TREES by Eleanor Shepherd

    In Grade Six, an English teacher introduced me to a poem by the American poet, Joyce Kilmer, who died fighting in the First World War. The simple and delicate beauty of the poem so impressed me that nearly all of the six two line stanzas have remained with me from that time until now. That was in the late 1950’s. 

            The poem says:

                        I think that I shall never see

                        A poem lovely a a tree.

 

                        A tree whose hungry mouth is prest

                        Against the sweet earth’s flowing breast;

 

                        A tree that looks at God all day,

                        And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

 

                        A tree that may in summer wear

                        A nest of robins in her hair;

 

                        Upon whose bosom snow has lain;

                        Who intimately lives with rain.

 

                        Poems are made by fools like me,

                        But only God can make a tree.

 

            Yesterday the words of this poem came back to me again as Glen and I were enjoying a picnic on the Niagara Parkway.  It was not the holiday we had originally planned.  This was the year that the whole family was going to enjoy a holiday together on Prince Edward Island.  However Covid put an end to that plan. 

 

            Instead Glen and I came to visit friends on the Niagara peninsula, at a place where we could still practice social distancing while our daughter and son-in-law tried to finish the renovations they were doing for us at our place when Covid hit. 

 

            The weather has been so hot this summer that whenever we venture out of our air-conditioned comfort, we head for the shade of the trees.  Perhaps that is what has made me so aware of them. Plus my daily morning walks, when I find myself as I walk along the lakeshore looking for the places where I will be able to walk mostly in the shade of the trees.

 

            As I opened the blinds this morning and looked out, I saw near the house where we are staying a tree so enormous, I had to bend my head way back to try to see the top.  I called Glen to ask him how tall he thought it must be.  Together we agreed that it was at least five or six stories high. 

 

            This new fascination with trees intrigues me.  I have always loved the way that the trees turn such beautiful colours in the fall.  I am struck by their starkness on the winter landscapes and how they are softened by the gentle covering of snow they often don. With eager anticipation, I await the signs of the first budding of the leaves in the spring, that heralds the end of winter and promises the end of ice and snow and warmer weather to come. 

 

            Awareness of the trees and what is happening in the world of nature is another one of a series of gifts that I have received during this season of isolation. We all know that this has not been an easy time of any of us. All of our routines were curtailed by having to change our way of living. At first we were up for the challenge but as the months went on, we began to desire what was familiar but no longer possible. 

 

The gift for me was that in the midst of all this, I found the capacity to appreciate the beauty that surrounds me, not just rushing past the trees but actually stopping to look at these strong and steady messengers and listening to what they might tell me about my perspective. Through them I heard echoed the words of the Psalmist, “Be still and know that I am God.”   

Word Guild Award 

        2011

                                                                                 Word Guild Award 

                                                                                            2009

What do you dream? —Carolyn R. Wilker

What did you dream as a child, as a youth, or as a young adult? Has that dream come true, or is it still on the way?

Today I began to read Exit Stage Right by fellow writer Jennifer Willcock. In it a student dreaming of a career in ballet goes for an audition at a prestigious school, despite anxiety whether she will be accepted. [No spoilers]

I thought about the fictional girl and how we follow our own dreams.

From the time I was a small girl, I’d wanted to be a teacher. My dreams may have come about because of a Sunday School teacher, as I learned new songs and heard new stories. Or it may have been inspired by my first teacher in my elementary school. Whatever it was, I saved my Sunday School papers and told my mother that I would need them because one day I would be a teacher.

  

Mom gave me a set of loose leaf rings to keep the Sunday School papers together. I believe I would also have kept my school notebooks indefinitely, as well, if I had been allowed to. The Sunday School story pages eventually disappeared and my school notebooks made their way to the attic of our farm house, to yellow with heat and age, and one day be tossed, but I was fiercely attached to my goal.

After confirmation at age 14, I eagerly accepted the challenge of teaching Sunday School, planning each lesson and teaching the students entrusted to me. I taught children of varying ages, and at summer camp too. It was as if my site-glass was permanently set on that goal.

Me with one of my Sunday School classes and fellow teacher

During my Grade 12 year at high school, I applied to college in the Early Childhood Education program and was accepted. I achieved my dream, teaching for several years—in co-op preschool, a city daycare centre—and then my own children as they came along. Eventually I made my way back to co-op preschool with my daughters, assisting the teacher and filling in when she couldn’t be there.

