NBA

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I knew It Would Come To This

Last Monday I knew that we would have to cancel our church service. Even before the NBA announced it was postponing their season, I knew it would come down to this. 

I Knew It would comer to this

I just didn’t think it would happen as fast as it did.

This week has been a whirlwind of landmark announcements, precautions, instructions and down right fear. 

For the fear part we don’t have to look any further than the hoarding of toilet paper that happened this past week. If people contract COVID-19 they will get a high fever, cough and respiratory symptoms … and with all that toilet paper, they may also get a clogged bathroom throne! 

As the week progressed, I thought it might be good for me to think of a way to stream our church service to our congregation. As I said, I knew it would come to that eventually, but I thought I had a couple of weeks to work out the details. 

On Wednesday I signed up for streaming services on YouTube. I already had a YouTube channel to which I post drone videos that I make. All I had to do was click on the request and in twenty-four hours I was able to livestream through my account. 

… But I was just doing that because at some point – maybe in a week or two – I thought it would be necessary. 

I was wrong. As the weekend approached, there were more and more health suggestions and warnings. 

By Friday afternoon, I knew that we didn’t have a week to prepare – we now had one day!

Along with securing a livestream platform on YouTube, I also had downloaded a piece of streaming software, which I hadn’t yet installed on my computer. I wasn’t even sure what it did. 

Now I knew I was going to have to find out more about this software and actually use it. But maybe I’m getting a little ahead of myself … 

It was clear that no one was going to force us to close our doors on Sunday. There were, however, recommendations on the size of gatherings organizations should limit themselves to. 

I couldn’t help but think of all the people out shopping in stores, stripping the shelves bare of essentials and non-essentials, purchasing what they “needed” while putting themselves at greater risk of catching or passing on the virus to other shoppers. 

People who were shopping this week were probably in closer contact with others than if they were attending a church service.

Though our church was under the size limit recommendations laid out by the health officials, I knew that there would be many people who, just to feel safe, would not want to come to church.

There were also a good number of seniors in the church who probably needed to avoid being in contact with people.

What went through my thoughts was to hold our service but offer a livestream for those who would stay home. 

That ended up being the plan we executed. How we put the livestream together, I’ll share with you in my next post.

Here’s the thing: Big changes can happen quickly, quicker than you expect or anticipate. If a face-to-face meeting with Christ comes quicker than you expect or anticipate, you will really want to be prepared for that meeting. The preparation is straight forward: place your faith in Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins and make Him the boss of your life. That’s what you need to do to be ready for the unexpected. 

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What unexpected decisions did you have to make this last week? Leave your comments and questions below.

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My Train Got Derailed

Your day can easily get derailed and it can happen so slowly that you don’t realize it until you are well off the tracks.

That’s what happened to my day last Monday … and it unfolded like that story of how to cook a frog. 

If you put a frog in a pot of water and slowly heat up the water, the frog won’t jump out. He will willingly let himself be cooked to death. 

The frog is comfortable in water and, if the temperature rises slowly enough, his body will adjust to the temperature until it’s too late and he’s frogs legs on someone’s plate.

Early last Monday morning, I was looking at a brand new day with all its opportunities yet to be discovered. I had thought about doing a few things but had no real plan for the day.

My wife, Lily, and I were at our cottage; it was my day off and I was relaxed – maybe too relaxed because I should have had a more specific plan.

Sadly, Lily and I never got to the place of carving out a plan. 

Instead, at 10 am we remembered that the NBA World champion Toronto Raptors’ parade would be starting. We turned on the TV and, sure enough, the party was all over the screen.

Commentators were commentating and people had arrived at the main stage and were gathering all along the parade route. There were millions of people – literally millions! Some estimated that 2,000,000 plus flooded downtown Toronto for this spectacle.

The video from the helicopters was amazing. The crowds looked like bees gathering on a honeycomb.

Soon the players arrived at the open top, double decker busses to get the show on the road. Fans overwhelmed the streets and the police from keeping the route clear for the procession. 

It was 12:30 before we realized we hadn’t had lunch and the busses had barely exited the Princess gates of the EX where they were starting. 

All that time there were interviews with the players, celebrities, sports experts and fans – all happy and delirious.

Like all the crowds of people, we were anticipating something special. We didn’t know what, but it was something we didn’t want to miss.

By then we’d given hours to this parade. We wanted to do something else but we’d invested so much time watching that we couldn’t just walk away before we saw the big culmination to this momentous event.

When all the players and dignitaries finally got to the stage, the people right up front had been there for ten hours … some had camped there all night!. 

There had been talk about a mini concert with Drake performing, but when it was all done there were only a few speeches, greetings from several of the players and that was it.

There had been so much build-up and promise of something that would be remembered for years and years. It was all anti-climactic compared to the frenzy along the way. 

Lil and I had invested a good portion of our day watching something that we had hoped would be inspiring, but instead left us feeling like we’d wasted several hours and missed out on the good things we could have done. 

We got cooked.

Here’s the thing: There are people who spend their whole lives looking for the next thing that will be exciting, bring a thrill or inspire them to do more. But much of that is just heating up the water in your pot. When you look back, it wasn’t really worth it. Every day seek Christ for a plan and give yourself to that plan, because that will inspire you. In the end, when you look back, you will be thrilled with the treasure you’ve stored up in heaven.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What are you wasting your time doing today? Leave your comments below.