Drive Close to the Cutter

It’s silage time where I live. Many of our Alberta farmers are spending their days doing the monotonous work of shredding damp crops into cow munchies. Frankly, I don’t feel like writing about the particulars of silage, so you can read about it at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silage
What I will say is that “the cutter” has a rotating bar that pulls in the swathed crop and shreds it into bite sized pieces that are then blown into a close-by grain truck.

I spent the other day keeping my friend company while he taught me what it takes to run the cutter and what it takes to drive the grain truck along side it. Since my friend is one of the most experienced operators on the farm, he typically runs the cutter, keeping track of the moisture levels and communicating with the truck drivers. You see, the truck drivers have to pull along side the cutter quite close in order to make sure that the full load of silage makes it into the truck beds. If you’re not watching and looking to the cutter operator you could end up hitting the very expensive piece of machinery, or missing the blowing silage entirely. My friend noted that if they are paying attention and communicating with him, they’ll eventually get the feel of when they need to speed up or slow down or turn to get the fullest load possible. If they get distracted while driving the truck or are on their cell phones they tend to lose sync with the cutter operator and this leads to lighter loads which leads to less profit in the long run.

Often the machine will pick up a discarded bit of metal in the field which leads to the work being halted while the cutter operator and truck driver look through for the metal jamming up the works. That day, a piece as small as the head of a bolt held up the operation for nearly an hour as five guys worked to remedy the problem.

The night before I rode with my friend I’d been thinking about the Bible verse James 4:8 which says “Draw close to God and He will draw close to you”. I was impressed by how well the silage operation worked as a metaphor for this verse.

Kind of like this, except with prettier equipment

If God is the cutter and we are the truck drivers then we need to be looking to God and communicating with him so we can draw close to Him and receive the full load of blessings. The more often we practice this, the easier it will become. If we’re distracted or not communicating with him we become too far away to receive His blessings.

Likewise, it doesn’t always take much to gum up God’s work in your life. Sometimes it can be quickly fixed between you and God and sometimes you need to take it to the shop and have more brethren help you fix the problem so you can get back to reaping the blessings.

I think back to the verse and find that for me it is true. When I make a conscious effort to draw close to God I usually can feel Him draw close to me and that is when I am most satisfied and thankful for my blessings. When I get caught up in the things of the world I get out of sync with what God is trying to do in my life and I become frustrated easily.

Just a small silage experience that I thought was neat.

A Free Gift from The King: Part 2

It's easy to get caught up in abstract and complicated ideas when it comes to theology. Sometimes I worry that I spend too much time debating the abstract and not enough time brushing up on the basics. I also worry about how people on the outside interpret the Christian faith. I fear that some have the impression of a people bound by rules and doctrines, who are constantly striving to be good enough while simultaneously telling others that they are not good enough. If this is how you view Christians I sincerely apologize. That is why I want to talk about what I consider to be a basic tenet of being a Christ-follower that I think some non-Christians would be surprised to learn about.

The little story I made up about the young, rebellious prince and the loving King in the last post, A Free Gift from The King Part 1, is an allegory to help explain this tenet. It's something we call "justification by faith alone".  You may also hear it paraphrased as "sola fide" - by faith alone. 

I'm going to be blunt here. Have you ever spoken to someone who has told you that in order to qualify for entrance into heaven you need to accomplish so many good deeds, dress a certain way, give a determined amount of money, be perfect, have never made a mistake, etc? They might have made it out to sound like a spiritual scavenger hunt or they may have made you feel like unless you start caring for children on the streets of Calcutta you are screwed.

I'm going to tell you with complete confidence that they could not be farther from the truth. If they truly believe they can earn their way into Heaven then they have totally missed the boat and I would be concerned that they are oblivious to the fact that they are drowning. There is nothing you can do to earn your way into Heaven. I can say this with confidence because New Testament authors take pages to try and explain this.

"Brothers, listen! We are here to proclaim that through this man Jesus there is forgiveness for your sins. Everyone who believes in Him is declared right with God - something the law of Moses could never do."

Acts 13:38, The New Testament (NLT version)

The Law of Moses was the rules that governed every aspect of Jewish life. Following these laws was considered necessary to be right with God. They included rules on what you could eat and not eat, how you planted your crops, how many tassels could be on your cloak, how you made tools and even how you had to deal with bodily functions like menustruation. Does this list of requirements sound vaguely familiar? The predominant-must-always-do-to-make-God-happy was the blood sacrifice of a pure and clean animal (often a sweet cuddly-wuddly little lamb). It was nuts! It was basically impossible to follow all of these laws to a T. Everyone who realized this was majorly stressed out as they did their best to check off everything on their scavenger hunt list. Then there were these guys called Pharisees who liked to go around pretending that all of these laws were totally reasonable and that they nailed every one of them all the time (they were lying) and that if they could do it, you should be able to do it too. 

