Editorial

Photos were flashing up on the screen one by one, timed beautifully with the accompanying song. Each picture depicted fun and rugged scenes of boys camping, fishing, swimming, building fires, tying knots. It was Cadet Sunday and our church was hosting several of the Southern B.C. boy’s club cadres for a service to highlight the exciting events and ministry over the past year.

Christian education didn’t make financial sense for my grandparents; it didn’t look possible based on my parents’ budget, and if you want to examine our family’s income/expense sheet, the math makes zero sense. Nevertheless, none of us would change a thing. You can’t really measure Christian values in hard currency.

Something in me says that keeping the awareness of the antitheses and of common grace in healthy tension is still important today. It’s not easy to do, I realize. But whether we use other terminology or metaphors, we still face the dilemma of either avoiding worldly literature because we want to stay pure or we indulge in an overly comfortable adoption of secular values.

Recently Cindy de Jong, our daughter, was ordained as a minister of the Gospel.
It impelled me to write the following.

The attack on the personnel of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris evoked a strong response from proponents of free speech in many democratic countries. Thousands of people took to the streets and held placards which stated unequivocally “Je suis Charlie” or “I am Charlie.” In my imagination I saw myself holding such a sign. But after some reflection, I asked myself “Am I really Charlie?”

There are many ways to get fired up again for the muscular reformed Christianity of my youth. I did not think that a scotch at the Toronto Sheraton bar would be one of them.

In the first recorded plea for freedom of expression, the playwright Euripides argued in 460 B.C. that free men deserve to speak freely. It was then, as now, a controversial statement; not everyone agrees that such freedom is in the best interest of the public. Plays about anything? Wouldn’t it be better to showcase stories that support society’s moral codes and political goals? Anything else could be . . . dangerous.

I have always loved New Year’s Day. Although it is just another day, the change of the calendar to the new year is significant in my mind, representative of all the possibilities that lie ahead and the closure of last year’s events.

Bert Witvoet is a bit puzzled by the Bible’s silence on exceeding the speed limit of 50 in a residential zone. Is it fair that Old Testament people didn’t have to obey impersonal stop signs made by human hands?
Wouldn’t Isaiah have called that a form of idolatry? Hmmm!

Bert Witvoet is a bit puzzled by the Bible’s silence on exceeding the speed limit of 50 in a residential zone. Is it fair that Old Testament people didn’t have to obey impersonal stop signs made by human hands?
Wouldn’t Isaiah have called that a form of idolatry? Hmmm!

We act counter-culturally in a world where “food, like everything else, has been hijacked by haste”.

Christmas. Once again Christmas. There is something heartwarming about repeating things on a yearly cycle. And then there are also fears about needing to be fresh about something that is very old. As a homemaker, I have that challenge with recipes and decorating, but pastors have it too with their preaching.