Category Archives: Sabbatical

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Day One-Time with Old Friends.

We made it safely to Saskatoon tonight after stoping in Wainwright for lunch with our good friends the Richardsons. It was a great time of fellowship and laughter as always. 

Tonight we had a great dinner with our friends Curtis, Lynn and Gabrielle in Saskatoon. Curtis is an amazing chef. We met these dear people nine years ago as we traveled to China together to adopt Abby and Gabrielle. Always great to see how these beautiful girls have grown and matured. 

Tomorrow morning we are off to Winnipeg for an evening with Kevin and Jill Schular and kids!  

   
 

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Ready to Roll

Van is washed and fueled up. Oil has been changed. Stuff is getting packed. GPS is set. Tomorrow we set off for our grand 2 month road trip.

We are appreciative to our LFC family for this gift and we look forward to what God will teach us during this season.

The trip computer is set at 0 now, we look forward to seeing 7500 miles or 12,000 kilometers on it when we hit home in late November.

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Sabbatical Road Trip

In just over a week Joanne, Abby, Lydia and I will head out on our long-awaited sabbatical road trip.  We are very appreciative to our family at Leduc Fellowship for this season of rest and renewal and we are very excited for this trip of a lifetime.

On this trip, we will be enjoying the time to be together, taking in the beauty of God’s creation and listening to the voice of God concerning the next season of life in ministry.

We will be covering about 7500 miles/12,000 km’s across Canada and the U.S.

Our route is as follows:
Saskatoon, Winnipeg, Minneapolis, Chicago, Nashville, Gatlinburg (Smoky Mountains of Tennessee), Raleigh, Atlanta, New Orleans, San Antonio, Phoenix, Anaheim, Santa Cruz, Portland and then home to Edmonton.
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We will be posting regular updates on this blog along with pictures.

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My Strength–My Weakness

No, I am not going to list two things here, one strength and one weakness.  I am beginning to realize that, as is often the case, the thing that we find as our strength is also our weakness.

Through the last number of years, God has been developing a shepherd’s heart within me. Looking back on my early years of ministry involvement I realize that this work of God began long ago.  In the current season of ministry I have found this calling intensified  and the joy that comes with it increasing exponentially.  This calling and passion has also become my Achilles’ heel.

It is in a desire to care for people that I have found a tiring pace, that at times seems unmanageable.  Even in a God-ordained calling, we need to realize our own limitations as well as the limitations that the Lord has put on the calling.  God never intended for me, or any of us, to sacrifice our walk with Him for the sake of the call.  I must maintain the integrity of my walk with the Lord, in order to be able to accomplish the task He has put before me.

In his book Sabbath:Finding Rest, Renewal, and Delight in Our Busy Lives  author Wayne Muller makes the following observation:

“Our work is fruitful only when we are quiet enough to hear the miraculous resilience and strength present among those who suffer, patient enough to see the light that shines in the midst of darkness. Thus, Sabbath is not only for ourselves; rested and refreshed, we more generously serve all those who need our care. The human spirit is naturally generous; the instant we are filled, our first impulse is to be useful, to be kind, to give something away.

Once people feel nourished and refreshed, they cannot help but be kind; just so, the world aches for the generosity of well-rested people.”
These words spoke straight to my heart this evening as I read them over and over.

 

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Sabbatical Week One

I am just coming to the end of the first week of my Sabbatical.  It has been a good week, but I am unable to comprehend fully the gift I have before me. So far, I feel that I have had week off and it will come to an end soon.  All week I have been fighting the urge to check email constantly. I have been wrestling with the thought that the phone will ring any moment as someone will need me, or have a question to answer.

I have been giving myself some grace as I adjust to a season of rest and sabbath.  The grace is needed as I already feel that I need to produce, something…anything.  I know I need to recalibrate around a desire to find value in being, rather than doing.

I am currently reading the book “Sabbath: Finding Rest, Renewal, and Delight in Our Busy Lives” by Wayne Muller.  In the chapter entitled “Rest for the Weary” he makes the following statement:

“I had always assumed that people I loved gave energy to me, and people I disliked took it away from me.  Now I realize that every act, no matter how pleasant or nourishing, requires effort, consumes oxygen.  Every gesture, every thought or touch, uses some life. 

…And so we are given a commandment:  Remember the Sabbath. Rest is an essential enzyme of life, as necessary as air.  Without rest, we cannot sustain the energy needed to have life.  We refuse to rest at our peril–and yet in a world  where overwork is seen as a professional virtue, many of us feel we can legitimately be stopped only by illness or collapse.  

…If we do not allow for a rhythm of rest in our overly busy lives, illness becomes our Sabbath–our pneumonia, our cancer, our heart attack, our accidents create Sabbath for us.”

I can relate to these quotes, all three of them.   I want to thank the Elders of Leduc Fellowship for the privilege to set time aside to rest, so I do not need to wait for something to take me out of action.