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Linger Longer To Impact Relationships More

I think we need to linger more in order to enrich our lives. 

linger longer to impact relationships more

When I grew up playing hockey, my routine was to get into the dressing room late. I would have just enough time to put on my equipment and get onto the ice. At the end of the game, I would do the reverse. I would change quickly and be the first one out of the dressing room.

I think I have carried that practice into other areas of my life. 

But I hope to change that if I can. 

I don’t know how many golf games I’ve played with friends where we didn’t linger after the game. It seemed that there was always somewhere we had to be next. Whether that was getting home for dinner or to a meeting, there always seemed to be a bit of a rush to leave the course. 

That’s not the way it always was though. 

I remember playing golf with the same buddies at 7:20 Saturday mornings. When we finished we would sit in the club house and talk about our game and life for another hour.

I didn’t realize how much I missed that part of the game. I say that like lingering in the club house is part of the golf game because there is something to that. 

You see, by lingering after a game you savour the time you spent together knocking balls into holes.

Later I regularly played with another group of friends. We had a standing Thursday night 9 holes … or more if we could still see the ball.

Afterwards we went to McDonald’s for ice cream cones or sundaes. What we were doing is lingering.

I realized that I enjoyed that part as much as I enjoyed playing golf with those guys. 

There really is something to this lingering. You miss something in the connection when you don’t linger. 

This reflection of mine started this week because a friend called me up. He knew Lily was away and wondered if I wanted to have dinner together.

We had some extra time before we were ready to eat so we met at my house, talked for a while, then picked up a pizza and came back to my house. 

We just hung out. And that’s what lingering is. It enriches a relationship. 

We hang out lots as kids, but somewhere in adulthood we forget or get too busy to hang out, to linger. 

Today I played hockey. I got there a little late and had to quickly get ready. That’s my style. But after the game, I was the last one to leave the dressing room. I lingered. 

And that is where connections are made.

Here’s the thing: Sometimes people wonder why they don’t feel all that close to God, to the point where they wonder if He is even all that close. I can tell you one thing, if you linger with God, that’s when you find your relationship with Him is enriched. You won’t wonder why God doesn’t feel close; you will experience His presence in rich and meaningful ways. 

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: Who do you need to linger with? Leave your comments and questions below.

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People Are Never Far From You

I discovered again this week that we are never far from people we know.

people are never far from you

We can have friends and acquaintances who we once saw on a regular basis and who were part of our world, but when we move or they move, our worlds change. New friends or acquaintances come into our lives and fill them up. We tend to be engaged with the people who are right around us.

It is very much like leaving one world and entering another. We have new scenery, new people and new experiences with those people.

It’s almost like the original Star Trek television series – well, minus Captain Kirk and the Klingons. They had a five year mission to explore new worlds. 

When we move or change our setting, we end up exploring a new world. 

When you travel to a different country, there are sights you’ve never seen before, different people, customs and languages. It’s like a new world. You may have heard of that world before, but when you travel there you get a new perspective of that land and those people. 

I remember traveling to Israel eleven years ago. Though I had never been there before, I had read through the Bible many times and had an idea of what the land was like. 

I was shocked at how my perception of the country was different from actually being there. My world collided with the world of the Bible and I came away with a new, richer understanding of that land.

When the world we are in is different from the world we have left or are going to, sometimes those worlds collide for a short time. 

This week Lily and I took a trip to Vancouver on the other side of the country from us. It was a new world in a lot of ways.

The scenery is so different from home. Though the people speak the same language, in a way there is a difference that is hard to pinpoint. 

Though we were there in that other world for a short time, our two worlds collided in an interesting way. 

Each day of our trip we had the opportunity to collide with old friends and acquaintances. 

One day it was an old high school friend of mine … and when I say old, having looked afterwards at the pictures, yes, we are getting old. 

Another day we met with a mentor couple of Lily’s and mine. What was interesting was, though we are regularly mentored by them, it was the first time Lily and I together had been in their presence. 

The next day we met with my uncle, aunt and cousins. On our last day, we met up with some friends from our years in Edmonton. 

Each time our world collided with their world. And it is those collisions that keep us connected even though our worlds are so far apart. 

