Lorna's Blog

Sept 21, 2008   Celebrate

This week it was wonderful to be with my old mentors, David & Norman Jean Maines as they celebrated their 50^th wedding anniversary. David & Norma Jean have made more television than probably anyone in current Canadian history – daily live TV for more than 40 years.

At their 50^th anniversary they announced the start of their next television project - a show called “Really Good Medicine”. Just amazing from a couple who have taught and inspired so many of us. What was most remarkable at the anniversary celebration was David’s & Norma Jean’s sweet love for their family—children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren— everybody has remained solidly in the footsteps of following Jesus, and loving and caring for each other. Truly remarkable in a profession and calling that has taken so much of their private space.

Also to celebrate is that we have hired our new Producer. This has been a 3-month search and I am so excited at who God has brought to join LUTV. Watch for that announcement along with our new website soon.

Sept 11, 2008 - Incoherence, God and our Elections

This anniversary I write on is one of our strongest collective laments for all that is wrong in the world.  In 2001, 2700 people died on this day in New York’s Twin Towers; the world launched into a new global battle against terror.  The heartache of family death from all of this continues to this day.

Pick whatever pain you’d like from the daily news or your personal life and a believer in God is confronted with a harsh reality:  life is disoriented and broken.   You can’t just wish the pain away, it stays.   I love the insight from Walter Brueggemann in The Message of the Psalms. who chastises us for trying to pretend pain is not there:

“Such a denial and cover-up, which I take it to be, is an odd inclination for passionate Bible users, given the large number of psalms that are songs of lament, protest, and complaint about the incoherence that is experienced in the world.  At least it is clear that a church that goes on singing “happy songs” in the face of raw reality is doing something very different from what the Bible itself does.”

Brueggemann reminds us that real life has a lot of ugly in it, and the Psalms show us how to face God with that: 

“They lead us away from claim in which everything is managed and controlled. …In every successful and affluent culture, it is believed that enough power and knowledge can tame the terror and eliminate the darkness… But our honest experience, both personal and public, attests to the resilience of the darkness, in spite of us.”  

I’m praying several passages from the Psalms for the process of the Elections underway in Canada and the USA.   Not only do we need leaders who will acknowledge the incoherence of a world broken from God’s way of doing things, but also leaders who have deep apprehension that God is sovereign over it all.

They did not conquer the land with their swords, it was not their own strength that gave them a victory.  It was by your mighty power that they succeeded; it was because you favored them and smiled on them.      Psalm 44:3

This week we have been busy tracking for interviews into both the U.S. and Canadian election scene.  Here’s my letter to the Party Leaders in Canada requesting their views on God, I’ve been praying they will agree as it should make for a fascinating broadcast the week of October 5.

Dear …

Congratulations for serving Canada in your leadership!  Your voice matters to more than six million Canadians who attend church weekly; and to the four out of five Canadians who believe in God.¹

It is for this reason that I am writing to request your participation in our All Party Leader Forum on Faith.  Our question for you would be:  “Describe your faith and the role it plays in your life.”   

Your answer would be aired unedited, for up to two minutes, the week of October 5.  This is not a debate, but a forum of collected responses from all party leaders on this question, and could be taped privately amid the campaign trail.  Should you prefer, we could also conduct a longer interview on the issue of faith in Canada, at your earliest convenience. 
 
Our organization is Canada’s leading Christian journalistic voice into this vast audience of Canadians who believe in God.  This is our tenth year of broadcasting a weekly, half-hour television program that airs nationally on the Global Television network, as well as on the national Canadian Catholic network (Salt and Light Television), the regional Evangelical broadcasters (CTS and Miracle Channel), and various other stations across North America.

We anticipate your answers would also be published in The Globe and Mail®, as part of my regular commentary there on Christianity and Canadian life.  I am the regular writer on this subject on the Opinions & Editorials page, as well as The Globe and Mail online forums of Faith Debate and Salon.

Could you please call me at your earliest convenience to determine the best time, date and location to tape your response to this invitation?  Our strongest hope is that we can complete this with you by September 29, for broadcast and publication the week of October 5.

Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Media Voice Generation / Listen Up TV

1. Canadian Institute of Interfaith Dialogue, Carleton University, (July 2008) Statistics Canada


August 28, 2008  Disappointment is okay

It's not great, but I guess I can accept that it is okay. I won't get into it all right now, but enough to say I'm just looking big time at disappointment. I react to this by "changing the tapes" in my head. I embrace the Biblical call to thankfulness, it's command to be thankful in everything, and I am appreciative of the mental health tool that thankfulness is. Not thankful for the disappointment, but just the ability to look at all the zillions of other things to be thankful for.

One of the most encouraging things I had this week was an email send of Gary and Sharon Bonikowsky and their amazing Olympian daughter Sarah, from Canada's Rowing Team. Gary wrote:
"I stared blankly at the Jumbotron for a full two minutes at the end of the race of races. Who could have predicted such an unlikely scenario… the Dutch, who our girls had already handily beat, storming from fourth place in a late charge to take second and knock our team off the podium? Its the stuff Olympic moments are made of. Only it was the wrong team! Three years of training and it all comes down to 8/10ths of one second!
As I sat here trying to reconcile this odd mixture of disappointment and gratitude, I was once again reminded of that passage from Ecclesiastes that I have trundled out so many times as a message of encouragement: “The race is not to the swift.” Well, having viewed that passage from both sides now, I thought Id better look it up and read it again in its entirety. I was surprised by what I found.
I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all. Ecclesiastes 9:11
Of course, what appears as time and chance to us, is really Gods working all things together for good beyond the scope of our limited vision. And I guess I’m okay with that. Our life’s path, with its unexpected twists and turns, seldom makes sense until seen in the rear-view mirror often way down the road."


Aug 24/08   Gods power in God’s girls

Some of you may remember Violet from our earlier program Aboriginal Predicament. This week she called to celebrate that she had given her life to Jesus Christ. She’s asked me to tell you all, and to ask for prayer; she is determined that “satan will not get her” Just yesterday she entered a 3-month drug rehabilitation program and she will be in isolation for 2 weeks. Pray for her in this challenging time.

Cherie, Di, Violet and Geri

I’m thankful for the great gift of friends, in the photo above, that walked Violet through to this new hope, and especially grateful to Cherie & Aaron at the Salvation Army 64:1 Church.
There have been many good things happening as we buckle down to launch our new broadcast season. It’s a very exciting time.
Last week I worked in Calgary and was encouraged by our fundraising friends there and with an amazing interview with John & Eloise Bergen. They are missionaries who were brutally attacked in Kenya and have a fierce determination to also overcome satan. Stay tuned for their beautiful story on Listen Up. On route home, we stopped in Manitoba to see all Vern’s family out at harvest season at the farm. It was very special.


Aug 12/08    Going for Gold in China

I was so captivated by the opening ceremonies of the Oylmpics I watched them twice.  The next morning I called Kamila, a young mom in my town, whose husband is languishing with a life sentence in a Chinese jail. Huseyin Celil is a Canadian citizen and his imprisonment in China is a gross violation of human rights; his crime appears to be that he is a Muslim. Huseyin hasn’t even been allowed a visit from any Canadian consular official. He is accused and locked away with unjust process.  Kamila, who has four children, the youngest born since this nightmare in China began, passionately believes it will help if we write to our Prime Minister, who has tried to advocate on Huseyin’s behalf, but gotten nowhere.  We have to try harder. So here’s where to write to the Prime Minister and appeal for justice and fair process for Husyein Celil, a Canadian citizen jailed in China.
Another friend I know, Don Hutchinson, an enormous fan of Olympic sports, is the spokesperson for the Religious Liberties Commission in Canada. He knows so many accounts of Christians unjustly jailed during these Olympics that he wrote to me:   “The failure of the government of China, the International Olympic Committee, and the international community to take seriously the commitments made to human rights in 2001 have made these the Games I cannot watch. I support our Canadian athletes and hope they do well, but can't bring myself to respect this incarnation of the Games that falls so far outside the expressed spirit of Olympism and has resulted in backwards steps for freedom of religion in the host country.
These Games have changed my life. My wife and I have concluded to do our best to avoid purchasing items made in China until such time as our Christian brothers and sisters, and those of other faiths, have the freedom to practice their beliefs.”  Just over a month ago, Xie Fenglan, a Beijing woman who believes much the same as I do, collapsed under torture in China.  Her crime was that her husband, a pastor, had met with American officials and was seen to be “destroying the harmony of the Beijing Olympic Games.”    

So here’s a prayer:  “God, could you help us all make a gold medal effort for human rights in China ?   I believe you are sovereign over the Chinese state.  For Huseyin, help him, bring him hope, sustain Kamila and the children, and deliver Huseyin your justice.  For the thousands others, whose faces we do not know, the Christians, Muslims, Falun Gong, and the many thousands who are pursuing their search and love for you, please direct them to your peace and deliverance.  Stir us to action on their behalf, help us to be Your hands and voice in action.”    


July 30/08    Back from my Staycation

Urban Dictionary defines Staycation as “A vacation that is spent at one's home enjoying all that home and one's home environs have to offer”.    I did exactly that in July, with a few detours, and it was wonderful.  

First – I hung out with 17 Junior Kindergarten sweethearts for our church’s Daily Vacation Bible School. Because of my work travel, I had really missed being connected to the rhythms of my local church activities and this was the perfect recipe.     

I developed my garden some more, entertained, and snuck away for a few days with my Group of Seven buddies, we’re a group a women who all work in ministry and enjoy laughing together.

Finally, I spent five days at nearby Loyola House in Silent Retreat – and it was amazing.  Everybody who knows me shakes their head and wonders, how could I handle not talking for five days ??   More on that, but first, check these photos:  

So what was it like to be on a Silent Retreat for five days?   Easy.  It felt luxurious to be in such peace and silence.  Socrates said “An unexamined life is not worth living” and while I may not be willing to die for that principle as he did, I certainly will fight to find silence so I can think about what’s going on in my life, and pray about how to react to it all.   In my time away I inquired deeply of God, about many questions, opportunities and challenges in my life.  I also napped more than usual, hiked all over their countryside, even painted and went to Mass.   At this Jesuit run center I had a spiritual director which I could speak with one hour a day, and I was asked to only use my Bible and journal for directions.  I was given short passages to meditate on;  Isaiah 43:1-7, Mark 4: 35-41 were two that worked deeply in my heart.   I’ve returned renewed to take my place in the sounds of this world.    

July 5, 2008   Summer Holiday

June 27, 2008   Summer Shock

Last week when Dave, our producer, finished the final touches on the program, he came in and told me the last show on the season was completed, he smiled and said, "and it's my last show too."   Wow, none of us saw this one coming.  This is a great loss to Listen Up TV and you the viewer! We've had a lot of fun, endless skill, much service always done with kindness, and a very persevering spirit from Dave.   You can read some of his resignation below, Dave is doing what all young creative people love to do, striking it out on his own.  Here's a few pictures of a great producer in action on our work.  Dave, you'll be greatly missed and thank you from the bottom of our hearts.   Please pray for who will fill these big shoes around here, we are accepting applications.  

Dave's Resignation - He writes
"I feel very blessed to have been able to work with such amazing people who taught me not just about working in television but also about living fully as a follower of Christ. 

I am comforted that I am not leaving Listen Up in a vacuum, there are certainly many other talented staff that are fully capable of carrying the ministry’s momentum forward. 

Again, I am so thankful for the opportunity I have had to work with the Listen Up staff and I wish Listen Up all the best in her future endeavours." 

June 19, 2008    Asking for help

Its been a full week with most of it spent in wonderful Manitoba.  Maniotba is where the prayer started for me to bring a Christian view into media, and this week, we went back to the place of that prayer to help ask people to donate to the cost of seeing that prayer in motion.   In true emotional Lorna style, I parked the rental car in front of the little house Vern and I were living in when that prayer was launched twenty years ago and just took some time to pray.  We have some challenging financical needs here at Listen Up TV, we are a donation run ministry,  and old friends and new ones listened and cared deeply for us on this trip to Manitoba.  None of us ever could forsee what that prayer twenty years ago would result in, this project of Listen Up TV and Media Voice Generation that reaches over a million people a month.  This is now costing much more than just a few friends can pay for.   Perhaps you would like to be part of the continuing answer to that prayer, "Lord, help me impact the media for you".  As a regular reader of this blog, I'd love to invite you to join us to help in financially supporting Listen Up TV with a gift (either a one-time gift, or a monthly gift),


Cancer and other things -- June 13, 2008

The word cut us like a knife, cancer. Vern and I had been married only 4 years, and the diagnosis stopped our world. Radical surgery was immediate, we held each other and cried all weekend, family came and prayed. Post operative the answer was, "we found no cancer. You're fine."

Two years ago, a very different ending. We stopped TV production because Dave's dad was dying. Cancer. Dave, our producer, took every creative thread he has, cared for his dad and said good bye. The loss of cancer touches us all.

If you're reading this and cancer is the word that is shaping you, I am praying for you. If you need spiritual care, please write , we'll get you connected to praying help for this journey. Here's the Christian insight into battling cancer from Tony Snow, former White House press secretary, last I checked he was still doing well batting the disease.

Apology

My week was rocked by being in Ottawa to watch Canada's Prime Minister apologize for the Indian Residential Schools which forced children away from their families, 150,000 of them including former Grand Chief Matthew Coon Come , who following a Listen Up interview in 2000, got me started on caring about this issue. His survivor statement and others, will be featured on the June 22 Listen Up TV. I wept in the House of Commons to be watching this unfold. It matters deeply. 

Travel

I went to California for a private gathering of professionals who work as Christians in the secular media from New York and Hollywood. This is complex, but there are times in your career when the Dietrich Bonhoeffer truth applies where he taught that some trains in the world are just going the wrong direction, and it takes courage to get off them. Your gifts can still be passionately engaged for God in beautiful ways.


May 25/08 - Will God judge my life?

"God is making a new creation. That's what his story is all about. He wants people who know him and live a life of love. Heaven, the ultimate goal of his creation, is about creating a community of people who know him and live in love, goodness, and peace.

To be part of God's creation we need to know him. To know God, we need to believe Jesus. So, to "get into heaven" we really do need to believe Jesus. Belief in Jesus is not some strange and burdensome requirement for entrance past the pearly gates. It is the goal of everything that is beyond the pearly gates.

But it is not enough just to simply say the right name or profess the correct religion. Our knowledge of Jesus must work itself out in a new life of love. In Matthew 25:31-46 , we have a picture of all people standing in judgement before God. Did people really love him and live the life of love that he intended? Many would assume that this means a life of pristine religiosity or ritual observance. Instead, Jesus asks whether they fed him when he was hungry and clothed him when he was naked, or visited him when he was in prison. When people lived out this real tangible love and care towards the hurting, poor, and troubled people of the world, they were actually loving Jesus! Then they were welcomed into God's paradise. They have believed in Jesus and known the one true God. Their lives have been washed clean by his wonderful forgiveness. They have lived a life of love. For these, heaven is truly home.

Caring for the poor and troubled is not a substitute for knowing the one true God, but it is an essential part of knowing the one true God."

May 16 Blog

It was a wonderful week in Ottawa.  I was travelling with my friend from Manitoba, Debbie, for the National Prayer Breakfast, some personal prayer retreat time for leadership, and to show my western friend the beauties of our nation's capital.

We stayed at the National House of Prayer.  This is a jewel in Canada’s landscape.  We gathered there with a group of Canadian pastors who had an international flavour and we prayed for two subjects very close to my heart;  one of which was the Prime Minister’s June 11 apology to the aboriginal people of our country for the sins Canada committed in the Residential Schools.  Having done several journalistic pieces on this, it was the first time I actually had the opportunity to be group prayer for it. 

