my thoughts

by

I Got Left Behind

No one likes to be left behind, to stay put while others go somewhere. It doesn’t even matter where someone is going or why; it’s the fact that they get to go while you remain that’s the issue.

IMG_2717

That’s what happened to me this weekend. Lily left town and I’m left to stay home.

In our relationship, I’ve mostly been the one who’s gone somewhere while Lily has been left behind.

Going anywhere has some adventure, some intrigue to it; staying home is nothing but familiar.

Sometimes we try to trick our mind so it sounds like it’s better to stay behind. We might say something like, “Oh I hear it’s really cold in Florida right now.”

That might give momentary relief, hopefully long enough until the person leaves so they don’t witness you begging to go along as their luggage.

The fact is, it doesn’t matter how rotten the temperature is in Florida, going there has two very big selling points. First, it’s adventure – you are the going person and not the left behind chump.

And secondly, it’s Florida, and we live in Canada. We have three feet of snow on our lawn … the best Florida could produce on its worst day would be something that looked like manna from Biblical times.

And that’s where Lily has gone. No, not to some Biblical times place; she’s gone to Florida.

Yes, she’s driven to Florida with her mother and sister. I saw inside the trunk and I would not want to be part of their luggage. Nor do I think I would fit in very well as a tag-a-long.

They’re better without me and I’m better to stay home. See how my mind is working hard to adjust to being left behind?

It won’t be too bad here for me. I’ll probably shovel snow a few times this week. They may only get a couple of beach days.

I get to go to work everyday this week and have some evening commitments, too. They won’t even have a schedule to keep. They may have a hard time remembering what time of day it is.

I will be eating some of the finest foods, made and cooked by Lily’s own hands, then frozen solid in the freezer, so I can easily slip them in the microwave and nuke them.

They’ll have to spend money and eat out at restaurants like Applebee’s, Bob Evans, and the Olive Garden. Well, maybe not them, but they will have to eat out.

Here in Kingston we’ve been having quite a bit of sunshine of late; you can almost feel its tanning effects on your face … or maybe that’s frostbite from the windchill effect.

It doesn’t matter. If I stay outside long enough while she is away, my skin will be just as red as hers … though I will have to be careful I’m not out too long so the tip of my nose doesn’t chip off!

Here’s the thing: God wants you to journey with Him. It is a daily invitation to walk with Him, not just on your own, and to experience your day with Him. Go with Him. The crazy thing is, you are going that way anyway. If you travel with Him, however, you’ll experience the adventure and not be left behind.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What trip do you long to take right about now? Leave your comment below.

by

Why You Should Pay Attention To Seconds

Seconds count. They’re such a short period of time that we can often over look them, but they count. Seconds happen in the blink of an eye but they matter; you can’t discard seconds.

stopwatch-thumb-thumb-380xauto-6678

In Canada we’ve done away with the penny but it still counts. We don’t make them or use them in cash transactions but they are still our smallest unit of currency.

I’m happy my pocket doesn’t fill up with them, but they still matter. They get rounded up or rounded down when paying cash. Pennies are counted “to the penny”, when using debit or credit cards or cheques.

It saves the country eleven million dollars a year not having the little copper coloured coins kicking around in the coin collector of your car, but they still count.

Often we don’t have much to say for the small things, the seconds or the pennies in life. They go unnoticed, they are too inconsequential to pay attention to.

The thing is those small things like seconds carry weight, they are significant, they’re important. Just ask James Reimer of the Toronto Maple Leafs.

He was 2.3 seconds from getting a shutout last Saturday night, when the red light went on behind him and the puck was found on the ice in the back of his net.

Tell Reimer seconds don’t count and you’d probably get an earful right now. He was working at back-to-back shutouts against the Edmonton Oilers and it was in the bag, just 2.3 seconds away. Nope, not gonna happen.

Two point three seconds is “One thousand, two thousand, Thre-“ and it’s over. It takes you that much time to get up out of your lazy boy chair.

How memorable was that, the last time you did it? It takes 2.3 seconds to retweet something – that’s not too exciting.

But a roller coaster in California launches at 84mph in 2.3 seconds. And the fastest pit stop ever, changing 4 tires, took 2.3 seconds. Now that’s fast! And you’re not going to forget those 2.3 seconds if you experienced them.

