events, we kept coming back to the idea of building four poultry barns.

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Following the cloud

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Following the cloud

People allow their lives to be directed by all sorts of things. Some people follow careers, some follow sports, some follow money, some follow pleasure, some follow happiness.

But as for us, we are (or should be) following the cloud.

I am alluding, of course, to Numbers 19. When the cloud rested over the tabernacle, the people remained. Whether it was a day or a month or what the Bible describes without further definition as “a longer time,” they stayed put. But as soon as the cloud lifted, they set out, and kept on following the cloud until it came to rest again.

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Jumping off a cliff (update)

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Jumping off a cliff (update)

I can’t believe it’s been two years since I wrote a blog titled “Jumping off a cliff.” In it, I talked about our decision to step out of leadership of the church we had planted many years before in obedience to God’s call to serve him on a wider basis.

No salary, no pension, still kids to support. All those thoughts went through my mind, believe me. But the same God who began to supply my needs as a penniless student and carried me (then us) through so many challenges since has - guess what - showed himself faithful. When we look back on God’s track record of faithfulness, why do we ever doubt? Probably for the same reason the disciples doubted Jesus’ ability to feed the people with seven loaves when just a few days before he had fed an even bigger crowd with only five. In truth, we are all doubting Thomases, to one degree or another.

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The perils of spiritual hoarding

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The perils of spiritual hoarding

Years ago, I went to a house way out in the countryside to perform a wedding. On my arrival, I was astounded to find the living room absolutely full of stacks of old newspapers. Many were piled far too near to a woodstove in the middle of the room. On using the bathroom, I noticed that even the tub was full of piles of stuff. The lady of the house was a cook at the hospital, and I wondered how long it had been since she had washed!

Hoarding is a psychological disorder usually rooted in some form of severe childhood poverty. A well-off professional friend of ours who had experienced a very poor childhood kept hundreds of tubs of empty plastic containers, bags and other things. She just couldn’t throw away stuff that she might need one day.

We can laugh, but most of us are guilty of some kind of hoarding. Clothes, old sets of electronics cables, batteries, pens, even (in the case of one friend) handbags. And we have a perfectly valid reason for keeping them all!