Wednesday June 10, 2009

Before the mountains were born or you brought forth the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God. Psalm 90:2.

There’s nothing like a text of this type to put things into perspective. Both God’s size and timeline are beyond imagination. If the nations are a drop in the bucket in comparison to God, where does that leave us individuals? A dose of insignificance does a great deal to undermine our arrogance and independence. And if we are so insignificant in the grand scheme of things, our puny worries and fretting don’t really add up to much either. Makes you wonder why God bothers with us!

Yet God cares about the sparrow and provides for them and their families. He will do the same for us. After all, as Paul suggests, if he gave his only Son to a cruel death to redeem us—our greatest need—why would he withhold providing for our lesser needs, Romans 8:32? The balance between God’s vastness and his love for the most insignificant is reflected in both our awe and joy and is essential to maintain a sense of security in life: he is both able and willing to respond to our needs and concerns.

God has many ways of providing for us, often, perhaps mostly, though others. Thanks to many of you that responded to my need for information on a couple of hymns. Both friends and strangers heard my call! If you wish to help us further in publicising our book Happy Together for those of you that have one, post a comment at chapters.ca, amazon.ca, amazon.com or amazon.co.uk. Just entering the words Happy Together will find us at or near the top of a number of hits. Even amazon.com has us at number nine of over 29,000 hits! We note that the book is also available at booktopia.com.au in Australia, kalahari.net in India and deastore.com in Italy.

We will be busy this weekend in Medicine Hat and in our own church, and we are planning a short tour across British Columbia early next month. Please keep us in your prayers for safety and sales!

Monday June 8, 2009

I put on righteousness as my clothing. Job 29:14.

This all sounds very admirable, but if you look at the context, Job is lamenting his lowered status among men, where formerly his good deeds were the basis of his righteousness. As you may recall, much of Job is a defence against God’s apparently punitive action towards him based on his own righteousness. It is a defence that all of us make at one time or another—“how could God let this happen to me when I have been so faithful?” In fact, the unfairness of God is used as a common factor in general against the evil and suffering in this world of ours.

Actually it is a feeling I have now. Having put so much time and effort—and money!—into our new book, and sensing that God was calling us to do so, surely it is now his responsibility to ensure the book finds its market! Our faithfulness should ensure his response. Yet as Ann often points out, when we have done all we could Jesus still made the point that we “We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty” (Luke 17:10). We are still responsible to do what we can to ensure our book gets to market. And as I stated last time—that is not my bag!

You can probably sense my frustration in these words. I have more important things to do that running around Canada selling books—I write them! So the next few weeks are going to be a balancing act: working on that interfering promotion while trying to complete—and enjoy—writing this second book before a looming deadline.

I quote parts of two hymns in this book, but need to reference them. If you can give me references for the following it would help enormously.

No power of Hell, no scheme of man,
Can ever pluck me from his hand.
Till he returns or calls me home,
Here in the power of Christ I stand.

and

Till we cast our crowns before thee, lost in wonder, love and praise.

If you can help here, please respond by the comment box below or to my email address:
bryannorford@shaw.ca.