In time, I began to write, then began to teach again—adults this time—and curiously also to take up Toastmasters and storytelling, and writing stories for others, including children. My goal shifted, but I was still teaching and helping others learn.

 

Storyteller at Enabling Gardens in Guelph

Through it all, there has been one guiding principle—my faith in someone greater than I am. A force that has been with me since childhood, something I continue to learn about. In spite of this current time with the Covid-19 pandemic, no matter my emotions at the moment or my goals for another book, I know that Jesus walks with me each day. I can count on him.

Your dreams can take on different shapes as mine did. They can take you on adventures you never dreamed possible. Who walks with you and guides you in your dreams? I hope you found a guide with a reliable compass.

https://www.carolynwilker.ca/

Carolyn R. Wilker is an Ontario-based writer, editor and storyteller

Dr E Stanley Jones, the Billy Graham of India -HIRD

by Rev Dr. Ed & Janice Hird,
What if we told you that in his lifetime, Dr. E. Stanley Jones was the most-widely read spiritual author in the entire world, with 28 books, some selling millions of copies?   Born in Clarksville, Maryland, in 1884, Time Magazine called him the world’s greatest missionary.   In 1964, Time stated that Jones’ “fame overseas as an evangelist is matched only by Billy Graham.”  Many see him as the Billy Graham of India.   Billy Graham spent ten minutes in his 1963 Los Angeles Crusade, commending Jones's missionary work, calling him his “good friend and trusted advisor.”  Billy Graham wrote in his final book that Jones “made a profound impact on all those around him because of his extraordinary faith and service to others…His is a worthy testimony of living a meaningful life during the journey to eternal life.”
Jones initiated “round table conferences” at which Christian and non-Christian sat down as equals to share how their spiritual experiences enabled them to live better.  Tom Albin said that “everyone was asked to share only their religious experience and specifically ‘how religion was working, what it was doing for us, and how we could find deeper reality.’”    Serving in India for over 50 years, Jones was personal friends with Mahatma Gandhi.   A top spokesman for the Indian government, when Jones received the Gandhi Peace Prize, called him “the greatest interpreter of Indian affairs in our time.”  Who could have imagined that God would use Jones’ book on Gandhi to inspire Martin Luther King Jr to launch the non-violent civil rights movement?  King told Jones: “It was your book on Gandhi that gave me my first inkling of nonviolent noncooperation.”
While in England, Gandhi for the first time read the Bible, finding the New Testament compelling, especially the Sermon on the Mount.  As Gandhi commented, it ‘went straight to my heart’.  Because Gandhi daily read the Sermon on the Mount, Jones said to Gandhi “You know the principles.  Do you know the person yet?” Gandhi confessed that he didn’t but was searching.
Early in his missionary service in India, Jones suffered a physical and emotional collapse.  Telling the Lord that he was done, he surrendered his ministry to Jesus, and the Lord miraculously restored him.   Self-surrender became his theme and song. 
There are many United Christian Ashram retreats across Canada and around the world.  Many members of our family have been powerfully impacted by the past 47 years of the BC Christian Ashram. The first one was started in India by Dr. E. Stanley Jones in 1930, after spending time at Rabindranath Tagore’s and Mahatma Gandhi’s ashrams.   Jones said that only Jesus was good enough to be the leader, the guru of a Christian Ashram.   He was very Christ-centered, teaching that the highest thing we can say about God the Father is that he is Christ-like.  Inscriptions on the original Christian Ashram walls in Sat Tal, India, said, “Here everybody loves everybody”, “East and West are alternate beats of the same heart”, and “Leave behind all race and class distinctions, all ye that enter here.” Jones commented that in the Christian Ashram, barriers of class and cash disappear completely.  A black man shared, “This has been the first week of my life in an unsegregated world. I have lost my resentment against white people.” 
Jones was exiled by the British government during World War II because of his stand for racial equality and independence for India. Experiencing reverse-culture shock, Jones spoke out against American racism on NBC radio:
“When I landed on the shores of my native land on September 7th, had I obeyed my impulses I should have taken the first boat back to India … I must confess I came to America with deep questionings and concern. From a distance your civilization seemed superficial and your Christianity inadequate.“ 
He told a critic: “If I should be kept back from India permanently, God forbid, then I should consider seriously giving the balance of my working days to help the (Afro-Americans) of America to an equal status in our democracy and to their fullest development as a people. For the color question has become a world question.”  This time of exile also enabled him to transplant the Christian Ashram movement to Canada and the United States.  For many years, Stanley Jones spent six months in North America conducting city-wide missions and Christian Ashrams, and the other six months overseas.
Because of his global impact, Jones the peacemaker was invited to periodically meet with Presidents Roosevelt and Eisenhower, General Douglas MacArthur, John Foster Dulles, and Japanese Emperor Hirohito.   Jones saw everything through the eyes of the Kingdom, seeing inequality and racism as violation of Kingdom principles.  He called the caste system “India’s curse”, similarly rejecting the curse of racism in his own American homeland.  In a 1947 article “India's Caste System and Ours,” Jones commented. “The caste systems of India and America are fundamentally alike – they are both founded on blood.”  For Jones, the sin of racism had set back the cause of missions and democracy, saying
“There are no local or national problems any longer. Our treatment of the (Afro-American) is a part of a world racial problem and should be treated as such … You and I know that the central problem of Missions in the East is the white man’s domination. It haunts every gathering, public and private, we have in the East.” 
He was one of the first in the States to have desegregated meetings, causing some people to gossip about Jones as a communist agitator.  Jones also served on the Advisory Committee for the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), which organized the Freedom Rides of the early 1960’s.  Reader’s Digest published an article entitled “Methodism’s Pink Fringe” (February 1950), portraying Jones as a Communist sympathizer, or worse. Jones responded ironically “Breathes there a man with soul so dead, who never has been called a Red?”   Because of his connection with Gandhi, Edgar Hoover had a 117-page FBI file on Jones.  Since he led so many communists to Christ, the communist leaders were not very happy about him either.  Jones replied, “You say, ‘He tends dangerous towards social equality between the races.’ If this be a crime, then so be it. It is a treason against democracy and against the Christian faith to advocate inequality of treatment between the races.” If the local laws required that blacks sit in the balcony, Jones instructed groups of whites on the main floor to move to the balcony themselves when the service began.   Dr. Bob Tuttle commented “Stanley had the pulse of the world. Who was more global at the time! He was the true renaissance man.” E Stanley Jones was truly a global firestarter for Jesus’ Kingdom. 