We can easily forget about the seconds in life but they count; they add up and they carry weight.

With just 6 seconds to go in the Leaf game, all 5 Leafs were clumped around the puck like a 7 year old Tyke team. That left two Edmonton Oilers by themselves at the points.

It only took a second for the puck to travel across the ice to the point man, and 1 1/2 seconds for him to get his shot off. Then it only took a little over a second for a free Edmonton Oiler to put in the rebound.

Seconds count, and sometimes they are more memorable than other times. Some seconds we’d just as soon forget. But it’s tough when they are the last memory, the last seconds of the game.

Here’s the thing: It takes seconds to turn on your radio in your car. It takes a mere 2.3 seconds to roll out of bed. And when you do, what happens next? … Do your thoughts go to what’s on the radio or what you’ll have for breakfast? It takes mere seconds. It takes a heartbeat to decide to pray instead. Seconds count and what happens in those seconds can change your day, change your direction, change your focus. That decision will have a significant impact on your day. You won’t easily forget that second.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What do you find difficult to change in a split second? Leave your comment below.

by

Staring At A Blank Page

This doesn’t happen often but this morning I spent quite a long time staring at a blank computer screen. No, my Mac didn’t freeze.

Paul Silcock white album.001

It was more that my mind was blank and so I had a nice white page on my screen that didn’t have any words written on it.

If white’s your colour, it was a beautiful sight!

The Beatles have a white album titled, “The BEATLES”, recorded in 1968. And yes, it was completely white with the title embossed on the cover. That album has been dubbed “The White Album” ever since.

But despite all the “white” there was music on the vinyl inside, and that vinyl was all black.

All white isn’t that great when you’re trying to write something like a sermon or a blog.  They call an all-white page “writer’s block”, when you just don’t have anything to put down on the page.

But it’s not that I didn’t have any thoughts at all. While my page was white this morning, I had lots of ideas come to mind; just none of the thoughts I had were worth recording, or I didn’t feel like recording them.

My mind jumped from one topic to another. I would think of something to write about, but then,  for one reason or another, the idea would die in seconds.

I decided to change my scenery and do something else to maybe knock the “block” out of my system – you know, do something radical, like hold your breath when you have the hiccups, or sip a drink of water upside down.

The idea is to reboot your system back to normal.

So I left my white page, and went upstairs to have breakfast. I thought that filling my mouth with food and having a conversation with my wife would somehow spark words in my head that I could then type out onto the white page on my computer.

Sometimes that helps. … The other day I was having trouble with one of the apps on my phone. For some reason it was staying on and burning up my battery at a crazy rate. I powered down my phone, and when I turned it back on, whatever had been stuck on, got unstuck and my phone was working fine again.

Unfortunately, that didn’t help much with my white page. I came back to it and, not only was the page still white, but I still hadn’t come up with anything worthy of adding some black marks to it.

It sure is frustrating when that happens.

I had other things that I wanted to get to, other things I needed to be doing.

I almost left that white page white. And then I thought maybe I should write about having a difficult time putting black characters on a white page.

It didn’t take long until the black marks started to create an amazing contrast on the white page. My white page became a mere backdrop to highlight all the black letters that are now prominent, front and centre.

Here’s the thing: Sometimes you read the Bible and nothing seems to hit home. You feel like giving up on reading it. I believe Henry Blackaby once wrote that when he spends time with God he keeps reading the Bible until God brings something to his attention. Don’t stop reading God’s word because, if you persevere, God will cause those little black characters to stand out and apply to you, right then and there.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What do you do when you are blocked in some way? Leave your comment below.

by

If It Gets In My Head, I Can’t Let It Go

Have you ever got something in your head and couldn’t let it go? Songs can get in your head and it’s near impossible to erase them from that ram chip in your skull.

kingston-memory-upgrade

And it doesn’t take much to get it in there. You hear a song on the radio and it sticks with you all day long.

You might not even like the song, but there you are in a meeting with your superiors and, just as you boss asks you an important question, you have “All About That Bass” by Meghan Trainor taking up valuable real-estate upstairs.

While you’re trying to think, you’re tapping your pen on the table and under your breath you’re humming “da da da da da”.

