Excerpts From: The Messenger |
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"Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so." The famous theologian, Dr. Karl Barth revealed this statement as the most profound truth he had learnt from Scripture. "Jesus loves me" – simple yet deep and the true basis of our faith. He loves us so much. His whole plan of creation is so simply put and emanated from pure love. It was all done out of love -- a pure, simple and true love. And a response to His love is the way towards establishing a relationship that will change one's life forever. What a discovery awaits each and every one of us when God's plan is seen in this light. He does not love us because we are good and deserved to be loved. That kind of love is one based on a reward system. God’s awesome grace surpasses all. He keeps on loving us no matter what.
The story is told of how a wife wrecked the brand new family car, and as she was getting out the insurance papers, she found a note from her husband. It said “Remember sweetheart, it’s you I love.” Oh, how our God loves us! We may feel like we have have wrecked our lives but God says: “It’s you I love.” We can trust a love such as this!
That is what love is, acceptance of one another no matter what. An enduring relationship with God involves an unconditional commitment to an imperfect person – ones’ self and an unconditional acceptance of His love. God's best and highest desire is for us to love Him with all our hearts, and to love others as we love Him.
I enjoy the month of October because we deliberately take time out to celebrate ‘Thanksgiving’ and ‘Reformation.’
John Calvin said that thanksgiving is the essence of the Christian life. Giving thanks allows us to respond to His love. When we feel the love and recognize it deep in our soul, we can indeed find rest. I believe that the soul at rest is one that has learned to give thanks.
Martin Luther recognized that we are declared righteous through an act of love, which was Jesus’ death on the cross. This was a free and gracious gift from God.
It comes with no strings attached. It's a gift that comes from a loving God who wants everyone to be saved. What is so amazing about this free gift is that we are totally unworthy of a gift like this.
We thank God for his love and grace.
Can you feel the love?
I cannot help but leave you with one of my favourite quotes from St. Augustine,
“The thought of You stirs him so deeply that he cannot be content unless he praises you, because You made us for Yourself and our hearts find no peace until they rest in You”
May the recognition of God’s love be the source of your refuge in the upcoming month!
Pastor Samuel King-Kabu
He was born in an obscure village, the child of a peasant woman. He grew up in another obscure village, where He worked in a carpenter shop until He was thirty. Then for three years He was an itinerant preacher.
He never had a family or owned a home. He never set foot inside a big city. He never traveled two hundred miles from the place He was born. He never wrote a book, or held an office. He did none of the things that usually accompany greatness.
While He was still a young man, the tide of popular opinion turned against Him. His friends deserted Him. He was turned over to His enemies, and went through the mockery of a trial. He was nailed to a cross between two thieves. While He was dying, His executioners gambled for the only piece of property He had --- His coat.
When He was dead, He was taken down and laid in a borrowed grave.
Nineteen centuries have come and gone, and today He is the central figure for much of the human race. All the armies that ever marched, and all the navies that ever sailed, and all the parliaments that ever sat, and all the kings that ever reigned, put together, have not affected the life of man upon this earth as powerfully as this "One Solitary Life."
Saturday morning after breakfast with Bente (my mother), I walked to the S-Train station and caught the train to Copenhagen Central Station where I boarded the regional train to Odense. We passed through the cities of Roskilde, Ringsted, Sorø, Slagelse to Korsør, where the train crossed over and under the waters of Storebælt to the Island of Fyn (Funen). Soon the train entered Odense Station and I got off. After a quick look around the platform I went up the stairs to the main building where Mikkel and Helena were waiting for me. Helena (now 3 ½) was not too sure she remembered me after a year, but soon mellowed and showed me her prized purple heart before dozing off in the car.
We arrived at Mikkel and Signe’s home 20 minutes later where baby Josefine (5 months – and made in Canada) was sleeping in her pram outside in the carport. Sebastian (recently turned 6) had a couple of friends over to play with. One of them left soon afterwards and the other stayed for lunch.
After lunch Signe and Mikkel got busy making dinner for everyone. The grandparents were invited – Mikkels parents as well as Signe’s mother and sister, Astrid. They started arriving one hour before dinner and got right into the grandparenting act while the parents were busy in the kitchen – playing games, reading books, cuddling the baby, etc, etc.
