Oh Deer!

Wise Guy Son and I were driving a remote highway in rural New Brunswick (Canada) last month, and we kept seeing “deer crossing” signs – and “moose crossing”.

Deer grazing on the green slopes near the road are cute. Bounding across the road a safe distance in front of you, they’re still cute.

Deer crossing the asphalt right in front of your vehicle are not.

Apparently wise New Bruswick drivers avoid country driving after dark, at least certain times of year. We saw chain-link fences paralleling sections of the highway where the moose and deer were most active.

As it got closer to dusk (prime feeding time for deer) and I kept seeing the signs, I watched even closer for any sign of off-road movement. Sometimes the highway was elevated enough that a grazing deer would be out of sight until it decided to climb up and cross the road.

Vigilance is important, but I found myself getting tense. Each yellow warning sign felt more menacing than the last.

A person could really start to fear these creatures! Instead of gentle, liquid-gazed deer faces, my imagination caricaturized them as grim-faced, wild-eyed creatures surging up the slopes in a suicidal guerrilla raid to stop the traffic.

A good laugh restored my perspective and got me thinking about danger and about sin, how as important as it is to be vigilant, we need to be careful not to blow what we’re watching for out of proportion. That’s where unhealthy fear comes from.

Deer on the highway: something to see and avoid. Menacing, mutant killer-deer that stalk our nightmares: something fear can use to paralyse us if we let it.

To paraphrase the words of Jr. Asparagus from VeggieTales: We don’t need to fear what’s out there, because God is the biggest.

Click here to watch Junior to sing it in his own inimitable style.

© Janet Sketchley, 2010
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For devotionals, reviews and conversation, stop by Janet Sketchley's blog, God with Us: Finding Joy.

Grandmothers' Necklace

About a year ago, there was a call out for contributors for an anthology - Grandmothers' Necklace, the brainchild of Patricia Ann Elford, a teacher, pastor and member of the Petawawa Grannies.

I had no clue who the Petawawa Grannies were, only that they were somehow connected to the Stephen Lewis Foundation (SLF). Still basically clueless about what SLF was really about, I realized I had homework to do.

So I checked out the website www.stephenlewisfoundation.org/grandmothers.htm and learned and contemplated. I am in awe of what Granny groups across the country are doing for sub-Saharan African grandmothers. Grandmother groups across the country assist struggling grandmothers in Africa who
have not only lost their own children to the pandemic of HIV/AIDS, but they face the rest of their lives wondering how to provide the basic necessities as they raise their grandchildren.

It's times like that when you wonder how to help. I jumped at the opportunity to submit a story. The sales and profits are 100% given to the Stephen Lewis Foundation to help better the lives of these quietly courageous African grandmothers.

Grandmother’s Necklace, a collection of inspiring stories, is the outcome of Elford’s brainchild. This remarkable anthology includes writings by 61 authors from across Canada, the United States and Ireland. The book also contains narratives from five African grandmothers.

I am honoured to be in the company of fine writers such as Carolyn Wilker, Ruth Smith-Meyer Phil Callaway, Kathleen Gibson, Judy Maddren, Patricia Elford, L. June Stevenson, and others.

The Kitchener launch of Grandmothers’ Necklace will be held Saturday, May 1, 2010, from 2pm until 4 pm at St. Philip's Lutheran Church, 236 Woodhaven Road in Kitchener. We are really looking forward to a great turnout. Some of the contributors will be in attendance and will be reading excerpts from Grandmothers' Necklace. I even had the honour of having my mugshot on the cover of the book. So if you happen to be in the area...come on out and sit a while. The Omas Siskona - the Granny group from Kitchener, Ontario, will be hosting the event and providing refreshments for the day!

My prayer is that God will be present and stir the hearts into realizing how blessed we are here and how if every one does something small, it can lead into something much bigger for those dear souls in sub-Saharan Africa. I cannot imagine the struggles these grandmothers face. But, being a grandmother myself, I sure can understand the motivation. If we each do our part, what a wonderful world it could be!~

God Meant For Good - Gwen Mathieu

Today is Easter Sunday; a day of celebration of our Risen Lord. Without the Resurrection, there would be no point in attending church, in fact there would be no church, as we know it. It was good to go into the house of the Lord and worship Him.

Usually on the Easter weekend, we have our family here to help celebrate but because of surgery last Wednesday, I thought it best to not offer an Easter dinner. So, today was rather quiet. For lunch we had a BBQ. That is a first for Easter Sunday, but then, I didn’t have to cook.

I spent the afternoon watching an old favourite, “Joseph”. It is one story that brings tears to my eyes, when Joseph and his brothers are reunited. What an example of God’s grace and forgiveness; what Joseph’s brothers meant for harm, God meant for good.

Are things much different for us today? When things don’t go our way or we are greeted with pain and sorrow, do we ask God what we can learn from this situation or do we grumble about the injustice, the unfairness? I hope we are like Joseph. He is one of my favourite bible characters. No matter what situation he found himself in, he kept his faith and was true to his heavenly father.

I trust I can join David’s heartfelt praise in Psalm 34, “I will extol the Lord at all times; his praise will always be on my lips.”

A Bad Day and the Day After - M. Laycock

A Bad Day. We got a call from the vet that my dog had been hit by a car. She was still alive when we got there and we had to decide whether or not to try and keep her that way. She was an old dog – somewhere between fifteen and eighteen, we think, and she was in pain, so we did what was merciful.

Then I got home to find an email from an editor saying he was rejecting a manuscript I’d sent him a few months ago. I was kind of numb as I read it. The words took a while to sink in.

I was expecting my dog to die. She was old a long time ago. I was pretty sure that manuscript would be rejected by that editor. It isn’t ready to be published.

But it was still a bad day. A day when things die always is.

But now that the day is over and I look back on it, I see there were some good things in that space of twenty-four hours. I was able to put my hand over my dog’s beating heart one more time and cry a little before having to go on with a day full of things that needed to be done. I was able to be thankful for the fifteen years that little ball of fur and bone was underfoot. I was able to be thankful for friends that make you feel better just by sitting across a table sipping tea; for days full of mundane things that are so beautiful in their rhythm that you hardly notice. And for that word, ‘hardly,’ because I did notice, just a bit; for the hope that gives me. And for editors whose rejections leave you still believing in the dreams you have for words strung across a page.

There are always things to be thankful for, even on a day when death becomes a reality. There is always hope for a new day, hope that the darkness won’t always seem impenetrable.

There is always hope because our Redeemer lives. It was a dark day when He died -literally, according to the scriptures - but Jesus didn’t stay wrapped in death. He rose and walked among his friends again, spoke to them, encouraged them, ate with them. He not only gave them hope for a new day, he gave them life forever after, life lived in the presence of God.

The Apostle John wrote that “Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the son of God and that by believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:30,31).

We no longer live within the day on which death seemed victorious. We live in the day that came three days after. We call it Easter.

And Jesus said – “blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (John 20:29b).


Marcia's devotionals have won awards and been published internationally. See more of her work at www.vinemarc.com