You just can’t shake that thought in your head. You’d like to record over it with something useful but it seems that for an undetermined amount of time that thought, that song is going to stick around.

I felt that way this week as I was writing my sermon. I got to near the end and I was in need of a closing illustration.

I thought of a story to use, but the story has been told many times. As I researched it, I discovered that the story has a couple of variations and it’s not even true!

It’s too bad, because it’s a great story of a boy at a concert who slips on stage when no one is watching and starts playing chopsticks on the piano. The audience starts grumbling, but the maestro hears the boy and comes out. He tells the boy to keep playing while he plays around him making beautiful music.

Yes, I know, you’ve heard that story. And yes, I know, you didn’t know it wasn’t true.

The problem was I couldn’t get that story out of my head! It seemed like the right illustration for me. I didn’t want to use it; I didn’t feel I could use it, but I couldn’t get it off my mind.

Every time I tried to think of something else, that story kept replaying for me like it was on a loop track just behind my eye sockets.

I scanned the internet for stories like it and found none. I looked in books where I’ve found some good stories in the past – again nothing. Just that one story.

It was perfect, but I couldn’t use it.

I got sidetracked but the story came back. Time was ticking by. It was evening; my eyes got heavy. I think I dreamed about that story and I was the boy.

And then I came to, and a memory awakened in me.

It was a real-life instance, a modern day parallel to that story. I had seen it on TV about thirteen years ago and somehow my brain found and loaded that story into my jukebox mind for me to play. Press E-10.

Here’s the thing: What we put in our mind stays there, and it will be recalled as needed at random times in the future. So we need to be sure we are storing God’s truth in those minds of ours. For just when we need a verse to encourage or help us, it can drop right into the forefront of our thinking. God’s truth might un-expectantly pop into our minds, and stay with us for the day … and that’s so much better than, “You know I’m all about that bass, no treble.”

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What has gotten into your mind lately that you can’t kick out? Leave your comments below.

by

A Winter Vacation Would Be Nice

It’s just past the middle of January and you know what that means, don’t you? It’s time to take that vacation to some place warm, with water and beachfront right out your window.

winter vacation

No, that’s only for the few and fortunate! For the rest of us, mid January signals time for the winter blahs.

The best some of us can do, in the words of the song by Smash Mouth, is take a “Holiday in my Head”. We can only dream of taking off, leaving work and responsibilities behind, for some carefree recreation and rest.

Many of us get out of bed in the mornings in the middle of January and have an overwhelming sense of overload … and dread.

You’ve got too much work to do, and dread that your goals and plans for the year are not going to be reached. You even feel like throwing in the towel and giving up, like there’s a looming catastrophe just around the corner.

Is that how you feel right now? You didn’t get in this place all of a sudden, even though it seems like one day you just woke up and, BAM!, all life is crashing around you.

No, it happens slowly and over time. You miss a deadline; you schedule it but don’t get it done. So you push that work off to the next day or the next, and soon it becomes critical.

That same sequence of events happens over and over with other things in your life, your goals your plans, your commitments, demands and requests from others.

And every day the build-up goes unnoticed until one day you wake up and it all seems like it’s crashing down on you, like a waterfall cascading over the rocks, thundering to the pool of water below.

You’re standing in that pool of water with that waterfall beating down on you. It seems hopeless to get out of it and it’s pounding you down.

It’s only mid January! You have the whole year still ahead of you, but all you can think about is that the whole year is a bust. You’ve blown it, or circumstances have made it impossible for you to have a profitable year.

What do you do when you are in that place? How do you get out from under such an intense feeling of utter defeat?

Well, there are a couple of things you can do when you feel that way. First, you can just forget about some of those things; they may not be as important as you made them out to be.

Second, write everything down, so you can see them all together. When your work and demands are just swirling around in your head, it seems like more than it really is. Seeing all your tasks before you gives you perspective.

Then focus on one thing at a time. Complete it and move on to the next, not thinking of all you have to do, but just the one thing that’s next.