The heart of this issue is similar to what we covered on this weeks broadcast on clergy abuse. For healing to take place, forgiveness will have to happen.  Let’s pray that spiritual reality is an authentic part of this national process.  I think it would help if many of us came to sit on Parliament Hill on the day of the national apology, and symbolized our regret over the wounds caused.

During the National Prayer Breakfast student seminar, I listened to Roger Boyer tell his deep story of forgiveness and re-identification with his aboriginal roots.  These authentic stories of healing through forgiveness are profound and hold great hope for individuals and our country.

What amazed me was the mystery of the Holy Spirit, that on the one evening of the year I take time to dwell at the National House of Prayer, the topic of prayer was exactly what I needed to be in.  This was a very personal encounter with an unfathomably large God. 

The National Prayer Breakfast has grown to 800 people and it was an inspiring event of politicians and community leaders listening carefully to Judy Graves of Vancouver, who has pioneered a recovery program for homeless people.  It brought us back in touch with what really mattered; living out the love of God and sharing it with those in need. 

We’re heading into a long weekend; it’s going to be a rainy one and a good time to finish off my homework for my philosophy class.


May 02, 2008  - A gentle, unhurried conversation makes for breakthrough in understanding.

When I first met Violet in January, she took the time to be honest, tender, teaching and real about the tragic events that had shaped her path.  She is the same age as I am.  We both went into government care at about the same age, because of family breakdown, and I think we felt a kindred spirit, despite our racial and lifestyle differences.  I felt I understood some things in a new way, a better way, because Violet was gentle and honest with me.   When we were back in Vancouver six weeks following that original interview, my friend Di and I went to find Violet in the downtown east side where she lives.  We found her where she works, near the bottle depot, and she greeted us like long-lost friends.  Another friend, Geri, joined us and we all went for lunch together. We discovered that while Violet had not yet seen her story broadcast on our earlier show The Predicament, friends and neighbours in the east side had, and she described herself as a TV star.

We laughed and had a good talk together and we took Violet to a beautiful prayer room in the east side very close to where she lives.  In that prayer room we were able to do what women do well; tell stories and then pray.   And we also connected her with the wonderful Church 61-4 which is a small collection of young Canadians who live and work to bring the news of Isaiah 61:4 to the downtown east side. They are friends from the Salvation Army. 

What I learned was that since first sharing her story, Violet has started rehab counselling and as a result of gentle honest approach on Listen Up some very beautiful and strong people have begun to walk beside Violet.  Geri, one of those people, gave Violet her cell phone to call me and I just about fell off my chair to hear her voice - owning a cell phone is out of reach for Violet who pays her rent by collecting bottles - so to speak to her across the country is amazing.

We laughed and cried together on the phone about the hope she now feels because the telling of her gentle story helped open the door to the next steps of love God had for her to discover.  I fully expect that in the future you could hear Violet on Listen Up again and you will be amazed at her progress. Her story reminds me that a gentle, listening conversation is also the start of healing.  I thank Violet for showing me that telling someone the story that hurts you deeply is a start on the journey to healing.

April 21, 2008   Peace  

I need to be peaceful to enjoy blogging.  You’ll notice we skipped a few weeks of that. 

I was sick, travelling, busy, but  peace has returned.   I’ve thought a lot about the priceless gift of a home, of family who loves you.    That’s what we learned on this week’s broadcast as we got absorbed into a family who had 12 children, and we featured the one child, Vicki, and her remarkable journey out of trauma.  See the photos of that below, taken by my niece Karla Dueck who volunteered to help on this shoot.  We’re back on our theme of encouraging people to adopt children in need, 22,000 of them waiting for adoption in Canada.   If it’s where God wants you to be, peace will come.  I’ve handpicked the volunteers helping us on the quest of answering inquires into this adoption challenge in Canada – don’t hesitate to ask, they’d love to help you.   This week I am away with our family helping our son Adam graduate with his Bachelor of Arts in Christian Studies from Ambrose University in Calgary.   100 Huntley Street is featuring Adam’s new CD on May 5, and I will have the challenge of interviewing him on TV.   “Tell me Adam, how was your childhood??”  

April 5, 2008  Reading for Inspiration?

It was a dramatic week, every day a stretching one.  And now I'm down with a bad cold, finishing off my school homework, this is all I've got energy for, quietly putzing at homework. 

Our day in Ottawa included being fogged in on the tarmac, initially unable to make our interview with the Minister of Indian Affairs. We had an amazing prayer team covering that need, and we're delighted the interview was rescheduled to 4 pm and we made it. The reschedule meant a double booking so I missed most of Jeff's fabulous Listen Up reception in Ottawa's West Block.
The next day the Purpose at Work conference began and I was challenged to be more assertive about marketing in every way. 
Finally - there is this week's program;  followers of the show will get the picture that I do not agree with Eckhardt Tolle's New Earth theory of the road to improving self.  If it all depends on me surrendering my own "ego and pain body" to a continuous release into the universe, it simply isn't enough to repair, renew and launch me. Nor does it deal with the truth of the Saviour Jesus.  The reality of Jesus is a truth that adjusts everything about how we do life. I'd really encourage some reading about that source:  Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis, or The Journey, by Billy Graham are two good books that give a great overview of the truth of Jesus Christ and what it means for your life.   
 This coming week, I'm off to Vancouver and Victoria to both fundraise, and to report on an amazing story of a girl recovered from the worst abandonment.  So stay tuned, that story is part of our search to understand why 22,000 children in Canada are waiting for adoption and where is God at work in that need.       

March 28, 2008  - BINGO

Every once in a while you have a great sense of clarity you are working close to God's heart.  We certainly feel that with the program content this week. We learned much on understanding the First Nations path toward a future of hope and healing.  On Tuesday, I'll be in Ottawa interviewing the Minister of Indian Affairs for a follow up on this program, we hope to air that program on May 4, 2008, we're calling it "The Apology".   Please check into the many resources and aboriginal communities featured on our weblinks, it's a fascinating journey into understanding each other.  

Happy Easter – March 23, 2008

“Little talks About God and You” by V. Gilbert Beers, published by Harvest House (1986) was one of our favorite family resource for learning about God when our children were young. (Click here to visit last Easter's blog entry , and you'll see a pic of those little kids reading their Easter gift – kids’ bibles)   And now, they, like us, must take their own steps to know and love God.  We are pilgrims together on this journey, like we were back in the 80’s, only the language is different, the learning a different level of back and forth, it’s good.  I was really impacted this week by the interviews at Listen Up, and by the work of Dr. Philip Wieibe on the Shroud of Turin that we featured.  I wrote further about our findings on children and God for www.globeandmail.com on Good Friday.  Later that night, alone, I watched Mel Gibson’s The Passion.  It moved me deeply, it’s the fourth time I’ve seen it.  Monday I’m speaking at Ryerson University on my views on atheism, so hopefully that will be interesting.  It’s the third University presentation I’ll have done this month, and I’m impressed how honest and inquiring these audiences are.  It all seems to fit with the Easter thoughts I’ve been mulling over, the wonderful invitation to let God interrupt our lives with His own.    

March 8, 2008       Pilgrim Paths

This week our team taped two TV programs, had three published works in The Globe, spoke at York University to present Christianity vs. atheism, and facilitated the Let A Child Have Faith in You campaign for Mission Fest Toronto.  Here’s what that was about:  Did you know that after the age of 4, children needing a home have huge trouble finding one?  In my area of central Ontario alone, there are over 8,000 children waiting for an adoption, many over the age of 4, most with huge wounds left on them by inadequate care.  Another 4,500 are waiting for foster homes in this area alone. Can you help them out?  Like, would you, could you, be called to be a parent to these vulnerable kids?   Write me and I can help you make the connection to explore this.  Let a Child Have Faith in You is an amazing campaign led by my friend Faith Goodman, and is part of the www.homesforkids.com plan to get church families taking in those children.   Kids and parents at risk was on our mind as we prepared this week’s program Tragedy in Bridgewater.  We choose the story because all of us felt sadness that a mother and daughter’s last words together were an argument.  We’ve prayed often for Karissa Boudreau’s family as we worked on the story.  We all know how lousy it feels to fight with our families. So we worked to put together some insights on how to manage the stress of parenting teens.  When I was in those days, I found it helps to remember that both you and your child are individually responsible for your actions before God.  We are both pilgrims on a journey with God, but I am the pilgrim with more experience and knowledge. So as a parent-pilgrim, there is a high call on our lives to conform our reactions to stress to Christ. The old, “what would Jesus do” question, and then DO IT!   That is a tough call when every button can be pushed by those we love most.  Colossians 3:12-17   helped me a lot.  I would pin it up on the fridge, the bathroom mirror, I prayed to respond like that.  We went for counseling, I quit my job, I had a lot of adjusting to do to handle being a better parent when my children turned into teenagers. It’s a season of parenting that requires less of our own agenda’s, and more patience.   I don’t regret one day of the adjustments.   I’m off to Calgary next week on fundraising for the show (we need help), and for some learning at conferences on evangelism, religion and politics. (don’t worry, it’s not all three at once).  Remember – check out www.homesforkids.com

Feb 29, 2008  - Taking the longer view ….

As we were working on this teen pregnancy show, someone called to remind me that God trusted a girl about 13 with the blessing of carrying baby Jesus.   I’ve thought a lot about that, about what happens when people say, as young  Mary did to her Lord, “I am the Lord’s servant, and I am willing to accept whatever he wants” (Luke 1:36-37).
Then look out – because you’ll watch the other part of God’s message to Mary happen:  “Nothing is impossible with God.” 
    Last night I had the privilege of interviewing women who are down the road of a lifetime of saying yes to “whatever God wants.”  And I concluded, wow, nothing is impossible with God.  The event was the Leading Women Conference.  My guests were 87 year old Mayor Hazel MacCallion, business leader Lynn Hazlett, parenting coach Dr. Karyn Gordan, and pastor Dr. Pat Francis.  It was a in house session of these great women letting us into their heart on what happens in your life when you say “yes” to God.   
    I also met the CEO of CAPPS, and some of her team at this conference, that is the ministry we’re featuring this week for our teen pregnancy show.  If you are pregnant, wondering about the cost of saying “Yes” to God about your crisis, call those great women we have listed on our CAPPS link on the show page, they will help you walk it out.  Or email us at listenup@listenuptv.com , Lesley who personally handles all our mail, will work with me on helping you get the connection you need.   

Feb. 22/08  -   Fitfully in your Forties? 

I promised on the program this week I’d add a few words from my many years of experience being in my 40’s.  Here’s a quick overview of my 40’s: six years ago our family stress load melted down to the point that I quit my career completely to go home and be a full time mom.  It was enormously liberating, I can remember being on a beach on Lake Erie and skipping. It was a full blown mid life crisis wonderfully underway.  I didn’t know if I’d ever return to work, certainly not in television.  My husband of 27 years went through three job changes in the 40’s, got a new degree, and opened his own business.  We put a new roof, new doors, new windows, replaced the fridge, all those boring things about being responsible.  I travelled to Africa, India, and Europe, founded a new media charity and was blessed with ten great staff recruited, I enrolled in University, and then our children left us.  They launched into their emerging adulthood with dramatic moves of independence and here we are, aging.   The 40’s have been anything but calm around here.   As I mentioned in the program, part of our human nature through all that change is to get bitter and grumpy, or self centered and fearful.  I describe that as sin, but it is also the trigger to hope.  Because when the discontentment rolls in, we are faced with moral choices.  We can choose to separate ourselves from God, and from God’s best from us.  Or, we can dig in and search for what God would have for us in this great season of change that is our 40’s.  We featured insight on this week’s program from authors that have all helped guide my 40’s, I’d recommend their books, and The Bible, highly for this decade. 

February 15,2008 – Irritated Feelings

One of the snoopy questions I usually wind up asking people I’m visiting with is, “so tell me about your religious background.”   That question has taken me through the gamut of irritating people, sometimes it was good, sometimes it was bad.  I think it really is worth exploring why questions about God make us uncomfortable.  That’s a huge question to unfold, my inbox and mind was swamped this week with freedom of expression questions around religion that our culture is wrestling with, but today’s blog is for personal reflection on that question. Why do questions about God make us uncomfortable?  

One of the earliest letters in the New Testament is called “James”, a letter which challenges us to put belief and behaviour together into good actions.  In James, we are reminded of a key principle in processing ideas, where it instructs:  “Dear Friends, be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to get angry.” (James 1:19)  

Take time to listen to your spiritual questions, listen to sources of truth about them, be open to explore the ideas God brings to you.  If I can paraphrase Acts 9:5,  one of the most dramatic spiritual encounters in the New Testament, Jesus asked a nasty guy named Saul, “why are you kicking against your conscious about God?”  The discovery that unfolded changed the course of the world.  Incredible, and it makes me wonder what could change in my life if I just listened more carefully to the voice of God.     


Feb. 8, 2008

 Its been a whirlwind few weeks of on location shooting, travel to Vancouver and Calgary, family birthdays, and a mountain of school work.  I am only coming up for air now.  Getting back to the gym, sweeping the floor, making real meals, oh it is so good to pause and catch your breath.  That’s one of the reasons why we are airing an important repeat broadcast this week. Aside from catching our breath so as to be able to think better around here, we think given the current debate in Parliament, the nation needs to look again at the message we brought back from Afghanistan. Most compelling are the stories of hope, and the stories of our soldiers reading letters from school kids in Montreal.  Tough guys, whose voices crack when they receive the sincere support of school kids for healing Afghanistan.  Politically our country needs to get behind that Mission!   Just 8 weeks after our producer Dave was staying at the Serena Hotel filming this week’s program, 8 people died in a bomb blast of the very hotel lobby he was at.  Pray for peace, wisdom and perseverance for what is right. 

January 30, 2008 - Lorna’s Thoughts on Money Makeover

I’ve never been wealthy, I’ve never been poor, I have always been provided for.  Isn’t that amazing?  I say that as I’m going off to a fundraising breakfast for Yonge St. Mission that works with the poor amidst wealthy Toronto—no shortage of diversity on the stress caused by money.

I’ve been helped in this area by thinking deeply on what it is that motivates me in subtle, and overt ways when it comes to money.  Is it freedom?  Is money the means to having the freedom to do what you like?  Is it security?  Do I need to feel safe and money makes me feel that?  Is it power?  Is personal success and control important to me, and do I desire the stability and protection that money sometimes provides?  Is it love?  Do I like to use my money to express love and build relationships?

Through these questions I learned that when money is stressing me out, it’s a good time to ask ‘what’s the deeper emotion behind the money?’  That question leads me to reflect on my relationship to God, my husband and children, and to the world of giving.  I do treasure Matthew 6 on this question of money.

January 10, 2008 - Christian first, broadcaster second ?

It was a challenging week trying to tackle a topic too big for our short minutes we have on air; what’s gone wrong in Kenya? I apologize to all who feel there was so much more we should have delved into, especially on corruption. We narrowed our focus onto the Church, and its response and even then could hardly begin to tap into the depth needed, but this haunting question has stayed with me: “Are we Christians first and Kenyan’s second?” Some in the Kenyan church asked that tough question in response to seeing violence break out in a country that claims 70% are believers in Christ. It’s a probing insight into how deeply will we apply our faith when it challenges our own comfort zones. I would have a chance to face the question sooner than expected.
Worn out and drained I stopped by my church for our Wednesday night prayer meeting. I never have time to go to this, but my friend had been inviting me for weeks and so finally I dropped into a pew to just be alone with God. I needed to rest in God, and I expected a quiet affair, the lights were low, the music artsy, it looked and felt suitable. Shortly the event began to unravel my agenda. Rather than rest in God, we were called to gather around some significant pain and pray. Hurting people came forward to weep and ask for help. It was dark enough that I seriously thought about slipping out quietly and going back to the car. But this is what Christians must do, love each other and pray. The evening went into over 4 hours in length on praying for people very personally. Yes, I honestly had moments I thought I should sneak out, this is too intense, my job has wiped me out, I’m tired, etc. But “Christian first, career second” just kept going through my mind. This is what Christians are called to do for each other. Still, I will need courage to return to prayer meeting again.