You really can’t go anywhere without finding someone from a world you once were part of. 

Here’s the thing: It always astounds me that wherever I go there is some kind of connection to my present or my past. It shouldn’t astound us then that no matter where we go or where we are, God is always there. We can never move away from Him, never go to another world. God is always part of our present; He is always part of home. Run to Him and maintain that connection. 

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What kind of connection have you recently made? Leave your comments and questions below.

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You Say Goodbye; I Say Hello

Yesterday I said goodbye to some friends who were moving away – friends I was used to seeing on a weekly basis, and whose home I was in every other week. … Now I won’t see them for at least a few years.

say goodbye, say hello

This morning I was reflecting on that. 

I’ve said goodbye to many people in the past, mostly when they have left my town. But there have been a few times when I’ve left town.

At the time of saying goodbye there’s usually lots of business to attend to, other people trying to say farewell, etc. There really is no time to think and contemplate about leaving, about a goodbye.

The goodbye is also not equally the same for both those leaving and those staying. 

For the ones who are going away, they leave for something new, something different. Their leaving comes with an element of excitement, unknown, even nervousness.  

But there is none of that for those who are staying and are saying goodbye. Everything stays the same for them. There is just the loss of someone leaving.

It’s kind of like eating your favourite ice cream cone. (For me, that would be a scoop of Rocky Road ice cream on a sugar cone.) 

As you take a lick, a good sized piece of ice cream comes loose and falls to the ground. If you’re like me, you hate that because you want to eat every bit. You’ve be anticipating it; you’ve been savouring the taste of that ice cream. And then to lose a piece of it, it’s hard not to be disappointed. 

Ever thought of somehow licking up that ice cream from the ground even though it’s past the 5 second rule? 

The reality is you still have most of that cone to enjoy and to delight your taste buds with. You are only losing out on a small piece. … But still the thought of missing even a morsel of that favourite ice cream borders on a deep feeling of loss. 

The experts say that the world has shrunk with technology and with travel being so accessible, but that is merely conceptual. The reality is distance changes everything. 

I remember when we moved from Edmonton to Kingston. Two weeks after we arrived our son turned five years old. 

When we discussed with him what he would like for his birthday he said he just wanted his friend, Joel, to attend the party. 

Well, Joel lived in Edmonton, but Mike couldn’t understand why his parents wouldn’t just drive him over, or put him on a plane so he could be there for his big day. Mike didn’t make the connection that it took us five days to drive across the country, staying in hotels each night. 

So until someone actually invents the Star Trek transporter, distance will not been circumvented. When you say goodbye, there is an element of missing one’s presence that lingers.

Here’s the thing: Though we will say goodbye to everyone in our life, even if it is only for an hour, we never say goodbye to God. He is always with us, even when we move. No matter where we go, He is there. So don’t act like there is a distance between you and Him. Speak to Him regularly throughout your day. Don’t treat Him like He’s gone away. And certain don’t pretend like He is not there with you. With God you always say “hello” and never “goodbye”.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: Who would you like to say hello to today? Leave your comments and questions below.

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Old Friends Don’t Get Old

Old friends never get old. Well, I guess they do get older, but it’s never old being with them again.

Memory Lane

When you’re with old friends, you talk about things that happened a long time ago and you remember them as if they just happened. You relive the past in the present time.

There is a sense that time stands still when you are with old friends. Even though we don’t have the same physique we once had, and parts of our bodies don’t work as well as they used to, somehow we are able to see ourselves in alter states of say 20 or 30 years in the past.

It’s a curious thing. But much like the size of the fisherman’s catch that got away, our stories seem bigger and better. They amuse and excite others; we get built up in their eyes … or at least our own eyes.

It’s not that it happens all the time. The mood or the atmosphere has to be right to bring back the past in such technicolour, with such glory.

It happened just the other day. Lily and I were with an old friend we went to Bible College with. We’d been watching hockey on TV and I can’t even tell you how the conversation got started.

But one memory connected to another and soon the TV was off (after the game of course), and we were into full-blown nostalgia mode.