Here’s the thing: To even get to the place where you are able to write everything down and then work on one thing, first turn to God and ask Him for help. Seek His guidance and wisdom to get out from under the downpour. Request His protection to stand over you so that the water beats on Him and you just experience the spray. Then you will find the calm, the presence of mind to do what you have to do.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What has got you overwhelmed at this time?  Leave your comment below.

by

Preparation Should Be Our Focus 

Have you noticed how much time goes into preparation as opposed to the actual event?

dinner setting1

It’s usually double, triple or more time than the event itself!

The other night we had some guests over for dinner. It was a great time and I think everyone enjoyed themselves.

But the time it took to prepare for the dinner was exorbitantly more than the dinner itself.

I’m not a cook but I noticed how long Lil spent in preparation for the meal … it’s no wonder people eat at restaurants so frequently.

You can leave home for a fast food joint, be fed and return home in the same or less time than it takes to prepare a meal yourself. And you don’t have the clean up either!

You just have to remember what the symbols for bottles, paper and food look like so you can put your trash and recycling in the right place.

But this discrepancy of time between preparation and an event happens in all aspects of life.

I remember my kids would spend hours setting up their hot wheel track all over the basement.  They would test it out to make sure they had the power chargers in the right places so that the cars would have enough speed to make it through to the end.

When it was all set up and ready to go, it took about 10 seconds for a car to go from start to finish.

I know that for me to preach a sermon takes about 30 -35 minutes – at least that’s what I aim for.  But to prepare for that thirty minute sermon takes a good 15 hours or so.

Back when I was in high school, I waited outside A&A record store on Yonge St., in downtown Toronto, all night to get tickets to an Elton John concert.

The concert was about 3 hours in total, but I had invested way more time!

What I noticed is we spend all kinds of time preparing for things that we are looking forward to. It’s like we do the work to reap the pleasure – only the pleasure lasts for such a short time in comparison.

What we really need to do is switch what we find our pleasure in. We should really be taking pleasure in the preparation to get the full enjoyment of the event or activity.

How much better would it be at the end of the night, washing up the dishes after a dinner party, to have taken pleasure in the preparation of the whole event?

We wouldn’t make comments like, “That was nice, but a lot of work”.

Instead, we would have savoured the time spent wrapping the cutlery in the napkins, or peeling the carrots, or cleaning the bathrooms (well, maybe not that one).

When it was all done we would be excited to do it all over again really soon. But who am I kidding? I’m just trying to figure out a way to convince Lily to put our china dishes in the dishwasher instead of washing them by hand!

Here’s the thing: We like outcomes, the main event; we try to reduce preparation. But it is in the preparation that the outcome, the main event, is as enjoyable as it is. To become more Christlike in our attitude and actions takes preparation. Time spent with God and His word is where He works on getting you all ready and presentable to emulate His Son.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What have you found to be the biggest time discrepancy between preparation and outcome? Leave your comment below.

by

Settle Into A New Year

I think I’ve settled into the new year now. The Christmas tree is still up and we still put the lights on, but it’s become a background decoration and not the main focal point in the room.

dawn

The first couple of days of a new year are still very much holiday-like. There’s the aftermath of New Year’s, like football and parades on TV, catching up on sleep.

Even work was still in holiday mode: all was quiet, no programs, just me focussing on what I needed to do to get ready for Sunday.

But that’s all done now – it’s January 3rd and today I feel like it’s just a regular day.

We still have some baking that I will polish off in the next week. And the fridge is still pretty full with lots of extra Christmassy foods. There’s even some eggnog in there that needs to be knocked back before it goes bad.

… They’re all just remnants now. A week ago they were part of the festivities, part of the charm of the season. But now they’re nothing more than the aftermath, a duty to be completed to seal the end of it all.

Two weeks ago there was still lots to look forward to; we were entering a time of family, friends, and fun. Now we just have the start of a new week to look forward to.

There will be some great highlights this year to anticipate and get excited about, but right now it’s all about getting settled in a brand new year after a busy time of life.

How I settle in is with some routines. As great as holidays and Christmas are, they get you out of your regular routine and, though that idea has some sparkle, it’s a little disruptive to the regular flow of life.

I’ve missed my 6:00 am alarm several times in the last couple of weeks. I like getting up at that time; it’s quiet, it’s peaceful … I’m quiet and peaceful.