January 7, 2008 - Sounding the Alarm!

I had a wonderful rest and holiday, lots of visiting and family over, the only thing missed was I did not get my silent retreat of ushering in the New Year, so that will come in a few weeks. This week our production team looked at a personal approach to caring for Africa’s needs, and no sooner did the show go off to the stations than Kenya erupted in violence caused by corruption. I struggled with a sense of betrayal when I saw this happening, I thought, “come on Kenya, we’re trying to show the world your continent needs care, but no one wants to care for people whose leaders behave so badly.” My sense of betrayal is compounded because Kenya is a deeply spiritual country; it has more than three times the Christian commitment that my country, Canada, does. I’m so disappointed to see this from a nation “that should know better!” It sets compassion back, it causes us to withhold. Stay tuned, we’re going to produce a program looking into those questions next week. Meanwhile, we pray for God’s peace to overrule the sin that is threatening stability in Kenya.

Dec. 21, 2007

“If I could ask God one question this Christmas, what would it be?”

It would be this: God, why did you bother? That’s my question for God this Christmas. I mean, God, why did you create a human race and why do You keep moving in our minds and hearts?

Why? In my small understanding, I think it must be because God is hooked on love; in fact, God would have to be the creator of love. Since we’re all busy this time of year, I’m just going to leave it at that. The very best thing I can do this Christmas is to verbally say to God, “God, I need your love, God, help me to love You.” I say that often, and it truly brings Christmas to my life.

Thank you all for joining me in this online journal, have a wonderful Christmas and New Year. I’m tucked at home for the holiday, my folks who are in their 80’s are flying in to spend some time with us, our two university kids are home, and I’m learning how to cook again. A most welcome time to recalibrate. “God, I need your love.”

Luke 1:37 “For nothing is impossible with God.”

Dec. 14, 2007     “I’ll Be Home For Christmas”

    It was close to midnight and I was driving from my university class in east Toronto to pick up my daughter from her last exam at the University of Guelph.  A long drive on snowy, truck laden roads and Josh Groban was serenading me in the car with his amazing rendition of  I’ll Be Home for Christmas.   Last Christmas, our daughter was in Europe studying at Capernwray Bible Schools and traveling with friends and I missed her terribly this time of year.  Our son comes home from school in Calgary next week, and I join mothers who go into overdrive on expectations of family warmth this time of year.
    Earlier in the day I had been with someone who this week will help 100 families a night hang ornaments of remembrance on a Christmas tree.  Families who will have someone come home “only in their dreams.”  Let’s remember to hug and love those around us who have to hang such ornaments.  
    I have similar emotions from this week’s broadcast where we think of all our soldiers and aid workers we featured on Afghanistan. When Dave Pascoe, our Line Producer, visited there recently he was told by the soldiers that they would really appreciate hearing from home this Christmas.  ListenupTV has contact with a chaplain in the military police division in Kandahar and he would happily pass on your letters to the troops. Send your words of encouragement to listenup@listenuptv.com and we will make sure they reach their destination.  On the show you will notice a moving segment on the CURE hospital in Kabul. Should you wish to send Christmas greetings to the hard-working staff at the hospital, feel free to use the above email address and we will forward them on to the Executive Director at the hospital.
These people are living out a very special part of Christmas: the love of God being brought to the desert of human need.   They will be away from their families and I thank them, (which seems so inadequate) but let’s all use this week’s broadcast as a reminder to pray for those families too. 
    My God With Us devotional readings reminded me this week of Isaiah 41:13:20 where “into the modern deserts we shape and inhabit, the Holy One pours out rivers and fountains.”    In Afghanistan, or here at home, let’s lift up our parched lives for His refreshing water. 

Dec. 6, 2007 - Christmas Preparations:

Give me enough years, and I finally start figuring out how to give to myself at Christmas. Here’s one way I’m doing that: Each morning, I’ve been spending time with the Bible and the book we feature on this week’s program; God with Us (The book was edited by a long time friend, Greg Pennoyer and Professor Gregory Wolfe.) It’s been a wonderful way to explore what it means to receive the gift of Jesus. Each morning I just try and get my head and heart around that, learning from both Old and New Testament passages that this devotional guide, God with Us, leads me on. Here’s a excerpt from the book’s devotional on the first day of Advent, by Richard John Neuhas:
“Faith is itself a gift, the gift of receptivity…He will not be Lord of our life without our permission. Faith is giving permission. “Lord, I am not worthy” …these are words of love surrendering to love. With these words, we make room in our hearts for the gift. With these words, faith gives permission for Christ to be in our lives.”

November 22, 2007, A Team That Matters

I know I'm supposed to write about sports on this week's blog, but I'm stuck on something our sports psychologist guest said on our program this week.

He said passion for a team is all about our need to be in relationship with people we admire.  When I asked him what it means that I don't have a team that I may be passionate about, he said it's likely I am finding that need met in another kind.  I knew instantly what that team was for me; it’s the Bible believing church.

Here's a photo of just such a "team" playing to win the game of being a church which takes its playbook from the Bible rather than culture.  It's a briefing held by the Anglican Essentials Network to announce that two Canadian bishops are being "drafted" by the Southern Cone because they have a better chance of being able to live out the calling to be a Biblical church on that "team".  This is a bold move within the 700-year-old Anglican Church to realign itself with its heritage of being Bible church people. 

At this event I interviewed my hero Dr. J.I. Packer.  Dr. Packer, Anglicanism's most well-known and conservative theologian and author, fully expects to lose his license to be an Anglican priest in Canada because of the view he holds— use the Bible to shape culture, rather than allow culture to shape your view of the Word.   He would be re-licenced under the new "team" arrangement with the churches of South America.  Watch for this story in an up-coming broadcast.

November 16, 2007 

Thoughts on this week’s program: 

“Birth is painful.  Babies are inconvenient and messy.  There is immense trouble in having children,” writes author Eugene Peterson. I agree with that, any pregnancy opens us to great risk.  But here’s another layer of the mystery Eugene Peterson summarizes so well; “Birth, any birth, is our primary access to the creative work of God.” 
I also agree with that because I’ve lived the wonder of God working through a crisis pregnancy, which is the process that put me on the earth.  We have a choice whether or not to let God in on the crisis, it’s an all or nothing deal really – to throw ourselves into the truth of God and count on it, live it and make our decisions by it.  In retrospect I can see the truth of Isaiah 40:11: “God tenderly leads those who have young”.   Around the age of 30, I spent almost a year working through the truths of Psalm 139; that was God doing His creative work in showing me I belonged to Him. It is hard for a personality like mine to pray “yes God, I accept you as Creator, Saviour and Lord of my life” – but it is a daily prayer that becomes more comfortable and comforting as you get to know God.  May that be the prayer for all of us who have the great privilege of caring for the unborn.    
Drop me an email at listenup@listenuptv.com if you need help on anything this week’s program or this blog may have surfaced for you.   We’re here to care about you.

November 10, 2007 – Remembering

I had a fascinating time working with Canada’s war veterans on this week’s program. Bottom line; these courageous men in their 80’s were reminding me with great vigor that we dare not neglect the memory of their sacrifice in Burma/Myanmar because if we do, the world only gets worse. They were wisely linking their past with today’s need, insisting Burma still needs help. Dr. Robert Farquharson, retired fighter pilot who fought over Burma in 1941-1945 said to me: “You don’t have to drop bombs to do it. In fact – that might be the worst way to do it. But voices can do it too.”
His concern fits completely with the words of theologian Karl Barth, who had to flee Germany because he would not support Adolf Hitler. Dr. Barth wrote:

"To-day everyone is a military person. Either directly or indirectly. That is to say, everyone participates in the suffering and action which war demands."

Whether it is as a soldier, or as part of the mile long column of barefoot monks in Rangoon, or the suit clad protesting lawyers this week in Pakistan, or TV programs like ours, or the church we featured who sponsored refugees fleeing Burma, or the children from this Montreal school pictured above, we “all must participate in the suffering and action that war demands.”
That is the lesson our war veterans have taught me this week; let’s remember deeply what it means to love.
Remember last entry I wrote about a security concern I could not talk about ? It was this: We sent Dave, our producer and camera man into Kabul, Afghanistan but he’s now back safely and is going to bring us a great program. This week Dave and our intern, Rikki, answered some mail from you our viewers on Afghanistan in an interesting way; after our first show on Afghanistan this season, Montreal’s Magaret Manson grade 3 and 4 classroom asked for help to get their letters to Canadian soldiers there. Here’s their welcome to Dave and Rikki, below, visiting the class and speaking on Remembrance Day, and helping with the letters - watch for this in our next Afghanistan show in early December.

October 19, 2007  


    I have been thinking so deeply on this since writing the program this week.  It was a pressure cooker to get it done in the time frame we had, there were personal and work issues swirling and I found it deeply calming to take the advice of this grandmother.   We also had what has now amounted to a security challenge at work, which I can’t even say anything about and I found myself just really needing to look up to God and gently pray, “Thy will be done.”   A Chaplain we interviewed for this week’s program told me the Amish say the Lord’s prayer, the prayer Jesus quoted as the template for prayer, six times a day.  I suspect my days would often be quite different if I followed that practice.   

Oct 13, 2007

I can't believe how casually we are talking about moderating our behaviour on a fundamental freedom in Canada; freedom of religion. As you'll see in this week's program, public hearings in Quebec are underway on the role of religious expression. In Ontario, we've just watched an election be lost over the issue of extending public funding to more religious schooling than just the Catholics who receive it now. These public exchanges are generating an atmosphere of fear and animosity towards the public expression of faith in God, and I find myself getting on the defensive. The sentiment that alarms me was best expressed in one of our streeter interviews: "no, don't speak in public about this, it is a very private matter."
This is outrageous to me, its unbelievable that we are talking about simply getting silent about our beliefs in God. You can click on my wrap on the main page, right hand corner, to read my opinions on what is to lose here, but Canada, stand on guard for the public expression of faith in Jesus Christ, because political correctness is pushing into your freedom. Do something about it this week; just turn to someone and ask, "so, have you prayed about anything lately? What are you asking God for?" Its time we publicly remind each other we're not alone in this journey through life.

In the Woods with God- Sept 28/07

I’m writing from lakeside in Minnesota where this is my annual week away to connect with nine lifelong friends. We are named the Star Fellowship, taken from the inspiration of Daniel 12:3, we are a group founded and mentored by Dr. Lon Allison, Director of the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College. (guy with the guitar, center) We come from four different countries, and all work full time in ministry leadership in a variety of places from churches, to universities, to media.

We gather to improve our skill development, to improve our spiritual formation, and to widen our worldview. “Passionate God lovers and tenacious Kingdom builders” is our motto. We learn so much from each other about how to do life; we laugh, cry, pray, and ask each other tough questions. This is our fifth year of gathering, and this year each of our personal soul sharing times have ended in a personalized song; “Spirit of the Living God, fall afresh on …..Lorna. Spirit of the Living God, fall afresh on her. Break her, melt her, fill her, use her. Spirit of the Living God, fall afresh on me.”

This experience is especially tender to me in light of our Season Launch this week of Listen Up’s 07/08 year: “Doubting Teresa”, the new release of the personal writings of Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light. It was with shock and dismay I discovered that this great saint experienced spiritual dryness. She was plagued by a lonely, dark heart, and yet she believed deeply that God was in that darkness, still loving her even though she had seasons where she didn’t feel it. She gave those disappointments back to God, and continually prayed a prayer: “Jesus in my heart, I believe in your faithful love for me. I love you.” As I read these fantastic letters, prayers, poems and reflections from Mother Teresa, there was also a huge sentiment of how satisfied she was that she considered herself a “little spouse of Jesus.” Any suffering she did emotionally in loneliness, she felt could be a gift of suffering to give up to Jesus who had suffered for the souls of the world. Her letters also showed she was anchored in her Christian walk by a connection to community. She did not flounder alone with her emotions or doubts, she had monthly visits with a spiritual director, and annual retreats (at least), where she was away for 8 days at a time to deepen devotion in a spiritual setting.

Not unlike what I have experienced again this week with my buddies here at the retreat. I am humbled that people we don’t even know shared this gorgeous cabin they own with us, and said, “Come, use our blessings for your blessings.” Sometimes when you doubt God exists, or that God loves you, something so tangible as this experience in community reminds me that God’s love is so much bigger than how I feel at the low points. I’d wish that for each of us reading this; the ability to get into Christian community on the journey with God, to have friends who can help us process fears, doubts, dreams and joys. It’s my hope that by my 50th birthday I could duplicate this group and launch a new Star Fellowship for yet another generation that needs just that kind of encouragement. In the meantime, if you need connection for your spiritual needs, drop us a note at listenup@listenuptv.com  as one of our staff members, Lesley, is available fulltime to help you with your questions.  No topic or issue is out of bounds.  So, reach out and write to us - help is on its way

"Surprise" - Sept 21, 2007

        It was my birthday this week and this was a really cool surprise to make sure I felt loved!  Here the work gang doing and amazing pot luck lunch expressing kindness and the gift of personality amid their busy lives.  We had a great time, and the gift of their friendship is such a blessing.

        Other gifts this week:
- attending a fantastic event Heavens Rehearsal.  www.heavensrehearsal.com
- sitting in my rocker reading all 350 pages of "Mother Teresa; Come Be My Light", I could hardly put it down.  This was a deep encouragement to my mind and heart.
 http://www.motherteresa.org/layout.html

- taping our first two shows of the new season.  I thought they were amazing, watch for our launch Sept 30th.
- anticipating our daughter coming home for the weekend!

Fewer are getting married?   Sept. 14, 2007     

The Census results this week about the nature of family in Canada have surprised me.   It doesn’t feel good to know fewer people are getting married in this country.  Before I panic, read the fine print in the release of the headlines that shout “Canadians redefine the family.”  Here’s what the National Post quotes from Anne Milan, the senior analyst with Statistics Canada:  “Marriage remains the single most common foundation on which Canadians build a family.” Marriage is by no means over in this nation, but it is steadily dropping, now at 68% and common law is growing to 15.5% according to the 2006 Statistics Canada report.   

So what does the soul of our nation lose when we start marrying less?   I think we lose a connection to covenant.  Covenant is different than contract; it is not only an agreement but an ethos of commitment that invites spiritual realities into human situations.  Covenant originated from God and expresses God’s character that He has committed to forever have a relationship with humanity.  When we lose touch with the concept of covenant, I think we lose hope that we can actually access a power in relationships that is bigger, and longer lasting than what we have only in ourselves.   So we fear marriage, we fear we won’t be able to make it work, we won’t be able to endure it.  If covenant is in the discussion, we can begin to explore that God invites us to learn of His covenant power to assist us in our relationships.  So, when I need to connect with the covenant nature of my marriage of 27 years, I read things like Colossians 3:12-17, and I Corinthians 13.   And then I pray, “God, help me to live like that despite my thorny personality and stubborn self.”   And for 27 years, God’s covenant nature with me has been helping enhance my covenant nature with Vern, big time.  I honestly don’t think our marriage would have lasted without our spiritual connection to covenant.  I, more than Vern I think, have needed to almost weekly sit with my relationship with God, and access God’s help for marriage, and we really do enjoy our marriage.   

Less of God in the nation means less of marriage. Left to the smallness of our own resources of the heart, marriage is a big challenge. A prayer for the week: 

    “God, how would you like to come into this question of marriage?”  