Mikkel and Signe were in Montreal from early January 2005 to August, while Signe pursued her PhD research in Chemistry at McGill. The first few months they stayed at Henry’s upper duplex while he was in Florida for the winter. In April or May they moved into the Rosemont apartment of one of Signe’s McGill colleagues while they were out west for a couple of months. While they were in Montreal I saw them – usually – 3 times a week (more often than I saw my own grandchildren). They came to Sunday worship at St. Ansgar’s Church. On Tuesdays they were at Simon and Erin’s after Sebastian’s guitar lesson upstairs and stayed for dinner (to which I was also invited). And on Wednesday mornings, it was playgroup time at St. Ansgar’s Church. Mikkel brought the children, Sebastian and Helena, to play with Meghan (same age as Sebastian), sometimes some other children also came to playgroup. The playgroup also served as a toy library for the children, as they had few toys with them while in Canada.
We had a lovely dinner and I got re-aquainted with Mikkel’s parents and Signe’s relatives. The children were put to bed after dinner and we, the adults, had some quiet time together, before the relatives left. We had already arranged to go to church the next morning in one of Poul-Erik’s churches. Poul-Erik and Birte (Mikkel’s parents) invited us to the parsonage for lunch after church. After they left I went to bed in Sebastian’s room (he slept on the floor of his two sisters’ room beside the room where I slept). Inevitably I heard the children as they – in turn – woke up during the night and went back to sleep. But I soon drifted off again.
The next morning everyone was up by 7 a.m. After breakfast, Mikkel took his bicycle and rode off to Søllinge Church to meet us there. We dropped off baby Josefine at the parsonage with Mikkel’s mother on the way and arrived at that church a little before Mikkel. We were greeted at the door by Pr. Poul-Erik in his Danish pastor’s frock (black) and wavy white collar. Soon we were seated in the church, which currently is under renovations. After the service we went into the ‘choir’ at the back of the church, which was closed off to keep the dust away from the main church. We could see the old granite stones, about 24 inches across, which had been used to build the original church some 800 years ago. On the other side the bricks were partly exposed – where the wall had been replaced many years ago. The large granite baptismal font was still there – it was too heavy to move around. Helena was baptised in that church, so she had asked to see the baptismal font. Sebastian was baptised in Hellerup church nearby, and Josefine was baptised in yet another church close to the parsonage, called Herrested Church. Poul-Erik is a parish pastor and has 3 country churches to look after. Usually he conducts ‘high mass’ in one church and evening prayers in another, while the third church has the Sunday off. It is done on a rotational basis.
Josefine was in fine fettle when we arrived back at the parsonage. Birte had already fed her lunch and we set about getting the table ready for lunch while the children played games or had a book read to them. After lunch we went for a walk – through the grounds of the parsonage, where we checked out the huge beech tree that was spewing infertile seeds over a large area of the garden near the back door. We saw the apple orchard (apples used to make apple juice, etc.), and the garden where the berries grew. Then we proceeded through the village to where their new house was under construction. The roof is nearly complete. Mostly the inside remains to be finished.
Mikkel’s dad will be retiring in two years, and the timing for the building of their new home was auspicious. It is expected to be ready in about a month’s time. The parish council has already approved their move out of the huge parsonage, but they also need the government’s go-ahead to proceed. Hopefully everything works out in time. They will have 2/3 less space than they have now in the parsonage, so a lot of culling and packing is already under way.
After the house-viewing we walked through the village to a pond where we watched the ducks swimming and passed by a very old farmhouse with a straw roof and exposed timber frame (bindingsværk), which I had to take a picture of. On the way back to the parsonage, we could see the large Herrested Church, wery close to the parsonage (where Signe and Mikkel were married – and Josefine baptised).
Back at the parsonage we had coffee and tea while Josefine had her afternoon meal. I perused the wedding album from Mikkel and Signe’s wedding. The wedding dinner was held at the parsonage, where a large tent was set up in the garden. Any guests that wished to could set up a tent in the garden and spend the night. Breakfast was served for them the next morning.
Mikkel set off on his bike and the rest of us piled into the car for the trip back to Odense, where we had a dinner of leftovers before I said goodbye to the Steffansen family. It was bedtime for the children and Mikkel took me to the train station and waited with me until my train arrived. I was back in Birkerød by 9:45 that evening, and Bente was happy to have me back home.