But the regular folk were realizing that nothing they did was good enough to gain favour with God. Being stressed and preoccupied with all of these laws wore down the people and I think that over time they forgot how much God loved them. That's why they weren't really on their toes when God sent his son, Jesus (our Saviour, Messiah, the promised one - that's right, for years God promised that He would make everything right). Jesus is the definition of awesome and because the Bible does a far better job telling about his life with us than I could I will just cut to the chase. 

Ultimately, God loved us so much that he wanted to be right with his people forever without all the stressful scavenger hunts and bloody baby sheep. But if you've watched the news lately you'd have to admit that generally speaking our species is a pretty messed up bunch and it would take a big heaping sacrifice of purity to make up for all of that.  So God sent his only son, Jesus, to die like a sacrificial lamb so that any one of us who believes in him would no longer be chained to a rule book and dead sheep, but would instead be justified with God, even though they had done nothing to deserve it. 

"Therefore, since we have been made right in God's sight by faith, we have peace with God because of what Jesus Christ our Lord has done for us. Because of our faith, Christ has brought us into this place of undeserved privilege where we now stand, and we confidently and joyfully look forward to sharing God's glory. We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance. And endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confidant hope of salvation. And this hope will not lead to disappointment. For we know how dearly God loves us, because He has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with love. When we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners. God showed His great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners. And since we have been made right in God's sight by the blood of Christ, He will certainly save us from God's condemnation."

Romans 5:1-9, The New Testament (NLT version)

That's pretty much the best part but if you stay tuned I have a few more thoughts on the subject. . .

Oh the sacrificial cuteness.

How is Your Courage?

"How is your courage?"

Since coming to my community and church I have learned a number of new words, phrases and terms that now grace my vocabulary. Out of all of them this my favourite.

To break it down even further I would say that the words "discouragement" and "courage" have changed my perspective on life. A strong statement for two words I realize, but I'm an English major - I'm allowed to have these kind of epiphanies.

I believe that discouragement is a positive word. We tend to use dramatic words with such finality when we're dissatisfied with our life circumstances. Sad, upset, depressed, angry, mad, hurt, resentful. Not that these feelings aren't warranted at times but I wonder if maybe we give these negative feelings far too much power by defining them all the time. After all, they are just feelings. Feelings come and go and are very biased to the situation or person they relate to.

To me, "discouraged" describes a state where you have demonstrated that you have courage, but something has happened that has made you forget that courage, suppress your courage or lose your courage. I think "discouragement" is a positive word because if you can acknowledge that you're simply feeling discouraged then the solution is easy! Go get more courage!

I don't know where to get "happy" or where to get "satisfaction" or "justification" but I know where to go to get courage.

First, you can find courage in the core of your being. It is something you can make a habit of self-producing. It can never be fully taken away away from you - you can just make more. You utilize your core courage by making conscious decisions about how you want to handle your discouraging circumstance. Each little decision to press forward, despite the circumstances increases your courage.

Secondly, courage can be given to you by your friends and family. It's a gift. Sometimes it's a few words, or a long talk, a hug or just their support. You might need this first before you can even find your intrinsic core courage factory. Having friends and family that can give you this gift is invaluable.

However, the most valuable place to go find yourself some new courage is in the Bible. Seriously! If you're not inclined to believe me then I don't know what else to tell you. . .good luck I guess? Did you know that God tells us to be strong and of good courage about 25 times in the Old Testament alone?And most of those times he is making a promise to see us through and lead us.


"Be strong and of a good courage, fear not, nor be afraid of them: for the LORD thy God go with thee; he will not fail thee, nor forsake thee." Deuteronomy 31:5-7


God spends a lot of time throughout the whole book trying to reassure us that He is with us, will never leave us, and has a plan for us. He is the cure for discouragement. By ourselves we may not have enough courage to get through but God can give us what we need if we ask. 


That's why I think the words "discouraged" and "courage" are powerful. They prompt you to take action. When I received "bad" news the other night, my friend noticed that I was upset and she hugged me and said that she knew it was discouraging. The little light in my head went on and I realized that the news was nothing but discouraging. I'm quite used to discouragement and I know how to handle it! My friend gave me courage, then I read my Bible and was encouraged enough that my personal little courage factory moved into gear. There's no need to wallow in discouragement if you know what you need to do. 


How is your courage?