August 17, 2007 
 
Since a picture is worth a 1000 words, here's my photo album summary from the last amazing month away:   
 
1.  Taping in Riga, Latvia with Greater Europe Mission; an agency which helps Europeans discover faith in Jesus Christ.

2.  300 missionaries gathered in Sopron, Hungary from Greater Europe Mission. www.gemission.org  It was a huge privilege to speak to these women and encourage them in the sacrificial approach to loving the world. 

3.  In Europe, I was challenged and blessed by the hospitality we experienced.  Here we are in southern France, with Baptist youth workers we know, Rike and Karsten Huttman.  They opened their friendships and their schedule to us and took us to this lovely family in southern France, the Goetz's.  It was AMAZING hospitality and it reminded me to open my door to strangers more willingly. 

4.  This is the prettiest vacation spot - Monterosso, Italy where Vern sprained his ankle and we had to just sit on the Mediterranean beach.  It was wonderful. 

5.  I arrived home from Europe to a huge blessing.  On Aug. 13, CL Ranches and the Copithorne Family from Calgary treated our media ministry to a Western BBQ on their ranch.  It was fun, and a great new adventure in hospitality, and letting people help you.  I was deeply touched, and encouraged, it was wonderful !  This beautiful gathering of 146 people put together a financial gift to our ministry that took us over the line on meeting our financial needs for our August 31 financial year end !     YAHOO !!

6.  The two cowboys at the Listen Up TV fundraiser who set their mind to making a difference in the world:  our host Marshall Copithorne, (right), and Vice President of our Media Voice Generation Board;  Preston Manning. 

7.  The Listen Up TV team gathering at a friend's home to pray and meet with God.  We were tuning our hearts to start the new TV season ahead. 

July 20, 2007

I'm going off line and away on an adventure of a lifetime. Vern and I have been invited to Europe to discover what God is doing there. Isn't that amazing? Europe has less than one percent of it's population who would claim to be a follower of Jesus Christ (That level is 12% in Canada). We're off to do some filming work with Greater Europe Mission in Riga, Latvia, and to speak at their Mission Conference in Hungary. We'll also vacation and rest ! Meeting up with friends in Frankfurt, touring faith sites with them, and then they are taking us hiking in the Swiss Alps. Vern and I will then catch a train and explore Northern Italy, we've never been to Europe before, and we're just so excited about. We return home and back to blog around August 10. Have a wonderful summer!


July 13, 2007 

Sin set a record in Canada this week as our youngest ever multiple murderer was convicted of killing her parents and younger brother.  A girl just 12 years old at the time of the crime, the horror has shocked many more than just Medicine Hat, Alberta where it occurred. Thoughts on our societal responsibility on this are can be read at my Globe and Mail commentary this week, but this post is for our personal responsibility to pray for this girl, her grandparents, her boyfriend, and their extended families.  In an April 26, 2006 letter of apology to her deceased parents, written just days after the crime, the girl wished peace upon her parents souls in “the summerland,” a pagan reference to the afterlife.    It is a reminder that spiritual sources inform all people and that the battle between good and evil takes physical hold of people and their situations. 


July 5, 2007      Building friendships   

    For 18 years Debbie and I have been building a great friendship.  Here we are in her Manitoba gravel pit finding me a rock for my garden that could fit into my suitcase. Debbie has been a deep mine of encouragement, fun, discernment, and spiritual help to me all these years.  Your soul mates should be ones that pull you closer to God, and that’s what  Debbie has been.  We would both be far less if we would have missed the journey of friendship that God led us on these past 18 years.

Here we are lighting fireworks to celebrate her birthday.  Because we’re great friends, this birthday will remain numberless, but it was recent.  As we age, it gets easier to get  more reclusive, but its not wise.  People move, our dynamics change, we have to start friendships all over again with brand new people, and the obstacles to creating friends mount.  I’m finding lots of people my age are lonely and sometimes I am too.  Last weekend Vern and I had to turn down a poker game with new friends because we were doing my math homework (he’s needed to be my tutor at this Tyndale business course – its been very tough) Busy, busy things crowd out the efforts of building friends.   I think that makes God’s heart sad because we miss joy that God created for us.   Jesus said his intention was that we would have “more and better life than we ever dreamed of.”  (John 10:10, The Message)   Watch out for the things that will steal relationships out of your life.    My advice is to keep risking (and forgiving)!  Keep trying, keep making it a priority to “love one another.”  It’s a deliberate effort. 


June 30/07    The National Dispute that marked Canada Day:   ….blog revised from earlier experience

I will not presume to understand the pain, anger, and tensions that are currently boiling on Native needs in Canada. The closest  issue I’ve looked at is in Caledonia, Ontario.  We decided to rerun this show this week given the National Day of Action held across Canada by First Nations people.  At issue is who owns the land – Six Nations native people, or the descendants of white settlers? I have been listening to great people on both sides of the debate, I have read Pulitzer Prize winning historian Alan Taylor explain the story that goes back 245 years in his excellent history book, The Divided Ground. Caledonia and its Six Nations Reserve could become an area of bloodshed and renewed divide in Canada, or it could become a place of great healing for the problems facing aboriginal Canadians.

Here’s why I think the role of Christianity matters so much in this:

In the late 1700’s, wealthy British donors paid for Christian missionaries to bring the Gospel of Christ to Indians. Those arrangements appear to have had two goals – to convert the Indians to Christianity, and to convert them so they would be open to British settlement along their land.

While that’s better than just killing the Indians so British could have the land, that legacy has forever marked a mixed motive in how the message of Jesus Christ reached the Canada’s First Nations people. Despite our political interference of mixing up thirst for land with the message of Jesus, many First Nations people still embrace the pure message of Jesus to their tribe.

When I asked Mohawk Mavis Etienne if she had a problem that this message was carried by British people, white colonialists, she replied: “I have no problem with that – it helped me meet my Lord and Savior who’s the center of my universe.”

She can say that because Mavis has done much inner work of forgiveness, and has been peeling off the garbage that got put onto the Christian message by white governments and clergy who tried to force aboriginal assimilation into Canadian life. There are many aboriginals who think like Mavis does. Their ability to forgive Canadians, to embrace what Christ intends for them is beautiful and it shows in their life.

The worst example I know of how the church erred in its sacred message is the story of what happened in residential schools between 1920 and 1996. The schools are even older than that; I encourage you to read about them at www.wherearethechildren.ca

I dare not presume a “fix” for this, rather, the picture below shows me at an old residential school near Caledonia’s land dispute. Here on behalf of our Christian ministry at Listen Up TV, I’m praying for forgiveness for the sins my people have brought to aboriginal identity in Canada.

This is why the church must now be involved. Spiritual realities have been part of this dispute since day one, and we must now bring a wiser understanding of our spiritual hope to the situation. As was done at a recent interfaith service at Six Nations, we must pray for “A:se Tyotahsawen - A New Start” . As you read history of this great dispute, it always comes down to individuals who were assigned leadership. Deception and greed over the Haldimand Tract was among others, caused by a British official, Peter Hunter, who was described in 1805 by one of his peers as, “so great a Devil.” Chief Joseph Brant, who oversaw the dispute for Indian interests, eventually gave in to excessive drinking, disrespect for younger warriors, and a lack of self leadership. Today we are still reaping the effects of both those individuals. The Bible asks us to pray for our leaders “so it will go well for us.” So let us pray for the current political leaders in this historic dispute. For government negotiator Jane Stewart, for Chief David General and the elders of the Six Nations, for Janie Jamieson, for Premier Dalton McGivney, for Mayor Marie Trainer, for the Clan Mothers and Tribal Council, for the warriors on the barricade line, for Prime Minister Stephen Harper. “God keep our land, Glorious and Free.”

See Lorna’s related article in The Globe and Mail: Where The Church Might Help The State

Family Together, finally.    -  June 9, 2007 

     For the first time in 11 months, our family ate together yesterday.  In a very deliberate plan, we’ve pulled the kids, 19, 21, home for a week so our lives can reacquaint, grow and love together.  Both Vern and I got weepy as we sat around the supper meal, just listening to Adam and Elise banter, laugh and tell stories. It had been so long. We have always had enormous fun around the dinner table.  The kids are pursuing school, jobs, travels, their independence, but they are happy to be home for a week of holiday.  In a few hours we’ll be leaving for a lovely cottage right on the beach at Lake Erie. (It has already been dubbed “the cottage with no internet”????) I’ve packed a ton of food.  

Reflections from covering the Billy Graham Library Opening - June 7, 2007 

     From a journalist’s perspective, I’ve concluded that the reason the story of Christianity has endured is because it’s supernatural and true.  Stories just can’t last in popularity for millennia, and become the world’s biggest movement, if they are not true. British mystery writer Dorothy Sayers has written, “The most dramatic question in the world is “what make you of Christ?”
     Billy Graham, the world’s most famous preacher, answered that question with his entire life.  As I toured the magnificent library that captures the memories of Rev. Graham, I was deeply moved at how focused and determined Billy and his team were to tell the world about Jesus Christ.  The library, (whose only book is the Bible), is a self guided tour through several rooms of film highlights of 60 years of Billy and his workers telling as many people as possible about Jesus Christ.  There’s this great old film clip of Rev. Graham in a crusade thundering out, “Who was this man that burst onto history’s pages more than 2000 years ago and why has he affected so many?”
     Jesus, the son of God, sent to be a free gift to the human race.  One of the latest ways the Billy Graham organization explains this is the link in our spiritual guide’s portion of our website called www.nowtrygod.com

     If you’re tired of being confused about what to do about God and you, here’s my suggestion.  Talk to God (that’s called a prayer), and say “God, find me.  I’m all yours.  If Jesus is your gift to me God, I take this Jesus.  I wrap myself around this Jesus, now teach me, help me, to understand what that will mean.  I believe in you, in Jesus.  I am following you God.” 
             I’d love to hear your thoughts about this journey to God. As I’m away on holiday next week, our staffer Lesley is collecting them for me, we’ll answer every one. 
listenup@listenuptv.com   

June 2 - Opening of the Billy Graham Library

    Just leaving Charlotte, North Carolina where Vern and I were privileged to be guests at the opening of the Billy Graham Library.  I was overwhelmed by the spiritual significance in all I experienced here.  Watch for this to be our program on air next week.  A few thoughts stand above the rest; trust in an unseen God, belief in God and His salvation for us all,  God’s love, Billy Graham’s faithfulness, focus, team work, sacrifice, prayer, family, friends. The three U.S. Presidents who addressed the event were deeply personal in their thanks of a friend who cared for them through thick and thin.  Again and again we heard of the beauty and power of one simple life surrendered to God.     
 

May 27, 2007 -   The Teen Sex show thoughts: 

     No sex except in marriage?  It’s a tall order in today’s cultural messages, but it is what God asks of the human race.   The marriage bed, is what the Bible calls it, is God’gift for joy, bonding, life and comfort, and God asks that we keep it pure and undefiled.   I want to recommend some helpful books to that explain why God would give humanity this mandate for their sexuality.  The books are frank, and honest.  As I noted in a request in the viewer mailbag, yes, they do cover masturbation, secondary virginity and are most helpful. There are many of these books on the Christian market but these are two of my favorites: 

Real Sex; the naked truth about Chastity by Lauren F. Winner

I Kissed Dating Good-Bye by Joshua Harris  


Saturday, May 19, 2007

   All those wonderful plans for gardening have been dashed by a troubling phone call with a loved one in our circle who is not managing their mental illness. I am just about to get in the car, drive a few hours and try to tend to this, but I felt I should stop a moment to blog. As we were preparing this week’s show on mental illness, prompted by some new moves in mental health care and the shocking statistics that one in four struggle with this, I kept thinking of this person. The need is closer to us all then we think, and frankly, our on air guests and their emphasis on love from the human heart being such a healer, compel me to act. It’s not quite my nature to care enough to act, my human heart wrestles selfishness.
Maybe this is a good moment to reach for my journal and reread something I wrote in it yesterday from Hudson Taylor:
“Measure your life not by the wine drunk, but by the wine poured forth.”

May 18, 2007

    Slipping into spring is an absolute delight for me, and as a long weekend stretches ahead for our Canadian calendar, I can hardly wait to get into my garden.  I find gardening very therapeutic, and I do need a lot of therapy.  (nothing unusual in that for me, it’s just how I’m wired)  I have finally recovered from the virus that knocked me out for a few weeks, and I just finished my English Literature course at Tyndale, and its wonderful to see the calendar allow for gardening.  For this past course I studied Charles Dickens novel Hard Times.  It made me wonder if someone has written a critique in story style of our Technology Age as Dickens did of his Industrial Age.  Hard Times is about what goes missing when we focus only on reason and fact, and not on the development of heart, character and mind.  Unfortunately, my next course is Business Math, and I am dreading it, but my husband is rubbing his palms with delight that he gets to be my tutor. 
    Next week I’ll post some photos of a TV taping we did in our back yard for Christian Blind Mission this week, it’s one of my favorite charities.  Unfortunately, we did the taping before I could do the gardening as they had a schedule to meet and they liked the yard in it’s raw state ….is there a lesson in that?   

May 4, 2007 -  Lessons from Cowboy Culture 

    Driving home from class last night I stopped at Harvey’s, and bought an Angus Burger.  It was amazing, and melted in my mouth.  The scale showed it this morning, but it was worth it.  (Yes, that anti beef book, Mad Cowboy, is in my house, my daughter is a vegetarian, I’ve been fully briefed on the perils of over consumption of beef.  I’d like another Angus Burger tomorrow.)
    This love for beef comes to the blog this week because of where my travels have been, discovering that real people actually had lives shaped by what it means to raise cattle. In Canada, we have 90,000 farms and ranches whose average herd is 54, and they bring the country the majority of our beef. (www.albertabeef.org)    In pulling together this week’s episode, which frankly, originated on a dare from a group of Albertans, testy lot that they are, our team was jolted by their challenge that we don’t really understand Alberta, or care what rural lives contribute to the country.  We’ve only done stories in Alberta on tragedies; the murders of our Mounties in Mayerthorpe, the school shooting in Taber, we thought it was time to do a good news look at Alberta.

     Rural values are branded in the Calgary Stampede movement, (www.calgarystampede.com)  who officially label the values as:  Western hospitality, connection to community, pride of place, and integrity.  It’s very clear the Stampede movement is not a faith organization,  but anyone looking at Alberta through a worldview that includes God, can see that those western values come right out of the heart of God for the well being of people.  So I should not have been as surprised as I was to find the vibrant Cowboy Churches, check them out at www.cowboytrailchurch.com   It was beautiful to see the authenticity of how people care for each other, both at the city cowboy church in Ranchman’s Bar on Sunday mornings at 10, or Tuesday nights at Cochrane at 7 pm, and way out in Dovercourt Hall on Thursday nights.   We thank Rancher’s John Fitz Herbert, and Lloyd and Sharon Quantz  and Tom King, (www.tomkingpoet.com)  who helped us hear the heartbeat of the soul for this story.    It’s amazing to me that amid all the challenges of keeping industry going, (Lloyd has even run for political office against the popular Ralph Klein), successful people like them, believe creating church is the most important thing they can do.  Helping people meet the God who loves them is the focus of their passion in Cowboy Church.   
    I’ll close with a quote from Cowboy preacher Bryn Thiessen: 
    “Jesus says, I’ve come to save you, but I didn’t just come to make your life a rosy easy way. You gotta follow me. And what cowboys appreciate most is you tell them the truth. You can never soft pedal the gospel and say that life’s a party. Jesus never said come and it’ll be easy. He said my burden is light. My yoke is easy. But he said you’re gonna have to carry your share of the load. And they appreciate that. So what it gives them, is a chance they’re all they’re really meant to be. And they understand all that. They understand that somebody made all this and fit it all together. They understand the fact that He was willing to die for them. Words like love and all that don’t always mean anything. But when they realize what Christ did for them, and what he asks of them is more than they can give. It appeals to them. But the important thing is, cowboys, just like anybody else – til the spirit calls them, they can’t hear. They’re no different – they’re just people the same as anybody else, they might smell a little different, dress a little different, think a little different, but once the spirit enters into them, something happens and that’s where they’re just like everybody else. When the spirit calls them, and they answer, things get turned loose. And they stay cowboys, but they’re cowboys with a new meaning.”  
Bryn Thiessen, Cowboy preacher in interview with Listen Up TV, May 2007 

April 26, 2007  -- Lessons from Sick Bay  

This day marked the start of going seven days without make up – my face was too leaky, my body too sore to notice.  On the 21st Dave and I were filming in Calgary’s indoor rodeo corral, and in mid interview Dave locked off the camera and turned to our volunteer Karen and said “take over.”  (She’s never touched a camera in her life)  We finished, and found Dave on a cot in the nurse’s station at the rodeo.  This was so unlike Dave, and now he is out with Mononucleosis and a weakened liver. (We’re praying for you Dave !!)  This was the start to the adventure of watching the rest of the team come together to care in a deeper way, to go beyond the second mile, and keep the show going, it’s been amazing.   I fell sick within a few days, and being too old to get Mono, have just been sidelined with a horrible virus, I’d never before been this sick before. Watch for our producer Patricia Paddy to host the show on Virginia Tech.   I thought much about those of you who struggle with illness and the patience it requires, and I learned again the importance of the rhythm’s of activity.    Philippians 4:13.     

