As promised, a brief story.

The first week of December found me walking in downtown Calgary in the general direction of one of my favourite haunts; McNally’s Books.

To describe the warmth, creativity and delight of McNally’s can only be accomplished if you visit it yourself. It has won several “Bookstore of the Year in Canada” awards within the last decade. McNally’s is great. The streets around the store are a mix of $100.00 meals and $2.00 pizza slices; the entitled well-off, the soggy poor and everyone in between.

As I walked down the street in the late gathering darkness of a fall afternoon, I saw the local police arresting three young men. One of those detained caught my eye. He looked so very much like my own son. He was tall (our son is 6’4”), well dressed, and calm as I walked past him.

About half an hour later I was returning back to the same spot where the arrests had taken place. The young man whom I had noticed before was now in the police arrest wagon (I have some Irish blood which tells me “paddy wagon” is racist). The young man was crying and hitting his head against the wall of his “mobile” cell in despair. He was beside himself, and I, as a father felt an inadequate grief, sorrow, sadness and protectiveness for him…for him…but also for my own son. I immediately phoned my son to see how he was. He wasn’t in. While he turned out to be fine when we connected later that day, it brought me to a place of reminder of the bond between me and my child. It also reminded me of the powerlessness of a father who wants to protect or intercede for a child whom someone else has apprehended (suspend for a moment the probability that the arrest was legitimate).

As I walked down the street in what was now darkness, the feelings of a father for a son brought me to the story of Christmas. We have understated the sacrifice that Jesus made in simply coming to live with us in the first place. In His coming, I imagine the parting between the Father and Son at that first Christmas. After that December Calgary walk I can only begin to imagine the Father and the Son in that long time between birth and death and resurrection. I glimpsed the love of a father for a son, the worry, the sadness, the choosing to let things take their own course.

How awful that would have been for God the Father. I got a taste of that earlier this month.

I have told that story to several folk, one of whom quietly told me that the story reminded him of his own youth and that maybe the night of despair might be what would change the young man. I hope my friend is right. I hope and pray and am restlessly drawn to that dark street, that despairing young man; a father anxious for a son who was not even his.

So, this year in a season of personal, national and international turmoil and reflection, I think and thank and pray for the gifts of a Father, Son and Holy Spirit. A Father who could “let go”, a Son willing to “leave” and a Holy Spirit who prompts us to remember and give thanks for both.

May we be aware of the pain around us.

May we have the same acuteness of caring as the Father.

May the Christ truly change the way we live out that concern.

May the Holy Spirit restore in us Christ’s compassion and animate us to live into what we lay claim to believe.

Emmanuel, God with us, each of us, and please, Lord, with all who call You Lord and who long to hear tidings of great joy “…for today, and each day is born to us a Saviour who is Christ the Lord”.

A Holy, joy-drenched Christmas season and year.

Warmly,

In Christ,

Jeremy Bell

Last week we had lots of prayer kind of news. The next two weeks I am going to tell some stories.   Personal ones.  Mine, and I hope by the Holy Spirit that they will have influence and encouragement for your own walk of faith in Christ.

The first is a story I told in the Heartland, “Listening to God, Listening to Each Other”.  Next week, on December 20, I shall tell a Christmas story from Calgary.

The Heartland Area’s Listening Sessions were a lovely experience for both the voices we heard around the room as we talked to each other and for the encouragement from the Holy Spirit as we prayed about what God would have us do this year.

Here is the story I told when I began to reflect in preparing for the remarks I made in Regina and Saskatoon on how much the wide open geography of Saskatchewan and its farming conditions influences what goes on there.

“Zero Till”
A Story from the Land

While I have always held a fascination for farming, I have not always been clear about the terminology.   My enamourment with farming went so far as to have a membership in the Sheep Breeders Cooperative of B.C. for a period of 10 years in the 1980’s.  I have been reduced to putting my home-made cinnamons buns in the Cobble Hill Fair as my main contribution to the rural life of Canada.

I thought I had a reasonable handle on rural lingo until I was faced with the term “zero till”.  For someone from Vancouver, the term “zero till” can only mean only one thing - an empty cash register.  (My apologies to Terry Summach of the Flexicoil Fraternity for my ignorance).  Zero till is a way of planting seed without first tilling or plowing the ground.  It builds up organic matter, inhibits erosion and retains moisture among other things. (I actually knew this stuff, I didn’t research it).

It turns out that zero till (apart from the economic conditions of farmers, a comment from someone from Carlyle, Sask.) has nothing to do with cash registers, but everything to do with farm implements and seeding.  Zero till means literally that the land is not plowed or tilled in order to prepare it for seeding. Zero till means that the seed is “shot” pneumatically into the soil. One of the technical terms to describe zero till is “pneumatic seeding”.  The root of the word pneumatic is “pneuma” which means the Spirit.  I want my life and the life of the denomination to be a life of “seeding in the Spirit”.  The “Listening to God and Listening to Each Other Sessions” were about that whole process of seeding in the Spirit; the seed that is planted first dies, then is rooted to new life, “grows to maturity and is ready for harvest”. The life cycle of our lives in Christ imitates exactly that process.

So as we spend time in the next year listening to God and to one another, may we indeed celebrate what God is doing by His Holy Spirit, placing a seed within us that will take root and grow, waiting for the time that in the harvest, we can declare God’s goodness, presence and leading amongst us.

Thanks be to God.

May you be strengthened in the midst of this Advent Season.

And may you know and experience the Spirit “seeding” you.

Warmly,

In Christ,

Jeremy Bell