Click on this link to learn more about the United Christian Ashrams. www.christianashram.org

Rev. Dr. Ed and Janice Hird
Co-authors of the  Blue Sky novel
-previously published in the Light Magazine

Equipped with Spiritual Discernment by Rose McCormick Brandon

In his letter to Timothy, Paul warned of seducing spirits that would cause some to deny faith in Christ (I Tim. 4:1). Paul stressed the ever-increasing need for spiritual discernment as dark powers multiply their efforts to sidetrack the faithful in these last days (2 Thess. 2:9).

            In Being the Body, Charles Colson writes of “widespread apostasy within the church, indeed within whole denominations, which any Christian should challenge.” The Spirit equips us with the ability to discern and the courage to challenge. 

He gives someone else the ability to discern whether a message is from the Spirit of God or from another spirit. (I Corinthians 12:10 NLT)

Do we shy away from exercising discernment for fear of appearing judgmental? There is a difference between discerning and judging. When Jesus said, "Do not judge, or you too will be judged,” (Matt. 7:1) he meant we should not condemn with intent to destroy or base our judgments on hearsay and evidence taken out of context. The crucial difference between a judgmental attitude and godly discernment is that the first is rooted in pride and the latter is rooted in love.

  A discerner examines, evaluates and checks the accuracy of a teaching or activity by comparing it to scripture. The discerner depends on scripture for instruction and the Holy Spirit for guidance and understanding. Jesus said that anyone who desires to discern between God-sent messengers and false prophets would receive the ability to tell the difference. (John 7:17, Matt. 7:15-23).

Discerning is an act of love – love for God, His Word and His people. The goal of a discerner is not to be right but to be faithful.

Knowing that doctrinal error has the potential to divide Christ’s church, John urged believers to test spirits to discover if they come from God (I John 4:1). Human imagination can manufacture the appearance of the divine. Donald Gee, who wrote about the Holy Spirit and spiritual gifts, believed the human spirit is the source of most deception and disruption. In Concerning Spiritual Gifts, Gee wrote “When it (the human spirit) becomes self-assertive rather than self-effacing, the only cure is at the cross.” 