April 19, 2007

I am doing this blog in an airport lounge on my wonderful Blackberry Pearl which was a gift to me from the kind people at RIM.  They hooked me on the light weight of this device. I may never travel with a laptop again!  We’re shooting 2 shows this weekend in Alberta so I will get right to the point. I am a huge advocate of positive thinking. That is what we explore on air this week with The Secret.  Here is my take on this week's program: The law of the universe is not in that book The Secret nor its companion DVD.  It is in Romans 8.  God in us equips us to move in positive, powerful energy.  Romans 8:31-39 To replace that truth with the idea that you pray to yourself or wish your way into your goals and dreams falls short of reality. Why limit yourself to yourself when the truth and power of God living in you is available?  To access that you must become a Christ follower.  A person who says yes to let Christ have ownership of your life. Romans 8:1-17   This week I was at Creativity Day at the OCAD and listened to Warren Coughlin the amazing top coach in Canada speak on The Secret. www.actioncoaching.com  It is always good to be encouraged to get your head out of “Stinkin Thinkin” that is negative talk to yourself but it is even better to realize the God of the universe wants to equip you to do that.  I recently told a very challenged and discouraged friend of mine.... The world says pray to yourself but the Lord says cast cares on Him. And do speak positive about you!  That is biblical. Bless yourself.  Say, I am smart, kind, gentle, an encourager, a bright young beauty who makes the world a better place because God lives in me!! Go for it. It’s Philippians 4:8 in action.

If you are not 100 per cent certain God lives in you and you are a follower of Christ, try this: lie on your bed and get quiet.  Then ask God to begin his work of grace in you.  Ask, believe, and receive. I would suggest further study on a Christian understanding of The Secret at this audio link...
http://www.burlingtonalliance.com/audio/index.html

John Stackhouse blog
http://stackblog.wordpress.com/
John Stackhouse http://www.regent-college.edu/about_regent/faculty/stackhouse_john.html


Easter 2007 

What if ? 
    I don’t agree that anything connecting Jesus to the Talpiot tomb has been found.  I’ve read The Jesus Family Tomb, carefully (it makes many more guesses than the documentary does) and I conclude there is too much connecting of dots that simply have no connections.   Well into the book you get the idea that “what if” is the favorite phrase of the authors.  What the Talpiot tomb controversy did help me understand is the value of the eye witness accounts of Jesus’ as found in the Gospels. 
    Our guest on the show this week, investigative journalist Simcha Jacobovici finds  Jesus’ burial ossuary and that of Mariamne and Judah, his  “wife and child” in the Talpiot tomb by connecting ideas from the Acts of Philip, which he quotes in fascinating detail. Dr. Philip Davis, Religious Studies professor at University of Prince Edward Island explains, “the Acts of Philip was written for a small deviant sect in the fourth century.  It is a literally fabulous account of the apostle Philip, his sister Mariamne, their friend Bartholomew, and some talking animals who they convert to Christianity….its a ridiculous choice as a source of information.”    But that is the source the creators of The Lost Tomb of Jesus use more than any other to explain what they think they’ve found.  They are very impressed that Harvard professor Francois Bovon translated the Acts of Philip and in that work speculated that the Mariamne is Mary Magdalene. I’ll quote from a great blog here by Duke University professor Mark Goodacre.   “For Jacobovici, it was the turning point for him to discover that Marianmne was Mary Magdalene’s “real name”.  That bad news for him is that it is only her real name if one goes with a fourth century text, the Acts of Philip, that has no chance of containing first century traditions.  Wherever she appears in first century Christian texts, she is always “Maria” as are the other several Marys in the New Testament.”     
     I read first century texts almost daily and I do ask myself “what if” a lot.  What if I take the words of these accounts of Jesus in my New Testament (first century text) seriously ?  That the claims of Easter are true (John 11:25)  What changes in my decisions, my actions that day if I answer to the first century request of Christ to “love him with all my heart, mind and strength?” (Mark 12:30)
    On a personal note:  Vern and I are retreating on a Easter break for a two day break away from the city, we miss the kids on holidays and it will be nice to get away and have some fun. 

Family Meltdown thoughts  March 30, 2007 

    What a fascinating topic we dug into this week on the statistics of how our kids are hurting because they lack authentic connection to boundaries and guidance from trusted adults.  Raising our children was a season of deepest examination of what was in my heart.  The selflessness that the job required was far beyond me, and I came face to face with a truth from Proverbs 14:1 in the Bible: a foolish woman has the power to destroy her own home. 
    So what do you do with that ?  Even now that my kids are grown and away from home, there is nothing that examines my soul better than when I have to examine how I am treating the people around me.  My husband, my colleagues, my friends; how I treat people always comes back to the school of the soul.
    We cannot change our soul until we can submit to the creator of our soul. Until we become a student of what God’s intends for us, we will not be able to care for ourselves, or those we love.    Matthew 6:33 started it for me;  “Seek first the Kingdom of God”  ….or as The Message puts it:   “…know both God and how he works.  Steep your life in God-reality, God- initiative, God –provisions. Don’t worry about missing out.  You’ll find all your everyday human concerns will be met.”
     The concerns of how to run our lives, interact with people, do our jobs, raise our children, it all comes out of asking God to rule our decisions first.  Call me high maintenance, but that means deep, daily times of reading the Bible, reflecting on it, counsel with others, prayer and meditation.  All the stuff that takes loads of time.  Time you can’t afford not to take.  That kind of time changes who I am and how I react to people, and how I parent my children.  

March 15, 2007

Where did the Blog go these last weeks?

Let’s blame it on my Science Class, which was part of my work for the Bachelor of Religious Education I’m studying for at Tyndale University College and Seminary.  It came witha load of homework and ideas that were anything but easy or natural for me to grasp. I have a huge new respect for anyone who pursues that discipline. The wonder of the world of science is stunning, and awkwardly difficult for a creative person to memorize and comprehend. But I’ve made it through the course, and now am back in the Psychology discipline, this time on Behaviour in Groups, and its fun.

What’s New?

I’m convinced I found evidence God moved slavery onto our Listen Up agenda. As you’ll see again in this week’s program, there are millions of working slaves in the world, please listen to the program online, it’s very important. The convergence of events and guests that led us to be able to cover this topic was nothing less than supernatural, it just would not have happened without spiritual realities at work. I won’t go into all the details here, but God moved on our agenda with such clarity we knew this was the topic to cover. Among the many interesting elements on this journey is Hollywood Producer Ken Wales, a guest on our program, featuring his fantastic work on the movie Amazing Grace.  It documents the abolition of slavery 200 years ago and features a historic hero of mine, William Wilberforce. As Ken Wales worked on this film, releasing March 23 in theatres in Canada, he had no awareness that slavery still existed; this movie was never intended to be a campaign against 21st century slavery. God had better ideas and the ripple effect this movie has captured speaks God’s purposes of justice. http://www.amazinggracemovie.com/amazing_change.php http://www.freetheslaves.net. 

When we started to work on this six weeks ago, I said to my fantastic producers Melinda Williams and Patricia Paddey that I doubted people were still enslaved, and Patricia almost instantly had proof; she brought us Rev. Walter Pimpong and IN Network and we cried over the truth of the Trokosi slaves he introduced us to. Its been a huge education ever since, and I recommend reading Not For Sale by David Batstone. 
Below are some photos from a wonderful event out team pulled together this week to allow a studio audience party on this topic.

If you want to be included in the next audience party, I welcome you onto our mailing list, drop us a note here at:

Listen Up TV
P.O. Box 40501
1295 North Service Road
Burlington, ON L7P 4W1
Or by email at listenup@listenuptv.com

†

What’s so Amazing about Grace ?

Grace: (definition from Webster’s dictionary)
“unmerited divine assistance given man for his regeneration or sanctification.”

If you’re reading this, God’s grace has found you. It’s golden threads will wrap around you and lift you to a higher place than you are right now. Walking into grace is a wonderful birth into what our lives were created for.
We don’t often talk about conversion, but its such a needed reality in our lives. Conversion from ourselves over to God. When you take the ideas in your head and want to put them onto screen, the computer converts them for you. When you take your mind, heart, will and want to connect it to God, Jesus Christ converts you. Jesus was God’s gift to the human race to be made right with God. It’s grace that allows us to discover the truths of that. History has labeled that process Christianity; Christ followers. It’s a huge conversion that begins with the little cry of “Jesus, I need you ……” and launches you into a daily walk of the discovery of grace; God’s help renewing your life into the beauty God designed for you. Make a very focused decision to either pray this prayer or not: “Jesus, I need you……my life is yours …….” If you want to talk more about this, drop me note at listenup@listenuptv.com.


Feb 2, 2007   Thoughts from Vancouver

Dave and I rarely have to run for cover, but on this week’s program we did.  Turning on a camera in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside attracted more attention than necessary,  but I hope we stayed long enough to bring you something important for this week’s program.  Such evil as is being revealed in the trial of Vancouver’s Missing Women demands that we push harder to see something of God’s hope for the sin humanity can create.  So that’s what we attempt to do on this week’s program.   I’m thinking about the 16,000 people living in that community that haven’t got the option to leave as readily available to them as we did.  People who desperately want a different life, but are trapped in poverty and many who are also trapped in addiction.  I think too of the people who work in the Eastside year after year, shining the love and hope of Jesus.   I really encourage you to go to the main web page and consider a gift of any size to one of the ministries we have posted there. It will make the load lighter for their much needed work.     

Jan 18, 2007

    It’s a very busy week getting ready for speaking events and it reminds me of a lesson I still haven’t learned after all these weeks in television.   One venue of communication is a full enough plate; the pulpit work is probably stretching it.   What makes it possible are the wonderful people like this team below, feeding me research, lining up guests and interviews, answering viewers, booking studios, running tape, editing, and editing again, directing, writing, shooting, administrating, booking, paying bills, searching for funding, oh the list could go on and on.  Drop the team a line at listenup@listenuptv.com and tell them they are amazing, because they are! 

    We’re having a party on Monday morning to watch their final show on 300; I just showed up for the interview, they dug up all the bad hair pics and bloopers, I’m almost afraid to see what they’ve produced.  For all of you at home that have prayed, paid, and supported us, thank you so very much.  There are now 477 people financially supporting Listen Up TV and we are deeply grateful for your support, each month is a faith walk, but miraculously, by the end of it, every bill has been paid.  Wow, thank you!
    The most vital gift I’ve received in this journey is a deeper friendship with Jesus Christ, my Savior.  After looking at all the stories there is no shortage of discovering how I and others have a nature that separated itself from God. Sin. The news is full of it. The human race needs a mediator between our hearts and God. Jesus was God’s answer for this dilemma. We need redeeming.  That daily prayer, that beginning prayer to the road that is Christianity, the road of following Jesus is; “Jesus, I need you.  I confess I am inadequate, I am short of what you intended for my life, my life that was made in your image.  Take my sin, redeem me.  Take over my life, help me to follow you.”  
       Jesus said the wind blows where it will, and although we don’t see it, we feel it.  He likened that to how His being, the Holy Spirit, enters our hearts and minds.  Jesus said He was like the wind, you can’t see it, but you do feel the change that faith makes in you.   You do feel the conviction that being open to Christ brings to you – May that wind blow through each Listen Up program, and in your heart and mine today.         John 3:3-21

Jan 5, 2007 

    Last night I finished another course toward the Bachelor of Religious Education I’m chipping away it through Tyndale College and Seminary.  It was on Human Development, a psychology course, and over the ten weeks our professor challenged me on the complexities of understanding all the different stages of life.  It’s left me deeply appreciative of being more careful about myself, and others.   I can remember being eager to learn about babies growing in my womb, how to manage their growth and then studying about my toddlers, and then at one spell reaching in frustration for everything I could read on teenagers, but aside from that, I’ve just let life spill out quite naturally.  Our text, Development Through the Lifespan by Laura E. Berk,  the ten different assignments on all the other life stages just teased me that I missed a lot of understanding and possibilities about myself and the people around me, truly we are “fearfully and wonderfully made” as the Bible describes in Psalm 139.  I’d encourage you to take an age-stage pyschology book out or google your age, and the age of people you relate to and study the cognitive and physical realities of these stages.  You’ll be amazed at some of the strengths and developments they have, and learn better how to love them, care for them and to make the most of yourself and your own potential.  Midlife, and older adults are remarkably complex, and emotional decisions, or the lack of them about basic orientation of being either outward focussed or inward focussed  ripple on to effect all levels of health, phsycial and emotional.  Bottom line, apathy about understanding any age stage hurts you and the people you love.  This week we’ve been busy researching guests for next week’s program on video games and it’s been an excellent example to me of the huge differences in understanding and respect for different age stages – stay tuned!    
 

December 24, 2006 

Merry Christmas everyone ….I should be downstairs making waffles (because I do that very well) but I’ve come from my morning prayers and I’m thinking about you, our audience.  I’m praying we’ll be able to help you understand the mystery and joy of the Savior.    Last night Vern, Adam and I went to see the movie The Nativity.  It was beautiful. Cinematically, it had the most stunning depiction of Christ’s birth, of this cave where Christ was born, laid in a manger.   This is the center focus of Christmas; That the God of the universe and our lives became a baby to live and love among us. “To give his people the knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of sins.”  Luke 1:77     Join me in opening your hands, mind and heart to that reality.  I find myself just repeating, “Come Lord Jesus, come.  Come into my life, I believe you are my Savior.”   
As you’ll see on the Christmas show, this week family issues dominate our hearts. 

In the emotion of our taping, I said on the show I’d share my birth story on this blog, and then I got thinking, “I can’t do that ….its so complicated, so many people could get hurt feelings, etc. etc. its not a story for the internet” ……I do tell it often, but I’m not quite up to posting it on the web. Our prayers in putting  the show out this week were that you could discover that whatever your family wound is, God wants to heal it. It was a miracle on the show taping, all four of us speaking were crisis pregnancies, unwanted, and left at state care. All of us found love, God took care of all us, even when it didn’t feel like it, God was working all the time. Don’t be afraid of adoption – of giving up your crisis pregnancy to the big purposes of God, or of taking one of the many children in care, (even though the red tape is immense), of persevering through the forgiveness and healing you may need for the family issues in your history.

