OnFire #282 Fireworks, Facebook, and Faith

Onfire Encouragement Letter
OnFire #282 Fireworks, Facebook and Faith

Hi Folks:

What a great few weeks it has been. Our oldest, Ian, graduated from high school. What a proud moment it was to see him walk across the stage and to play drums in the grad song. He’s working for the summer picking orders at a  car parts distributor. The next milestone will be dropping him off at college in September.

Sunday we attended the 100th anniversary of Camp Wildwood, our local Christian camp (www.campwildwood.ca). I worked there one summer as a lifeguard and swimming instructor and so it was good to celebrate with them. 

The German student who has been living with us since January will leave for home tomorrow. He has been kind and helpful and we will miss him. We took him sightseeing at New Brunswick’s famous Hopewell Rocks (www.thehopewellrocks.ca) yesterday. While there we saw a nest of peregrine falcons being fed – what a neat experience that was.

That’s about all our news. Blessings

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sunday was July 1, Canada Day, and we celebrated as many did by going downtown to watch fireworks. The show here in Moncton started kind of low and slow, but then the big ones came out – the ones which start with a “whump” and streak high into air to explode with the biggest booms. We were treated once again to showers of burning white, red, green, and blue.

The real crowd-pleaser here this year was a kind of twice-exploding firework. Just when it looked like the last embers had burned out, it exploded with a larger burst than the first. All of us “ooo-ed” and “aaah-ed” at those big double-bangers. What a surprise it was to see another when we thought it was finished.

I left impressed with this firework I hadn’t seen before, so I was a little surprised when I saw comments in the “Twitter-Face” world about how lame the show was. Really? I thought it was pretty cool, especially the twice-exploding ones. How did we see the same thing and think about it so differently?

It took me a while to see the irony in the situation. Earlier in the show, I had almost convinced myself that it wasn’t going to be good. “Low and slow,” I thought. “Is this what our tax dollars paid for?” But then something in me suggested 1) that it was too soon to judge the whole show, and that 2) fireworks were cool in and of themselves, so I should stop complaining.

The experience was a good reminder that perspective makes a difference. I came out on top of this one, but only after squabbling with myself. I had to decide I was going to enjoy the show, to choose a different way of thinking about it.

This is not so different from faith. Faith means we decide to believe that things will not always be the way they appear to be right now. This is a matter of perspective, that we choose to look at things from a different angle in our way of thinking. The writer of Hebrews puts it this way: “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.”  (Heb 11:1)

Two people look at the same situation. The first person decides it is a lost cause. The person of faith looks at it differently and says, “It only looks lost. I know God has other things in store, so I choose to think differently.”

I hope this helps.  Be on fire.

Troy

OnFire is a bi-weekly letter on faith and character written by Troy Dennis. Troy is the Pastor of Family Ministries at Highfield Baptist Church, Moncton NB Canada. This letter published July 3, 2012. Scripture taken from New International Version, 1984. To subscribe or reply, email onfireletter@gmail.com. Archives are located at  www.onfireletter.com. Blog located at www.onfireletter.blogspot.com.