As I begin my year as moderator of the 135th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Canada, I am keenly aware of the high […]

There is a small craft sitting on my desk. It is a sailboat; not your fancy dream yacht but a typical souvenir sailboat. It is carved out of wood and the sail is made of dried palm leaves hanging on a tiny mast. It is so rough and coarse that you might wonder if it will actually float and sail. It is from Vanuatu, a South Pacific island. I received it from our guests of the Presbyterian Church of Vanuatu to the 134th General Assembly. It is a precious reminder of the sacrifice many of our ancestors paid.

For those of you who live in milder climes, the news of spring may not be so special. But for most of us real Canadians, it is glad tidings as good as the safe delivery of a newborn child. You suddenly feel the energy to clean the mess left in the middle of your garden conveniently covered by snow. You continue planning the gardening, cleaning up inside and outside the house, changing a few appliances, repairing leaky taps and pipes, and maybe putting a new floor (oh, but, you have to wait till there is new paint on the walls). As the list gets longer, your house gets more life in it. Why not a new kitchen and new bathrooms? Maybe you should renovate the whole house. Oh well, you should move to another house this year. You have waited long enough and you deserve it. So you grab the newspaper. Alas! Headlines remind you of what you have forgotten. We are in the midst of the worst recession in decades.

Pyramid, Great Wall, Roman Colosseum, Machu Picchu, Angkor Wat of Cambodia, Petra of Jordan, Chichen Itza, Teotihuacan of Mexico, and more. Do any of these names sound familiar to you? These ancient structures are amongst those listed by the BBC as the 50 places you must visit before you die. They are truly incredible. It is hard to even imagine how these structures were built without any modern equipment.

“So, what do you do during weekdays?” He looked at me with a mix of curiosity and sympathy as he threw this question. He was new in town, opening a retail business and I was on my visitation – a kind of welcoming visit as the pastor. Obviously he was not a Christian.

As soon as we finished our Christmas celebration, we were, once again, bombarded with the news of wars – towns ruined, innocent civilians killed and children injured. Although peace has been on our most wanted list since the beginning of humanity, it seems almost impossible to have it come true in our own generation. War once again steps into our reality with such force that it mocks us and totally defies our efforts for peace. It is so frustrating to witness tragedy sweeping the region with such horrifying brutality and insensitivity that it angers us.

Every year, we begin a new chapter of our lives. It is like a blank paper given to us, a new opportunity, full of possibilities, waiting to be filled up by us. Everyone has a resolution as the new year begins. Spending more time with the family, getting back into shape, quitting smoking, going back to daily prayer life, being more organized, etc. They may sound very easy and perfectly normal to follow, yet we know that they are the annual contests on our list. We start the year with great hope and determination but we tend to lose energy as soon as the decorations are put away. Making changes in our lives is not as easy as it seems.

Every December, I am very busy for a special reason. The first day of month we sing Happy Birthday to my wife Karen. While the familiar song still lingers in my ears, our wedding anniversary comes up three days later. So it becomes “a very Happy Anniversary.” Then after three weeks, Merry Christmas arrives. I guess I didn't know better about the implication of these special days before I got married. I feel sorry for my children as I see them preparing cards and gifts one after another, and their wallets getting thinner. (Fortunately, none of them were born in December.)

"Dad, why does this year feel like it's going faster than last year?" This was the question that my youngest son, Ted asked me one day. He was nine years old.
Does anyone have the answer to this question? Time really flies. Every morning, we are kindly reminded that the mighty Canadian winter is expanding its territory and we are moving closer to the end of year once again. Recently we have been flooded with news about the election, the crumbling economy and the fluctuating market. They make us worry or at least concerned. But I believe it is a good time for us to look back and reflect on the journey we have made throughout the year.

Many churches were at leisure over the summer months as members went away to cottages and other vacation destinations. Yet at the same time, many churches were busy organizing summer special mission projects such as youth camp, VBS, community projects and short term mission trips. Many groups from various regions went out as mission teams to share, serve, and build relationships with others. I believe they all came back with experiences they will cherish for the rest of their lives. I still have a vivid memory from my first mission trip. There I was shocked by the living condition of the people and learned a precious lesson – we have to share. The impact was so great I ended up going back on many other trips in following years.

Throughout my Moderator year, I'd like to encourage and challenge you with two topics – to change, and to heal and reconcile. I talked about the first one in last month issue and now I'd like to share with you about the second topic – to heal and reconcile.

As I write this it has been a month since my induction as the Moderator of the Church and I may be more familiar with new title but it was like getting a new name. Sometimes you really have to force yourself and others to accept that you are 'it', not 'that'.

It's been a good, yet busy year. I continued as the pastor of my congregation, overseeing its continuing worship, witness and work, while engaging local, regional and national duties. True, my workload doubled and my emails tripled as I tried to fulfill my goal to lift up the local church by preaching and teaching in as many places as I could, but I also had fun. I avoided as many meetings as possible, except for the Assembly Council. Regretfully, there were a few invitations I couldn't fulfill, but for the most part it was an enriching and encouraging year.

The number one passage in the Bible that has been a substratum for my vision of ministry has been Acts 2:42-47. Here is how Eugene Peterson renders it in The Message):

I am writing this column before I participate in a national aboriginal and church leaders tour to highlight the need for healing and reconciliation between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people. From March 1-10 we are scheduled to visit Ottawa, Saskatoon, Winnipeg and Vancouver. (There will be extensive coverage of the tour in next month's Record.)

I write to you in the dead of winter. Even in Abbotsford, B.C., as in the rest of Canada, the leaves have fallen from the trees, some snow has fallen on the ground, the temperature dips a little below freezing and the wind is often cold. Getting up while it is still dark to face the short, often dreary, days of winter is a bit tougher for most of us.

Although I live in Abbotsford with almost 100 churches, seven of which have an attendance of 1,500 to 5,000 on a weekend, I also live in British Columbia where 30 per cent of the population does not believe in God and 60 per cent does not attend church or any other faith institution at any time during the year.

Janus, the Roman god of gates, doors and new beginnings – after which the month of January gets its name – is often portrayed as having two faces, one looking backward and the other looking forward. Christians believe God is the God of the past, the present, and the future (Exod. 3:14a), as well as the God of new beginnings (Rev. 21:5b). Jesus, our Saviour and Lord, portrayed by John as being “the door” by which we enter into new life (Jn. 10:1-10), is also spoken of as being “the same yesterday, today and forever” (Heb. 13:8). It's helpful to meditate on the faithfulness of God's mercies through the seasons of life (Lam. 3:21, 22), and the ability of God to bring us into new beginnings through Christ (2 Cor. 5:17-18a) as we observe another transition from the Old to the New Year.