You may feel like you are a stranger to us as you read this site – but you are close in our hearts, I’ve been praying for you, our whole team has been praying for you. Feel free to write us your story, listenup@listenuptv.com we’ll answer you early in the New Year. Merry Christmas friend, Merry Christmas.

December 19, 2006 – Preparing for Christmas 

            Finally last week I had time to engage this Season. With the children both gone away at school, some of the usual triggers that set Christmas celebrations in motion were quiet.  This past weekend my 18 year old daughter left her studies in Germany to travel with friends to Italy and Eastern Europe during the holidays.  She won’t be home for Christmas, rather, she phoned us from Pisa, Italy, thrilled with her adventure. I emailed her a pathetic picture of the Advent Wreath we made without her this year, it missed her touch. Tonight I make peanut butter balls, dipped in chocolate, another tradition for our 20 year old son who does arrive home from Calgary on Wednesday.  Hooray. 
            So what started the season’s meaning for me this year?   I engaged my favorite Christmas tradition.  I sat for an extended time with my Bible reading through the Christmas stories in its pages.  I reflect, read, and pray for truth in the stories of Luke 2, and Matthew 1 to shine into my mind in a new and fresh way.  As always, I choose one verse to be my meditative “special” for the season.   This year it is Luke 2:11.

“To you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.” 

Think deeply with me what that could mean.    A Savior from what?  And why for me? 


Nov 30/06 the crunch to actually “do” something ….

As promised on this week’s program Care for Creation, here’s my attempt to adjust my energy consumption.   This may seem rather weak, but, I’ve decided to try and consume less fuel by slowing down when I drive.  This is a significant change in my behavior; it means adjusting my schedule, and changing my habits. This week it meant I was late for almost every appointment I had because I did not adjust my schedule to allow the extra driving time.   So it’s a big adjustment for me.   I’ve driven 13 hours this week on Ontario highways where most drivers exceed the 100km speed limit.  I have a competitive streak in me, and I don’t like being passed by everyone, nor do I like adjusting my schedule to slow down. 

So, you guessed it, this fuel consumption challenge is becoming a spiritual issue for me.  My soul did relax being in the slow lane, there were so many less decisions to make – you just coast along.     Conversations with God in the car went something like …. “Boy, I’m more selfish than I thought ….” and “would you do this if you weren’t commanded by God to love people, this is a hassle to save air quality for others …..”    The human heart knows no end to its selfish desires, even when it comes to our habits of consuming fossil fuels that destroy the air quality and that lead to global warming.   

Also to save fuel and time, I stayed in the dorm at Tyndale University College Thursday after classes, rather than burn more gas back home and out again.  Some students were playing light-hearted, fun Christmas tunes.   Classes are very fun, we laugh a lot and I’m so delighted to be in school one night a week.
 
Favorite Bible passage this week:  2 Chronicles 18-20. 

Lorna’s thoughts on “the bank” - Nov. 24/06

I was struck at the press gallery that gathered for the event that we feature on this week’s broadcast. The Global Micro Credit Summit seemed to have reporters eating out of it’s hand. The press conference with Nobel Prize winner Dr. Muhammed Yunus was like a bunch of kids sitting listening to a favorite grandma while she fed them fresh cookies. They just seemed to love a good news story.. We learned Dr.Yunus began his work without any strategy or business plan, he just gave 42 poor women in Bangladesh a total of $27 from his own pocket so they could get to work selling and making stools. Today, over $3.8 billion in loans like that have moved out of the Grameen Bank he started, and over 2.5 million families have started small businesses so they could feed and educate their children. I have personally met people deeply impacted by the grace that comes from micro credit. Please click here for some thoughts and photos of my trip I took with my daughter to Honduras with Opportunity International (O.I.) to see how micro credit changes people’s lives. It is beautiful. The Economist Magazine credits O.I. with giving the very first loan that started this banking revolution. That loan, like Dr. Yunus’ first loan, was just a simple move of compassion. Rev. Ross Clemenger, a missionary working in South America was sad to see pastors having to leave their church work to try and feed their families, so he just gave that first hand out via a small loan to one of them so the struggling pastor could start a small business. An O.I. executive once told me the mystery and frustration of trying to track the paper trail of a good man’s heart, he just kept on giving small loans until, well, here we are, the world’s press is calling it a banking revolution. Read about O.I. on our site this week. As the Bible says, “lend to the poor.”
I do believe good, kind tasks are available for all of us to do. It’s the way God made us. We feel better when we do them, and it’s God’s hope and design for the world, that we all get doing them. Here’s some of my favorite Bible motivation on that; Isaiah 68:6-11, Galatians 6:7-10. Spend yourself on someone else’s need, let God surprise you at what results follow. I know Rev. Clemenger and Dr. Yunus, pioneers of the micro credit revolution, would agree.

November 11, 2006  - Remembrance Day

There’s talk in Canada of trying to find a better way to create the Poppy Pins we all wear at this time.  People object to buying too many as they always fall off and get crushed under foot.  I saw this a new way this year.  There were many poppies on the ground, in stores, at Tim Hortons, being walked on.  But it spoke me about how I feel the nature of peace is – a trampled, beat up thing.  It spoke to me of  pain, of sacrifice, it may sound silly, but it reminded me again of the sacrifice of our veterans.  We are very sad for the latest 42 Canadian deaths in Afghanistan, a country which so desperately needs our military’s healing help.    Watch this link and think about that and join me in praying for our globe and it’s people.  This song was created by Terry Kelly in 1999 because of something he actually saw occur in a Shopper’s Drug Mart on Remembrance Day.  A selfish dad, unable to stop his shopping for two minutes of remembrance.   A Pittance of Time can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDw0SZL3CNY

Oct. 27 -- Back from visiting the Amish Tragedy in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania

The beautiful people we met helping the traumatized Amish families in Nickel Mines have left me with much work of the heart to do. Please watch our program this week and next for the story of forgiveness unfolding there. I’ll simply leave here some photos and quotes that I’m thinking about.

• Holding on to the lessons of history shapes the Amish heart – a spokesman for them says:

“Thousands of our fathers, mothers and children of all ages suffered a martyr’s death by hanging, drowning, beheading or being burned at the stake. These folks received no pity or love from the local authorities and harbored no hate or revenge toward the state church that did the slaying.

Those who could escape sailed on ships to America, they also brought along a forgiving heart which their forefathers had taught them through the Word of God. They practiced this forgiveness in America, and millions of Americans are descendants of these pious groups. How was this forgiveness lost, or how has it faded out among American citizens who say it is foreign?

We Amish do not wish to be recognized as a more forgiving church than any other denomination…..forgiveness cannot be bought or borrowed. It needs to be practiced and nurtured daily. It will not happen overnight. Those 10 Amish school girls were not taught to defend themselves ….they did recite the Lord’s Prayer every morning at school. Could it benefit to have this prayer restored in schools? We say thanks to the board of education to be granted the privilege to have our parochial schools.” Benuel Fisher

• Holding on to community shapes the ability to do the “right thing” – and it takes incredible determination and sacrifice of self to live in community that helps you be Christ-like.
• The ability to pour out one’s emotions is a needed for mental health:

“Repentance can never be over-emphasized in the church. Followers of Jesus need always to be repenting for their sins and wrongdoings …Had Charles Roberts IV understood the forgiveness and spiritual catharsis brought through repentance, he may not have been consumed by anguish, guilt and revenge over past sins.” Rev. Alexander Veronis, Annunciation Orthodox Church, Lancaster

• Forgiveness is a choice.

“In the past, I often said forgiveness often comes from information, from being able to better understand what happens and put it in a better light – and while I still believe that’s true – what the Amish have shown in this time is well beyond that – they are forgiving immediately and acting on that forgiveness – I think it’s very much how God does it – he just forgives – he gives us that grace, which is an incredible gift.”

Brad Aldrich, Family Resource Counseling Center, who facilitated meetings between the Amish victims and the Roberts family.

Oct 17/06: Traveling Lessons

  On Sunday my brother took me to the most interesting church I have been to in my memory, Fresh Wind Church of the Living Christ. A group of about 100 were meeting in a high school theatre in Abbotsford B.C., and dominating this very casual church were the sights and sounds of about 15 disabled people. They were very vocal and beautiful in their collection of wheelchairs and protective gear and some were part of the worship team. I watched as a worker went over to the open Communion table and brought the symbols of bread and wine, the broken body of Christ, to a mentally and physically handicapped man. Broken Body given to broken body ….it made me cry. I’d heartily endorse the writings of the pastor of this church -- www.bradjersak.com or www.freshwind.blogspot.com

How is it possible that family can be so much fun? On this western working trip I did have the chance to see my wonderful 20 year old son Adam in Calgary open an amazing gift: a 1600 piece quilt made for him by my talented sister. A beautiful gift of love and sacrifice, bonding our family. I enjoyed getting groceries and cooking up a meal for Adam and his friends, here they are singing …the quilt is in the middle.

Sept 30/06

So many things have happened lately there’s no way it will all fit in a blog. 
But two significant developments: 

• I love being a student again.  I’m finally finishing off a university degree, my Bachelor of Religious Education at Tyndale University College and Seminary and spending every spare hour and some work time doing homework.  It’s the best remedy for not losing your mind because your children have left your nest.   Perfect timing. 

    The class work is amazing, by Thursday I’ll be finished the first course in Christian History.  Everyone should take Christian History, its fascinating.  I’d like to share more on these studies in upcoming blogs, but for now I’m just trying to figure out how to juggle the class assignments. 

• I’m just back from a wonderful week in North Carolina where I had a retreat with a mentoring group I’m in out of the Billy Graham Center.  10 friends, our fourth year doing this together, it was so good.  We’re very intentional about growing each other, about growing our love for God in our lives and our work.  This was a real holy huddle. 

• I miss the kids a lot.  I’m so glad I left these studies until after they left.  The years being a mom who got to nurture hands on went very quick.  
  

On our show of Divorce Care this week, we hit a lot of deep spiritual questions about what to do with a hurting heart.  I’d encourage you to scroll down to the blog I have about the Anne Graham Lotz interview below – there’s some good advice there.    Or check out our 25th anniversary blog if your marriage needs repair, nothing is impossible with God.  

Sept 20/06 : When God Makes A Promise

     Our program this week focusing on the recent war between Lebanon and Israel brings us face to face with how God keep's His word.    The Bible passage of Genesis 16 launches the Arab nations of the world, you can read it again in Genesis 21 right near the same territory of the Bible where we read how the Jewish people find their origin in God, in Genesis 17 and beyond.  God used an angel to give a desperate single mother a message:  the child of Abraham she was carrying was part of God’s plans.  “You are now pregnant and will give birth to a son, you are to name him Ishmael, for the Lord has heard about your misery.  This son of yours will be a wild one – free and untamed as a wild donkey ! He will be against everyone, and everyone will be against him.  Yes, he will live at odds with the rest of his brothers.” 
    And that is the birth of the Arab peoples – Ishmael – meaning, “God hears.”    It was “misery” for this woman to be in a rejected pregnant state. God heard her pain, God promised the single mom Hagar dignity, “I will give you more descendants than you can count, (Genesis 16:10) ….for I will make a great nation from Ishmael’s descendants.”  (Genesis 21:18)
    So why must the Arab be at war with the Jew ? 
    Such mysteries are evidence only of the reality that God is far outside human understanding, but thank God for glimpses into the character of God that do anchor our world.   1.  It was God who created both Arab and Jewish nations   2.  God declared there would not be harmony between them.   3.  When a desperate woman cried out to God she was heard by God, and the Arab nation today is proof of that lonely woman’s cry for help.  
    It all comes from the “book of beginnings”, Genesis.  And here we sit, thousands of years later, writing and reading blogs, trying to figure out the mystery of God in our lives. 

Sept 17/06 : Listen Up's New Baby

     This is beautiful Brianna Jean Davis in the arms of her mother Gloria, and father Kyle.  For the past two years I have closely watched Gloria birth the administrative details of our TV ministry, she has also been my personal assistant, and there have been so many details and things she has knit together to make us work week after week.  To now step back and watch her birth her first baby leaves me almost beyond words.  It’s just remarkable, as we met Brianna in her new home I was overwhelmed at how God grows people.  I can think of no better home for little Brianna than the protective, gentle, diligent Kyle and caring, sensitive and nurturing Gloria.  This is truly a blessed family unit, the goodness of God is all over it.   It was quite a moment to hold this vulnerable new born Brianna.  Only hours earlier I had given a final hug to my own 18 year old daughter as I waved good bye to her at Toronto airport as she headed off to nine months in Europe.  Elise is off for adventures at the Capernwray Bible Schools in Germany and Sweden and I will miss her greatly.  The next morning I stood in the back of our church, watching pews of people in front of me, thinking of how completely out of my control and care our dear Elise was, and I was deeply thankful that the people of God, our church, have had such a huge part in raising her, and that now I had to release my daughter to the care of Christians around the world, some 2.3 billion that there are.  I thought too of little Brianna, a new girl getting the start of her parent’s close care and attention,  knowing Kyle and Gloria too would be relying on their church family to help them raise this beautiful miracle.   Jesus has such a special love for children.   

Sept 10/06 : Caledonia Land Dispute

I will not presume to understand the pain, anger, and tensions that are currently boiling close to our TV studio at the nearby Caledonia land dispute. At issue is who owns the land – Six Nations native people, or the descendants of white settlers? I have been listening to great people on both sides of the debate, I have read Pulitzer Prize winning historian Alan Taylor explain the story that goes back 245 years in his excellent history book, The Divided Ground. Caledonia and its Six Nations Reserve could become an area of bloodshed and renewed divide in Canada, or it could become a place of great healing for the problems facing aboriginal Canadians.

Here’s why I think the role of Christianity matters so much in this:

In the late 1700’s, wealthy British donors paid for Christian missionaries to bring the Gospel of Christ to Indians. Those arrangements appear to have had two goals – to convert the Indians to Christianity, and to convert them so they would be open to British settlement along their land.

While that’s better than just killing the Indians so British could have the land, that legacy has forever marked a mixed motive in how the message of Jesus Christ reached the Canada’s First Nations people. Despite our political interference of mixing up thirst for land with the message of Jesus, many First Nations people still embrace the pure message of Jesus to their tribe.

When I asked Mohawk Mavis Etienne if she had a problem that this message was carried by British people, white colonialists, she replied: “I have no problem with that – it helped me meet my Lord and Savior who’s the center of my universe.”

She can say that because Mavis has done much inner work of forgiveness, and has been peeling off the garbage that got put onto the Christian message by white governments and clergy who tried to force aboriginal assimilation into Canadian life. There are many aboriginals who think like Mavis does. Their ability to forgive Canadians, to embrace what Christ intends for them is beautiful and it shows in their life.

The worst example I know of how the church erred in its sacred message is the story of what happened in residential schools between 1920 and 1996. The schools are even older than that; I encourage you to read about them at www.wherearethechildren.ca

I dare not presume a “fix” for this, rather, the picture below shows me at an old residential school near Caledonia’s land dispute. Here on behalf of our Christian ministry at Listen Up TV, I’m praying for forgiveness for the sins my people have brought to aboriginal identity in Canada.

This is why the church must now be involved. Spiritual realities have been part of this dispute since day one, and we must now bring a wiser understanding of our spiritual hope to the situation. As was done at a recent interfaith service at Six Nations, we must pray for “A:se Tyotahsawen - A New Start” . As you read history of this great dispute, it always comes down to individuals who were assigned leadership. Deception and greed over the Haldimand Tract was among others, caused by a British official, Peter Hunter, who was described in 1805 by one of his peers as, “so great a Devil.” Chief Joseph Brant, who oversaw the dispute for Indian interests, eventually gave in to excessive drinking, disrespect for younger warriors, and a lack of self leadership. Today we are still reaping the effects of both those individuals. The Bible asks us to pray for our leaders “so it will go well for us.” So let us pray for the current political leaders in this historic dispute. For government negotiator Jane Stewart, for Chief David General and the elders of the Six Nations, for Janie Jamieson, for Premier Dalton McGivney, for Mayor Marie Trainer, for the Clan Mothers and Tribal Council, for the warriors on the barricade line, for Prime Minister Stephen Harper. “God keep our land, Glorious and Free.”