At that time of the morning I don’t have a million things to do. I don’t have a bunch of requests for my time, my presence. I like that about answering my alarm.

I remember when I first discovered the joy of the early morning. Back . . . well, let’s just say a long time ago, I would sleep till noon if I didn’t have something pressing me to get up.

Though I would sleep that long, I didn’t feel all that rested, and I would get this sinking feeling that a good chunk of the day was over, that I missed out on something.

I didn’t start getting up at six right then, but that was the start of finding a great part of the day that I had never before considered valuable.

Now it’s my routine every day, to answer my alarm at 6:00 and begin my day quiet, calm and peaceful. You should try it if you don’t already.

Here’s the thing: That first part of the day when it is all quiet in your home and in your own being is a great time to connect with God. For some people, it might require a cup of coffee or two just to clear your mind, but there’s no better time to spend with God than in the most peaceful time of the day. Find a comfortable chair, set the light just right and give those first thoughts of the day to God. You’ll love that routine, and so will God.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What is your favourite routine? Leave your comment below.

by

It’s All About What We Believe

In my last post, I wrote about setting goals for the new year (click hear to read). In this one, I am going to share a secret that helps me do that. In my next post, I’ll share another secret.

ball and chain

Normally goal setting starts with dreaming of all the things you might want to accomplish. You brainstorm a million ideas, then select the best ones.

But I didn’t start there – I started in a place I had no desire to go.

I began with evaluating my limits … to be more precise, my limiting beliefs. And that’s very different from my limits.

I’m limited by a lot of things. I could blame my parents that I’m not six feet tall or have the mind of a rocket scientist. But that’s just genetics. I can’t do anything about that.

Everyone has limits.

But limiting beliefs, that’s a different matter. They are not really limits; they’re just a bar we set for ourselves that we don’t think we can get over.

The problem with those limiting beliefs is that we live up to them all the time … or should I say, we live under them every time.

What’s worse is they aren’t necessarily true; we just believe them to be true (limiting beliefs like, “I can’t do that”, “I’m a failure”, “No one cares”).

When it comes to goal setting, they keep us from accomplishing the goals we want to reach.

In the past, my limiting beliefs have been the mastermind behind me sabotaging my own goals.

They come from stories I’ve created based on my past experiences. Still, I believe the stories and live them out time and time again.

These limiting beliefs are ingrained in us and you can only change them by replacing them with new stories – a new story that overwrites the old one.

That’s not easy to do.

But this week as I was listing my limiting beliefs, I found a key to begin the process of overwriting those limiting beliefs.

It starts with a truth. Then you have to trust the truth enough to experience that truth in your life and thus write a new story.

It sounds simple but it takes some work.

For me, two truths from the Bible that I read right after I wrote my limiting beliefs will help me write some new stories.

1 John 5:14-15 says, “This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him.” (NIV84)

We can ask God to help us overcome our limiting beliefs. He will hear us and answer.

Then Ephesians 3:20 says “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us,”(NIV84)

Now that’s powerful! Whatever you believe about yourself – whatever I have come to believe about myself – God is at work within us and can do more than we can even imagine.

The first step is to believe these truths, and then go out and experience the reality of them. If you do, you’ll replace that old story, with a new one.

Here’s the thing: If you want to grow deeper with God, if you want to see God work in your life, then address those limiting beliefs by believing and experiencing these truths from God’s words. Then write a new story through experience.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: Do you have limiting beliefs that hold you back from all God wants for you? Leave your comment below.

by

It’s Time to Look Ahead To Next Year

It’s that time once again to start looking ahead to what the next year will bring. And what it will bring is much more of what happened this year!

goal-setting

Now if that doesn’t sound all that appealing, then maybe it’s time to set some goals for 2015.

“Goals” – that’s a nasty word, isn’t it? Setting goals is often like setting oneself up to fail. Goals take thought, planning and following through. There’s a lot of work that goes into setting goals.

They’re not like scoring a goal in hockey. Those goals come suddenly, sometimes with no planning and not much effort. Sometimes you can score a goal just by being in the right place at the right time (with your stick on the ice, of course).

But setting goals – whether they are personal, career or family oriented – doesn’t come all that easily.