You could see it in the eyes and expressions of our kids as they listened on and on to stories they had been part of – tales that were foggy at best in their minds, but were now developing real substance and a vivid image in their newly refined memories.

Some of those stories will be told to their children; some of them will be acted out before their children with a bigger and better feel to them:

… The story of football games in the family room, how I fixed the score before we started, just to create tension and excitement in my kids till they almost burst.

… The stories of back when we were in school, the antics in the dorms that became legendary at the college. It was like we were the heroes of old, the past celebrities recounting life as it was when they were stars.

Those moments create a warm feeling that draws everyone in the room closer together like there is some secret information that they are now privileged to care for … like they’ve been invited into the inner circle.

You just don’t want those times to end; you wish they could continue forever. You want to talk and listen, and continue to light up the eyes of your kids. But you realize that you’re not that age any more. You get tired and can’t pull the all-nighters of the olden days.

You snap back to the reality of the present, and become cognisant that you are thirty pounds heavier, your hair is thinning, and you don’t look anything like the guy in the stories.

But it was great to go back there for a while.

Here’s the thing: You can remember the past, visit the past, make the past seem bigger and better than real life. But you can’t bring the past back to life; you can’t live in the past. So let the past teach you; let it inspire you to live in the present in such a way that you will want to bring colour to this present again. And may God be glorified in those memories.

Question: What were the circumstance that led to your last memory fest? Leave your comments below.

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Lasting Memories

This past week Lily and I attended our 27th district prayer retreat.  Prayer retreat is a getaway for pastors and their wives.  It’s a time to be refreshed and renewed, and focus on ourselves both emotionally and spiritually.  I look forward to these retreats every year.  Just three days, but they’re special.

winter-day-view

Over the years, the retreat experience has varied in a number of ways.  When I started in ministry in Alberta, our prayer retreat was in Banff.  Now THAT was a tough place to be with the mountains, the hot springs close by, and the shops lining the main street that Lily loved to check out.  I’m not sure we ever bought much there, but we did have to go in every one of them!

At prayer retreat we reconnect with all our friends, many whom we had gone to college with.  After the evening meeting we couldn’t wait to get to the restaurants or hot springs just to hang out.  We’d even hang out at the Christmas shop on the main street. It had a bench just inside the door, I called it the husbands bench. My buddies and I would sit there and make comments about and to those coming into the store, while our wives shopped. We had some great times, a lot of laughs together.

Because prayer retreat was always in the off-season when the rates are cheap, we got amazing deals on great accommodations … except for one year, and my friend, Dave, and I continued on and on about it until our wives were ready to kill us.  (But Pastor Dan’s room WAS bigger than both our rooms put together!)

So, it was a real change moving to Ontario and attending our first prayer retreat at Joy Bible Camp.  The contrast was extreme!  We were in the middle of nowhere; we stayed in tiny rooms where we either shared a washroom with another couple, or had to walk outside and down a flight of stairs to get to the shower.

But Joy Bible Camp had a gym, and every night after our meetings many of us hit the gym for some ball hockey, or basketball.  It was so different from the retreats in Banff, but in some ways, the retreats at the camp had their own charm.  Oh, those afternoon broom ball matches, with Gerry knocking bodies around!

And, at the end of the retreat, there was always the bonus excitement of whether the cars would start … retreats in those days were at the end of January with temperatures well below zero!

Well, this year prayer retreat came full circle.  The retreat was in Huntsville, at Deerhurst Resort (that’s right – where the G8 Summit was held).  Our accommodations certainly rivaled those days in Banff.  And, like the retreats at Joy Bible Camp, there was even a ball hockey game!

Now, I haven’t said much about the speakers and times of prayer.  Over the years, I’ve been challenged, encouraged, made fresh commitments, prayed for others and been prayed for by others.  We have had rich times with God and each other.  And Lily and I have experienced them all together!

Here’s the thing:  God puts a variety of experiences in our path, and He brings a variety of people along to experience them with us.  God uses those experiences and those people to shape us and mold us along the way.  We should treasure each experience we have and cherish every person He brings alongside.

Until Next Time!

Pastor Paul

Question: What experiences has God used to shape you? Leave your comment below.