See Lorna’s related article in The Globe and Mail: Where The Church Might Help The State

September 3/06: Homesick for God?

I’ve been thinking deeply on our feature interview we air this week with Anne Graham Lotz.  Obviously I was attracted to this woman because she is the daughter of Dr. Billy Graham – the world’s most respected teller of the Christian story, an evangelist.  His daughter Anne is also an evangelist.  This career began for her not because she was his daughter, but because she was an overwhelmed young mother, feeling inadequate about what life was throwing her way, and she was “homesick for God.”   So she began to study the Bible, inviting others to do it with her.  30 years later she is filling stadiums helping people find God. 

Just yesterday I had been sitting at the grocery store having coffee with a friend who says she can’t find God, despite some effort, and her confusion makes my heart sad.  So I really mean it when I press into Anne with questions about spiritual discovery like I do on this week’s broadcast.   My friend cited a litany of messy problems and said, “so if there’s a God why does this happen …..?   It doesn’t make any sense.”   

When I asked Anne Graham Lotz a similar question, she said,  “People losing their faith are the ones watching at a distance.”  

Those are hard words, but she’s got a point.  In the past 15 years of asking people questions of spiritual discovery, I have covered a huge variety of people telling their crisis and life journey story.  In each and every case, where a situation seemed impossible, they have come with personal evidence of God loving them, comforting them, helping them through their crisis. They found it because they, like Anne when she was in her “homesick for God”  phase, they looked hard.  Stubbornly, persistent, and most important, in good sources.  The Bible, a bible preaching church, a bible believing friend.   

When I invited my friend to church with me, she said 90 minutes was too long to spend doing that each week.  I wince, because if our idea of God is small enough to fit into our time frames, than God isn’t big enough to be God.  Rather, discovering God will consume you.  A couple of suggestions to try: 

www.nowtrygod.org -  warning – it will take 20 minutes to think through the journey on this website.

www.jgmjtoronto.ca   - warning – it will take 2 days to do this– I want to invite you to come with me to the Toronto meetings with Anne Graham Lotz on September 29-30.  They are free, and yes, worth a plane ride to get there – totally.  Click on the Toronto button on the bottom of Anne’s home page link.  Write us if you have any questions on that, listenup@listenutpv.com 

www.cmacan.org  - warning – regular church attendance with one of the recommended churches here could change your life.  Click on the “looking for a local church” button on the top right of that page, this is not a comprehensive church listing, just a listing of the church group I belong to, and therefore I do trust every church I could recommend on that link. 

Bottom line, please do give yourself the time to understand the God who is inviting you into a relationship.  Through God’s son, Jesus Christ, the purpose of your life is waiting to be discovered.   God bless you – feel free to drop me a line with any questions or prayer requests – we handle them as our most important task.  listenup@listenuptv.com 

August 26/06:  Remembering a Disaster:

The human spirit is remarkable, and I’m deeply touched by the ability in our soul’s to persevere The worst disaster I have ever seen was to walk in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, a mind numbing destruction, one year ago.  I walked through Waveland, Mississippi where the eye of the hurricane traveled.  A huge tidal wave pushed in shore for five miles, destroying all but 65 homes in a town of 8,000.   Last week I talked again with Veronica Gill, whose home was destroyed, (scroll back a year on this blog for those photos and memories).  Not a piece of debris remains on her yard, rather, she has planted grass again, brought back hope, worked incredibly hard and her family lives in two FEMA trailers on their property. The new life of her growing lawn had strengthened her spirit, the beautiful green, even if construction couldn’t start.  No one there has yet to receive government money to rebuild, their insurance is useless as it was didn’t cover “tidal wave” – which is what the hurricane pushed in shore.  About 7 church groups have come through to help Veronica clean up, and it deeply encouraged her.   Pastor Don Young continues to recruit dozens of volunteers each week, in fact he still wants 100 people a week to come and help families like Veronica rebuild.    He’s a pastor from Genesis Church a state away, and has so much energy and hope that God wants him to mobilize hands, feet and hearts to show the love of Christ to those in trauma. Maybe God is inviting you to help them – check our home page for the link on how you can get involved in building your spirit while you help others still in need. 


August 19/06  - The Toronto AIDS 2006 Conference 

This week I felt what I imagined would be the cry of God.  I was in the magnificient St. James Cathedral of Toronto, in a packed out congregation of people gathered to plead with God for the crisis of AIDS in our world.  The service and choir was stunning.  The prayers solemn,  and I think you could feel God’s sorrow at the millions affected – 13 million orphaned children.  I was so saddened by it all, after I spoke to my young adult kids about the need for abstinence, the need for, as Bill Gates said as he opened last week’s AIDS 2006 conference,  for ABC; Abstinence, Be Faithful, and Condoms.  He was booed by the crowd for that free advice, but I agree with him. Let me quote from the Ecumenical Media Team at the conference, who reported that Rev. Gunnar Stalsett, former Bishop of Oslo and the Conference co chair, said “faith based ministries deliver the majority of AIDS care services …and we must be honest about the driving forces of the pandemic.  We need to say it is about sexuality, it is about drugs.”     Yes, that message goes with Christian compassion, and God can give us the insight, and strength to protect sexuality, it certainly does go counter culture.


     I read in an unsettling book that I began this week, MegaShift, by James Rutz, about miracles that appear to be happening all around the poorer countries in the world. The book claims that we are at a moment in history to experience amazing connections with God, connections that produce miracles.   I put the book down after a few hours of reading and just sat and wondered about miracles.  I did remember a few (there’s one at the very start of this blog,) and then I remembered what happened  just a few weeks ago, August 5/06.  Vern and I were in Winkler, Manitoba at the World Harvest for Kids.  It was pouring rain, a long awaited downpour for dry farming land.  It was the worst possible timing though as that day was to be the day to set a world record for harvesting wheat.  (For non farm folk reading, it has to be dry to harvest wheat.)  The event was a fundraiser for a great cause –http://www.worldharvestforkids.com.  This harvest-a-thon was to help sponsor children in the developing world to attend Christian camps, and everyone working on it was praying. They’d planned so much for this massive event. Somehow, that harvest field on the edge of town escaped the downpour.  It was dry enough to harvest, while all around it was wet.   It was a good reminder to ask God to get invovled in everything.   Here’s some photos from that amazing event.   

Fundraising Harvest in Winkler, Manitoba  – amazing that not only the field stayed dry following a downpour, but that 40,000 children have had the chance to go to Bible Camp in India because Winkler Bible Camp helped grow a dream of Children’s Camps International.  http://www.childrenscampsinternational.com/ray.html

I became a Christian at Winkler Bible Camp when I was 17,  and still have a deep heart of thanks to a camp cook, Audrey, and her husband Alf, who were my friends and a home away from home for me at a time when I was trying to find my way forward in life. This shot is me having a reunion with them in Winkler after almost 20 years of not seeing each other.  You never know what God will do with the seeds of love and kindness you plant into a young person’s life.  www.winklerbiblecamp.com


August  9, 2006  - Back From Vacation

There aren’t enough words to describe it. Its been a great holiday, and a wonderful rest. For the most part, I was “just” a mom and wife for the month of July and it was really good for me, and for my family. I baked a lot of desserts, did much more cleaning and fixing up than usual, read my favorites, gardened, scrapbooked, hosted friends on the deck for lunch, and agreed to my 18 year old daughter’s request to go wilderness canoing and camping. Our family had a blast at it. I think the pictures can tell the story. Our son has now moved back to Calgary, (ouch, we miss him), our daughter leaves next month for school in Europe (ouch) Its absoutely great to be back at work. Here’s a photo album of a few highlights from the joy of summer holidays.

Next week – watch for photos from a world record setting harvest event.


July 3/06  - Summer Holidays

It’s the start of my summer holidays – and I’m going offline for a month, unplugged. 

I am a passionate believer in the need to rest.  My best friend sends me emails with the subject line, “your schedule is exhausting” ….well,  I do like to run on high speed, but it is also equally true that I am passionate about breaks for rest and renewal.

It's interesting to me that the world was created with a mandatory weekly vacation day and when God established his yearly calendar, He punctuated it with additional times of rest and festivities.

In addition to weekly Sabbath or “soul breath,” as it means, the Bible directed God’s followers to take 20 days off a year for times of feast and festival.  Maybe that's why the yearning for vacation keeps resurfacing; it's a good gift designed into the very nature of who we are.

So I’m going on a break, and resting is a gift that I have no idea what's in the package until I unwrap it.

I’ve long valued some fascinating interviews I had with the director of the Canadian Stress Institute. After helping 300 of the world's leading employers reduce stress among their ranks, the Institute's director, Dr. Richard Earle, says vacation is about cutting the leash, or myriad of leashes that restrict our choice.  Sleep in, drive away, do nothing, the options for cutting the leash are endless.

Dr. Earle's advice; focus on what brings you satisfaction and you've begun the road to a vacation.  In his esteemed opinion, even the lowest of budget, or busiest of professions should be able to negotiate a holiday by analyzing what is it that gives you that satisfaction.  Once that's determined, make those ingredients happen - even if only for a day, an evening, and you're bound to emerge from the choice you've made, as a rested and satisfied person.

But it's not just the Canadian Stress Institute that's telling you to reach for freedom from work demands.  The first and original owner's manual for how to run human life has the requirement for rest in it's top ten.  The ten commandments of the Bible outline the need for Sabbath, roughly translated meaning, "soul breath". One day out of seven we are told to say "enough" and to simply stop our work for a revival of who we are.  Can you really let go and slide into a divine principle ?

And what delightful orders these are, direction that reflects God's loving heart for the people of His planet.

Have a great rest, and we’ll chat again in August – Lorna 


June 16, 2006 - some thoughts:

I recently went to visit a newsmaker who has been told he is dying of pancreatic cancer. Rev. Harry Lehotsky has transformed his corner of Winnipeg’s west end in the 20 years I’ve known him. A radical inner city pastor, who refused to retreat or take his family to a safer place, he’s been given a prognosis of only a few more weeks. His actions have been so full of God these past twenty years, he’s built inner city housing for the poor, a café, a theatre, a church, jobs, renovated 22 condemned homes and revitalized his community. Somewhat selfishly, I wanted to hear his words. and know what a godly man like him would want preserved for life on earth. He was clear – “keep a running conversation with your Saviour, and just do what needs to be done.” He’s fought the system, he’s run for politics, jogged daily with recovering addicts, cut his best friend down from a suicide ….preached, prayed, lived an amazing life. I pray for Harry, his wife and three fine young sons. I hope to write more on him and his story in the coming months. Let’s be like Harry – tender, but tough. Hard working but hope filled. Sacrificial and sensitive, practical and passionate, a deep lover of God and God’s wisdom and grace. Thank you Harry for being you !
The next while at home is full of changes. Vern has opened his new office as a Financial Advisor, Adam looks like he’s about to go back to Calgary to finish his schooling, and Elise graduates from grade 12 in the next short while. She’s doing great and has chosen to be in Germany and Sweden in fall for Bible school for a year, before she heads off to university. She recently took her first sky diving to celebrate being 18, it was quite the experience for us all.
Finally, those of you who read this blog regularly know we are all quite attached to our pet rabbit which had the run of our house. Last week she bit into a lamp cord and electrocuted herself severely, and we had to “put her down”. We’re all still sad about that.

June 10/06  -“Our Home on Native Land”

Yesterday I spent the day with our cameraman Dave covering the disputed land that Natives are occupying in Caledonia, Ontario. A fight that has been brewing since 1784 when the British gave the Haldimand Deed for 950,000 acres to the Six Nations Indians for being British allies during the American Revolution. A deal to also compensate for their millions of acres lost of original Six Nations land for their alliance with the British Crown. It is sin when authorities break their agreement and act like this boundary around native land does not exist. This area around the Grand River has continuously been developed by white settlements, and this is an enormously complex disagreement. Today the Six Nations have approximately 45,000 acres of their original deed. In 1995, Mohawk leaders filed over 70,000 court document for their claim of this area, and now in 2006, Caledonia’s expansion of 600 homes is one subdivision too many for the original owners of the land. The show home has been taken over by force and is headquarters for the native claimants.
  It is also sin when Natives grieved through 200 years of law breaking on this land claim, resort to violence to enforce their rights. Attempted murder, assault and theft are just some of the police charges natives face in this dispute.
  We listened to clergy from both sides, then spent the afternoon on the reserve, and with the opposing sides taping for a show. Its hard to believe this is Canada. The animosity and danger is close to a war zone. On our day in town, two cameraman were hospitalized, beaten by the Natives when we were there, over 10 OPP officers stood and watched, and as the mayor told me, “911 doesn’t work in our town any more. We have no protection.” Today though, charges are being aggressively pursued by the police, which is what’s needed, a return to law and order.
We need to pray for pastors in the area trying to minister Christ to this most complex situation. I can’t urge enough prayers for peace and healing to prevail, please pray.
  There are over 300 disputes like this across Canada – but Caledonia is the one being fought for them all. Over 100 Chiefs from across Canada came this week in solidarity with the occupation, and law breaking at Caledonia. The Baptist church caught in the disputed zone is hosting a prayer time outdoors June 25, 7 pm, bringing what in essence is neighbours who have become enemies together for prayer.

2 Chronicles 7:14 "If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land."

May 19/06 – Lorna on The Da Vinci Code

Obviously I don’t get out enough, because after reading reviews of the Da Vinci Code movie, I’ve concluded I must be the only person out there who actually thought the movie was exciting. I give it 3 star rating. A friend and I went expecting to be bored, instead we actually were on the edge, and the packed theatre broke into spontaneous applause as the movie ended. It’s not very sophisticated, it follows the book exactly, and it has several cheesy lines where Ron Howard tries to appease everyone from evangelicals to skeptics, but it’s a very easy to watch movie.

While shopping the next day, the clerk who I chatted with about it summed up why the book and the movie are so popular. “Its good somebody is challenging the one guy who wrote the Bible, its good to get a few other theories out there,” she said.

That sums up the success of the DaVinci Code. We’re looking for other stories because we don’t like what Christianity is, or we don’t know what it is. DVC (I’m so tired of saying it) teases our spiritual curiosities and requires no commitment. Christianity is quite different. It demands our entire life, mind, and body.

I’m a very happy Christian, but it’s not a belief that is convenient or natural to my disposition. Honestly, I believe in the reality of God, and that I can’t make up what God is, or is not. At times I fear God,(like now, trying to explain God on a blog), but 95 % of the time, I’m just in love with God. I work at this. I am more devoted to my inner life than I am to exercise or diet on my physical body. I study, reflect, pray, read and work through my Bible almost daily. I was actually hurt, wounded, by the lies about Christianity in DVC. The movie and the book left me sad. It’s blasphemy to treat God so cheaply, to treat the history of Christianity with such lies.

Contrary to what the sweet store clerk believed, “one guy” didn’t write the Bible. The message Jesus passed on to his disciples was carefully guarded and considered precious to his followers. Many suffered and died, bearing witness to this earth-shaking story. It’s quite clear that the words of Jesus were straightforward and well-preserved, albeit through a quite messy church. A very readable history book on all this that I’d recommend is The Story of Christianity by Justo L Gonzalez, / Harper Collins, 1984

Today I asked one of our broadcast team what was her “tipping point”, what was it that made her decide to become a Christian? She told me of a frustrated conversation she’d had with her ex husband, hanging up the phone and feeling like nothing she was trying was working.