For many years I didn’t really set goals for the new year. As a pastor, the flow of ministry is more in line with a school year, so I make preaching plans from September to August.

I’ve never been one who makes New Year’s resolutions because to me they are nothing more than some good thoughts no one’s going to follow through on. I know I certainly won’t.

But last year I took an online goal setting seminar and set some goals for 2014. Now in December looking back, I accomplished many of them.

It was a positive experience so I’m going through the seminar again this year and am now in the midst of setting some new goals for 2015.

I’d like to say I met and exceeded all the goals I set for this past year but that only happened in my dream yesterday morning.

In reviewing my goals, I now see that two may have been a little unrealistic, and one I just never got down to working on.

That doesn’t mean I failed. I accomplished most of my goals and what I’m really pleased about is that three of them I didn’t start until six months into the year.

But having said that, this year I hope to improve. I think I know some key areas I can focus on to ensure I do.

One area is addressing my limiting beliefs. Limiting beliefs are beliefs about yourself that hold you back from accomplishing things you would like to do.

These beliefs will keep you from setting some goals you should set, and prevent you from accomplishing or completing some goals that you do set.

A second area that I am going to give more focus to this year is keeping my goals on my radar all year long.

You can set great goals at the beginning of the year, but if you don’t keep reviewing them, you easily forget about those goals you weren’t planning on starting right away.

In my next two blogs I’m going to write about how I’m addressing these two areas of my goal setting so that I have greater results than I did this year.

Here’s the thing: We have this great resource that tells us about God and His will for us called the Bible. However, most of us don’t refer to it very much. We use it more like a manual that you pull out when you need to figure out how to do something. We don’t actually read it. As we approach 2015, let me encourage you to set a goal of reading through God’s Word this year. Pick a reading plan, and commit to reading through God’s great book for you.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What’s your biggest blockage to reading through the Bible? Leave your comment below.

by

My Free Time Got Fried!

Why is it that when time is freed up from one thing, it is so easily filled by something else?

Cool-Polar-Bear-Photos-Im-not-lazy.-Im-just-highly-motivated-to-do-nothing.

When you get a break from a regular task or project that gives you all kinds of freedom to work on something else. But what invariably happens is other things and people come along, take bits of that freed up time and leave you with nothing.

I’m not sure anyone else experiences this phenomenon but it happens to me every time I get a break from preaching.

The last two weeks I haven’t had to speak on Sunday which freed up a large amount of time I would spend studying and writing sermons.

That freedom was welcomed because I have some extra events around Christmas, some planning for early in the new year and a sermon to have ready a couple of days after Christmas.

So, though I did not have to preach, I had lots I needed to work on – the freed up time was something I needed.

However, now that I’m at the end of those two weeks, I didn’t get done nearly what I needed to and the hopes of having an easy, no pressure, leisurely Christmas is kind of out the window right now.

There are a few reasons why this happens to me, and I can pretty much predict it to happen every time I get a break from sermon prep.

First, I feel a little freer than normal. Without that thought in the back of my mind of needing to have a message ready for next Sunday, I kind of let my guard down.

I don’t protect my time as much as I do when I have to write a sermon. I will chat with people longer, and be open to making appointments at times I never would if I was working on a message for Sunday.

Secondly, I find that I am less focussed. I might be working on something but then become aware of something else that needs my attention. I will drop what I was working on and start plugging away on this new interest.

I’ll know that I shouldn’t be spending the time on this new project, but my lack of focus keeps me drifting from one thing that catches my fancy to something else.

Thirdly, I find I’m just not as motivated as when I have a sermon to produce. There is something about having the pressure of a deadline that keeps you moving in that direction. But when the pressure is gone, sometimes the motivation is missing too.

What it all comes down to is discipline. When I let my guard down, or am less focussed, or not very motivated, what it really means is I have not disciplined myself to use my time in the best possible way.

Man, next week is going to be busy!

Here’s the thing: When you get out of routine with God, whether that is attending church, spending time with Him alone, serving Him in some capacity, or learning more about Him by yourself or with others, what you find is that time gets used up by other things. If you don’t discipline yourself with God, you will find that you let your guard down to other things, you are less focussed on Him and you lack motivation for God. Stay disciplined.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What gets in the way of your routine with God? Leave your comment below.