The Bible, our manual on discernment (2 Tim. 3:16), teaches that anything that exalts man’s work belittles Christ’s sacrifice on the cross (Eph. 2:8). 

A Jesus-follower is careful not to condone or condemn anything that is not first condoned or condemned by God. He is able to guide His followers today as surely as He did when He led the Israelites through the desert by flame and cloud. He is the One who filled the tabernacle and anointed Jesus with wisdom, knowledge and power  (Isa. 11:2,3).  

A discerner knows that crowd sizes, excitement levels, affluence and success are not always evidence of God’s blessing. What is evidence? A life transformed. At the cross. Everything true is rooted in the cross.

The discerner's heart longs for the Spirit and is not satisfied with temporary blessings. Discerners strive for deep, lasting, consistent faith. 

Prayer: Father, make me like the Bereans who “received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true" (Act 17:11).

***

Rose McCormick Brandon is an award-winning inspirational writer who contributes to denominational publications and devotionals. She writes and teaches Bible Studies, authors biblical essays and is the author of the Canadian history book, Promises of Home – Stories of Canada’s British Home Children. Her book, One Good Word Makes all the Difference, contains stories of her personal journey with God from prodigal to passionate follower of Jesus. Rose is married to Doug, the mother of three adult children and grandmother of four.

CANADA DAY 2020 REFLECTION by Eleanor Shepherd

           

As a child growing up in Vancouver, I used to love to say that I lived in the third largest city, in the third largest country on the third largest continent in the world.  To me it was an intriguing idea to have all of these thirds. I had no ambition to live in the largest city, or in the largest country or on the largest continent. Like Goldilocks, for me, what I had was just right. 

            Now, having living in the three largest cities in Canada, we chose to settle in one that reflects some of the diversity that marks our country. It is a place where the aboriginal inhabitants have been joined initially by French and English speaking peoples, and with the years immigrants from many other parts of the world, as the word got out what a good place to live this is.  

As an adult, and particularly during the last fifteen to twenty years, I have had occasion to travel and live in many other locations, on another continent, living in Europe and visiting other exotic places like Africa, South America and Australia.  My conclusion is still that where I live is the best place for me. 

            During the pandemic that we have been living this year, that conviction has been confirmed as I have seen the way that we have been so well able to survive and even thrive in some ways as our way of life was completely interrupted. Unlike many other places, we have had resources that are now making it possible for us to experience something of a return to what is familiar. Once again on this day when we celebrate our country, I feel so fortunate that I was born and have spent so much of my life in such a wonderful place.  

            I am aware that there are things we need to change to make this a better country. I am encouraged to realize that many people in our country share my desire for us to become more just and kind and considerate of others. Of course we will make mistakes in our desire to bring about a different future. We are imperfect people. Yet our efforts will encourage others to try new ways to make their dreams realities as well. We continue to try to make amends for the ways those who have gone before us have erred. At the same time we need the humility to hope and trust those who come after us will make up for our shortcomings.  

            Gratitude overwhelms me when I watch my granddaughter make a poster of herself and her best friend who happens to be brown skinned. This seems the right place for me when I see her heading out with her mother wearing their Covid-19 masks and carrying her placard to show their support for the changes that we need to make so that all Canadians will be treated justly. 

            During the time of isolation from others, I have been thrilled as I take my daily walk along the lakeshore at the opportunities to exchange at the appropriate social distance greetings with my neighbours.  In our polite Canadian style we take turns moving into the street or on to a grassy area or driveway to allow each other room to avoid contact, practicing the social distancing we have learned is important to protect each other. In a country where we do not live crowded together on top of each other we have such a luxury.  

            On this Canada Day, I am aware of the manner in which I am favoured by living in such a remarkable country. My prayer for our country is expressed well in the final verse of our national anthem: 

Ruler supreme, who hears our humble prayer,
Hold our dominion in Your loving care;
Help us to find, O God, in You
A lasting, rich reward,
As waiting for the Better Day,
We ever stand on guard.
God keep our land glorious and free!
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.

Word Guild Award
2011

Word Guild Award
2009

Word Guild Award
2018