Finding Hope

Where do you find hope?

I have been weighed down with the burdens of the difficulties of change in some of our MCBC congregations. I have also been weighed down in my volunteer ministry with the despair of a man who is seeking to bring his wife and daughter to Canada, but has almost exhausted all of his options. He is a fairly new Canadian, and I know him from when I was pastor at Sherbrooke. In my personal life, there are ongoing relationship challenges with some of our fellow-owners in our townhouse community strata.

Where is the hope in the midst of this kind of heaviness? In my last blog entry I shared about some new signs of the church coming together as a more unified voice of witness these days. This gives me hope.

Awhile back Diane and I went to a story-telling concert with Adrian Plass (as the Christian humourist storyteller) and Glen Soderholm (as the musician). It was so peaceful and energising of an evening.

Last night Diane and I, our daughter Jill and her husband Andrew went to the Vancouver Symphony Christmas concert. It included an ensemble choir and an actor/story-teller interspersing the songs with dramatic readings from "A Christmas Carol". What a great evening again set aside all the troubles of the world and just take it in.


Then tonight, the Place of Refuge Society board hosted the MP for Vancouver South, Ujjal Dosanjh, at the Place of Refuge house. Mr. Dosanjh was given a tour of the house and then we sat down to tell him about social justice concerns in this area of Vancouver - matters to which we would like him to give influence. These included: affordable housing, affordable daycare for low income people, the increasing number of people begging on Fraser Street, and more. There were people who spoke that represented MCC-related ministries in all of these areas of concern. Mr. Dosanjh was very supportive of our concerns and simply said that we needed to raise our voice louder so that our voice gets all the way to Ottawa for the federal government to hear these concerns. This meeting was filled with people that have hope for a better community. I also was filled with hope. I guess it is people with hope who give me hope. It is being with people who give off positive energy coming from godly convictions that energises me and lifts me to a place of new hope after walking in places of despair. (Photo courtesy Patrick Tam/FlungingPictures.com - Thank you Patrick.)

May God bless you with this hopefulness too!