Jette
It was the second day of my bicycle ride down along the West Coast of Ontario. On the first day, I had ridden from the shores of Georgian Bay, across the neck of the Bruce Peninsula, to come to rest at Port Elgin, on the shores of Lake Huron. I awoke in the dawn mist of the campground at Macgregor Point Provincial Park, packed up all my gear and left the park before most had arisen.
I returned to Port Elgin for breakfast, and called ahead to reserve my camping spots at provincial parks for the next couple of days. The distance I could travel was governed entirely by the placement of campgrounds along the way. My goal for this day would be the town of Goderich.
Once more, then, and for the last time, I passed by Macgregor Point along Lake Range Road. It was a quiet, country road, well away from the highway. There were few cars and both sides of the road were lined with impenetrable forest. It promised to be a hot, sunny day, now that the mist had risen. Normally, I would rejoice at the lack of any wind, but I found I had to keep up a speed of at least 15 km/hr in order to stay ahead of the many biting flies that would otherwise circle around me. I crossed "Concession" roads at every two kilometres exactly.
Lake Range Road ended at Concession 8. I could see off in the distance the huge concrete shells of a nuclear power plant, along the lakeside. As I followed Concession 8 down to the shoreline, where there was a small settlement, I passed radiation counters every few hundred feet. All the woods to the left of me were fenced off, with stark warning signs. From the point, I was able to get a good view of the plant.
As I continued along the roads southward, B/C Road and Tie Road, all view of the nuclear plant itself was lost. The roads were not at all arranged as indicated on the map. Some roads and towns shown on the map simply were not there. Alongside the plant itself was a long, high fence, topped with barbed wire. When I stopped to ask at the gate whether there was any sort of visitor's centre, the armed guards looked visibly nervous, and directed me out to the main highway. The visitor's centre was far up the hill, so I decided against the detour.
Beyond the plant, I came to tiny beach hamlet of Inverhuron. No shoreline road led south from there, so I had to climb steeply inland. I passed a wagon full of Amish or Mennonite girls dressed for the beach, dressed in head-to-toe bathing suits as one might see in the 1890s, and wearing bonnets.
On the high road (but still not the main highway), I lost all sight of the lake. All I could see to the my right, across the farmers' fields, was a distant line of trees. I soon came into the delightful town of Kincardine. Here was a beachfront park, a long pier jutting out into the lake, and an historic lighthouse. I rested in Kincardine for lunch and spent more than an hour looking around. As I headed south, I was able to follow Beach Road right alongside the water for quite a distance. At the county line, though, I was shunted inland to the main highway, Highway 21. The traffic was a shock, for I had been on the highway all morning!
Lake Huron was once again just a distant line of trees as I beat my way southwards under the hot sun. After a couple of hours, I came to Point Farms Provincial Park, still about 5km short of Goderich. I set my tent up in the park, on the bluffs high above the lake, and then set out for town. Goderich, I would discover, was quite a large town and a major port. I would find a bike trail leading down into the port across an old CP rail trestle. Upper town was famous for its octagonal downtown square and for the oldest jailhouse in that part of the country. I looked around town, had supper, and managed to catch the tourist information centre before it closed. The brochures I picked up would be instrumental in solving my lodging problem for a few days hence.
I lingered overlong in town and found myself riding back up the bike trail in near total darkness. Back at the main highway, I still had 5km to go. Although I had a rear tail light and was wearing reflective gear, these things did not help me see ahead. I found I could only advance when there was a car coming one way or the other, so as to illuminate the road. Otherwise, I had to stop. It was a long 5km!
Before retiring, I stood out on the bluffs looking out into the unbroken grey of the lake at night. It was impossible to make out the horizon. All was the same uniform colour. A mist hid the stars. Distant sheet lightning, far out on the lake, lit up the night sky. I slept well that night.
(The story will be continued in subsequent editions of the Messenger. Accounts of earlier bike rides can be found at http://rogerkenner.ca/Bike/Bike.html)
Roger Kenner
Web Page prepared by:
Roger Kenner
& Jette Blair.
Content-New Topics Last Updated: 2007/03/14
St. Ansgar's Lutheran Church - Montreal