She remembers physically shoving her hands across the table to the invisible God and saying, “Here, you take this life, I’m fed up with it”

She went to a neighborhood church the next Sunday, just walked in and felt like home.

(here’s a suggestion on finding a good church) http://www.cmacan.org/churchlocator.php

In the five years since, my friend has hardly missed a Sunday being taught in church. She went on to be a missionary, and now works full time with us and now serves on her church Board. She’s a very happy woman and a joy to work with.

I never cease to be amazed at the stories of how God draws people to His heart. Jesus loves each one of us, no matter what our story is.

There’s been countless stories trying to rewrite what God has had to say through Jesus Christ. Weird little fringe conspiracies like the DVC have never had the life changing power that the true message of Jesus Christ has in our world today.

“I am the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father except through me”

Jesus – John 14:6

April 27/06

I love surprises, and I’m still smiling about what happened in Woodstock and St. Stephen, New Brunswick last weekend.

Since I was invited to speak at the University Graduation of the amazing St. Stephen’s University, (www.ssu.ca) I was looking for a way to maximize the time away. A friend of a friend had told us Ian and Barbara in Woodstock, New Brunswick loved to throw “connecting parties”. So Listen Up TV made a call and asked them if they’d like to have one for me, to give me a chance to connect their church and town with our mission in television. Its one of the ways we fundraise. Presenting our TV project in a small question and answer setting, simply letting people know what we do, why, and how its paid for. We are gifted by people who want to see more of Jesus on TV, its not a market product. So you can imagine to have complete strangers open up their connections, their home, their friendships to you, is pretty amazing. Vern and I arrived to the nicest welcome we’ve had in a long time. A seafood feast, a great gathering of New Brunwick people and just plain friendship. Those lovely tourism ads you see about how wholesome and welcoming New Brunswick is are true.

Our hosts insisted we stay for night, and thank goodness we did. The road from Woodstock to St. Stephens is not like the eight lane freeways we’re used to in the Toronto area. Rather, we navigated through the forest in the early morning hours – arriving in St. Stephen by 9 a.m.  This is the town where the chocolate bar was invented. And this lovely yellow building you see here is actually where the Ganong family housed the first women who wrapped those chocolate bars. Visionaries who have a passion to educate university students with a Biblical worldview now own and use the building to give students an education in soul formation enroute to academic pursuits. I would really like to take a summer course there. We took our time getting to know students, board and faculty at St. Stephen’s, it’s a very precious jewel on the Canadian landscape. Character development, moral understanding, godly wisdom amid your academics. The students were passionate about their education. They have a student teacher ratio of about 10 to 1.

Because Vern loves to drive and conquer new territory, we took the long road back to the and drove through to Bar Harbor, Maine. It’s a beautiful resort town on the ocean. Just as pretty as the lovely St. Andrews, New Brunswick which was our last stop back enroute to the airport. We’ve been married 26 years, and this weekend away working together was one of our nicest dates ever. Think through the qualities in I Corinthians 13 – it’s a lifetime of work that’s worth persevering in.

April 20, 2006 -  Off to New Brunswick

I’ll just keep this short, the rabbit managed fine while we were gone, and the family reunion in Winnipeg was wonderful.  27 years with that group of in-laws and it just keeps improving, they are honestly the sweetest people.  I remember when Vern was thinking of marrying me, I told him I wasn’t nice enough to fit in with his family.  He laughed, we’ve worked it out. 
 
Vern and I are both rushing off now to go discover New Brunswick.   Friends of Listen Up are inviting us to share the vision of this TV work in Woodstock, and then on Saturday I’m speaking at Graduation at St. Stephen’s University.  It’s a fascinating school. http://www.ssu.ca/  I’m delighted we can do this.

Our program this week has a very special friend of mine as our feature guest – Diane Craig.  Be sure to learn her story.   


Easter 2006 - April 13/06

I feel very guilty this weekend.   This cute bunny, our pet rabbit Denny, is in his cage all weekend.  Yes,  we have this rabbit for a family pet.   It’s a source of great friction and joy in our home.   I think the rabbit should be socialized more, others think it should be protected more.  My husband thinks it should find a new home.  Denny is house trained, and is very emotional.  He has the run of the house for a few hours a day, he shakes his head at being scolded, he jumps and flips in the air when he’s happy.  He has yet to be outdoors, he’s seven months old, and if he has a choice to chew on fresh greens or cardboard, he usually picks cardboard.  He’s growing into a suburb rabbit, he doesn’t even recognize what should be his natural habitat.    He shouldn’t be in his cage all weekend.  But we are spending Easter at the Dueck Family Gathering in Winnipeg, and I have been overruled that someone can take care of this cute bunny better than his cage, so, the decision is to protect him in his cage – all alone, a Easter bunny, alone for Easter in our quiet house. So I feel guilty, I do, I feel poorly that we’re making this rabbit be in a cage.   


I don’t mean to make light of the subject of guilt, but, sometimes, you just have to deal with it.

That’s what we found out on the amazing show God directed our steps to.   Please click and watch online if you missed it. It’s the story of how a man, Mike Barre,  accidentally started a fire that burned down 75 homes, twice the hectares of Toronto, burned down the largest community employer,  and we tell the story of how Mike dealt with his guilt. 

He wasn’t a religious man, but he needed God and he sensed it.  Even though neighbors, (most of them) forgave him, he just felt rotten, ruined, broken.  Through the help of a wonderful Pentecostal Pastor  (the Reverend had breakfast with him weekly)  he did “therapy.”    Mike came to understand that Jesus provides a way for any person, no matter their wound of guilt, can come clean.  Can be a friend of God.   Check out more on this Christian process called salvation by looking through our website.  Melinda our web producer has been finding lots of great links for you to know the meaning of Easter, the spiritual significance of a relationship with God, and relief for guilt. 

Happy Easter  


Bibles and Kids -  April 7/06 

So many interesting things occurred this week.  Among them, the debate in Canada over should Bibles be offered to school children in Canada.  It consumed much of my week.  I think they should get the choice to have a Bible, you can see my Globe and Mail article on this.


You can also see a photo here from about ten years ago when we gave our children their first Bibles as an Easter gift.  It was one of our better ideas.  I am shocked that statistics by Gallup and others claim that 85 % of people leave their Christian faith between the ages of 18 – 30.  Something is going wrong in how kids have absorbed their faith that it can be so easily lost.   This week I also learned of the study in the great book Faith Begins at Home, by Mark Holmen, that shows over 85 % of youth claim their mothers were their most influential spiritual source, followed closely by their dads. 

It occurs to me that you can’t pass on what you don’t have yourself. It does not work to outsource spiritual teaching of our children.  Its good to augment it, but it has to be sincerely coming from our hearts.  Spilling out at our dinner tables, being heard in prayers daily with and for them.  I find it quite challenging to have my faith naturally flow out to my 18 and 19 year old kids, it was a lot easier when they were little and sat spell bound at everything I said.  (or so I remember )   As parents interested in teaching spiritual truth, we need to do as the Bible asks;  talk, walk, show in each and every circumstance why God matters to you and how you think of God.  

I love reading my Bible, its how I start my mornings.  I’m at the age now where most unchurched people I meet of my demographic are sincerely curious about having answers to their spiritual questions.  I’ve got a great connection with the people at the Gideons, the volunteer agency that gives away free Bibles in Canada.   Write to me at listenup@listenuptv.com and I can mail you one. 

Have a good week preparing your heart for Easter.  Lorna

March 23/04

A good use of memory

This week our program is very precious to me in that we get to air two hero’s of mine – Steve Saint and Erin Chapman. Watch online and find out why I think so highly of them, but bottom line, they are two amazing stories of complete tragedy being sifted through the hands of God. What they recall is God in and through the events, not abandonment, not bitterness, but God’s love and purpose when the face to face facts seem to shout pain.

In my personal meditation times this week, I was completing a chapter on “memory” in my Believing God study by Beth Moore. It was the best use I’ve had in a long while of how God uses our memory to speak to us. The exercise, which took about an hour a day for 5 days, was to divide my life into 5ths, and answer some questions. I so often only remember negative things when I’m asked to look back, I remember pain and hurt. This time, we were asked to remember what, if anything of God was in those chapters.

I’ve been smiling all week at the faithfulness of God as I answered questions like: Did anything remind you that there was a God during that time ? I had plenty of evidence.

On Monday this past week, our Listen Up Team retreated to Crieff Hills for a day of spiritual refreshing. We worked with the professionals at www.healingstreams.org and had a wonderful day of prayer, mediation, worship and making clay images of what we sensed going on in our hearts. Sounds weird I know, but it was deeply refreshing.

This weekend I head up to Beaverton to preach to a vibrant church there, and then on to Ottawa for two days of media training before I head back home.

Saturday March 18/06

A change is as good as a rest:

This week I had the blessing of choosing to work from my home all week.  Spring break – our daughter in her last year of highschool, meant I wanted to spend time with her so I took advantage of being able to set flexible work at home. She had a lot of homework to catch up on, so in lieu of any actual vacation, her and I decided to lunch at a different ethnic restaurant every day.  We had a really nice time together.

That’s my segue into the international theme of this week’s program.  I personally did not agree with our on air guests that Western business is selling out the value of championing human rights by doing work in China.  I think rather we should lobby they be accountable to use their business influence to step in and insist on change. Its easier to influence from within then outside.  

As for part two of the program – My African Dream – featuring the change in Bruce Wilkinson’s approach to Africa, well, I loved working on that part of the show.  Best selling author Bruce Wilkinson is a hero of mine. I was impressed when he moved to Africa to open ministry there. Naturally, having him unexpectedly leave Africa, sounding defeated (according to the Wall Street Journal) fascinated me.  What had gone wrong?  Canadians Ian and Janine Maxwell were chosen by Bruce to replace him on his project, renaming it Heart for Africa, and I know Janine as a personal friend.  So we’ve lunched together, I’ve heard much more than I can reveal, but let me conclude this:  Bruce is still a hero of mine.  There is no scandal, no huge loss, just a normal human being who heard what he believes is the whisper of God to “let it go Bruce, you’re finished here.”  Yes, it happened under the death of one of his dreams there, but so much good has been done and will continue – its just the early start of what’s underway.  Watch for more explanation in our interview with Ian and Janine.

I’ve read quite a few Bruce Wilkenson books.  The one I would recommend everybody read is Secrets of The Vine.  A very important look at John 15. 

This week I was also able to go to my favorite prayer chapel for solitude.  I used the time to reread my 2002 Journal and think through how God has been leading my steps.  The work of the Holy Spirit is to also be an “agent of remembering.”   (John 14:26)  We learn things about what to do next through remembering the past.


March 9/06 

Enjoyed my own small party in Calgary with my son and his university friends, they just visit so differently than you do at 40 plus.  You get far too uptight as you age, I’m not impressed.    I had a busy week taping our “Spring Break” show which analyzed the party culture around university life.  My other teen thought the views I brought home from that show were “on crack mom”  …..so, we’ll wait to see what the audience says.   Then I was off working on Anne Graham Lotz interviews as she launched her effort in Toronto, and presented her new book “I saw the Lord”.   Watch for my feature interview with Anne in an upcoming Listen Up.     

March 4/06  -  Lessons from the Road

It’s the season of learning and networking travel, and my apologies to the regular blog readers for how slack I’ve been at updating.   Last week I was learning in Ottawa at the Faith and Politics Conference, this weekend I’m learning in Calgary at the Leading Canadian Women Conference. 

My conclusions from both these events is the same;  there are battles to be won and we need to be far more strategic, goal and results oriented, and keenly committed to hearing the voice of Christ.   Coasting through life, just doing what comes our way, is not enough. God is calling us to engage the world we live in with courage, love, and a thoughtful, determined mind.  To be sharp, helpful, visionary, compassionate, sacrificial, collegial, and darn stubborn about not leaving our posts.  That people of God’s love and wisdom are deeply needed in this world.

So that’s what I’ve been learning lately.  Its one of the reasons why I feel good about airing a rerun on Listen Up this week, a very special rerun.  It is the one year anniversary of the deaths of four servants in Canada, four brave RCMP officers who were shot in the line of duty.  Dead because of sin.  I have visited with two of the parents of these officers, Colleen Myrol, and Rev. Don Schiemann.  Their stories about why their sons served Canada, to the point of being willing to lay down their lives, has stayed with me.  So too have their conclusions that we are a nation with deep social ills and inequities of justice that need correction.   These four officers were shot at Mayerthorpe, Alberta by an angry, marijuana grow operation owner, a man with multiple charges and convictions but uncured of his anger.  The grieving parents have since launched a justice campaign, asking Canada to strengthen law and order in our land.  The Globe and Mail concluded that their activism is about the only thing that’s changed on this tragic case in the 12 months since their deaths.  The questions and opinions Rev. Schiemann raises on Listen Up needed another hearing – its time to run the program on our Mounties again.

Time to run and go get some groceries here in Calgary.   My son who is at University here and his friends are coming to my hotel room to enjoy the pool here and have a party.  I feel old about this – but I want to just watch in amazement at the wonderful potential in the room of  youth who learn, who have dreams, who have a future in which to serve the world.  

Like you and I, God is calling us them engage the world we live in with courage, love, and a thoughtful, determined mind.  To be sharp, helpful, visionary, compassionate, sacrificial, collegial, and darn stubborn about not leaving our posts. People of God’s love and wisdom are deeply needed in this world, and we can just humbly ask God to equip us so we can walk into that need.   

Feb. 04/06 

I’m back at home on a rainy night after a longer than usual trip away, seven days in British Columbia, and it was a mind stretching, faith stretching trip in every sense of the experience. Perhaps what has surprised me most is the reality of God’s presence in the lives of people. People who had been strangers, who had been unknown, yet seven straight days of discovering the reality of God and God’s enormous creative love for a variety of lives as varied as is Creation itself. We are all loved by God, and every journey counts to God, and every step is an invitation to do it with God. You pack your bags up and travel as a “journalist”, and much to my surprise, I discover such a tangible reality of God wherever I look, its left me stunned, and delighted. Happier than I’ve been in some time that I walk out in a reality that God runs this world, I just relax. As I think of our program this week, “Surviving the City” - I realized what I learned in Vancouver and beyond these past seven days, was we can get through just about anything if we trust God to love us through people. God is using people to heal the city, the country, whatever. When you’ve been burned by people, that’s a hard lesson in trust, but it has to be learned.

For example - one of the miracles I witnessed while away was forgiveness. I interviewed Mike Barre, and several victims of an unfortunate accident Mike caused in the Mclure and Barriere area of BC in 2003. Mike has recently been convicted of setting a forestry area on fire in that district when he dropped a cigarette butt. It was a fire that covered twice the land mass of Toronto. That fire left 73 families homeless – most of them uninsured. And it left 180 families without a job as that fire also burned down the town’s largest employer. Watch for this complete story, “Forgiven through fire” as our Easter Special. It was like walking on holy ground interviewing a community filled with hope and forgiveness and the reality that Christ makes all things new.

Let me conclude with a short quote from a book that originated in the 1750’s – The Sacrament of the Present Moment. This quote is from the writings of Jean-Pierre De Caussade, a priest who was a spiritual director to nuns in France. As women do, the nuns saved the letters they got, and Kitty Muggeridge translated these old letters into a delightful book that one of God’s friends in B.C. gave to me. (Les Woller, check him out at www.leswoller.com) Here’s my closing thought as I unpack my suitcase from a memorable trip:

“O you who reach after perfection and are tempted to be discouraged by what you read about the lives of the saints …you who are daunted by exalted notions of perfection. It is for your consolation that God wishes me to write this. Know what you seem to be unaware of: that God in his mercy has made free everything which is necessary for human existence, such as air, water and earth. Nothing is more essential than breathing, sleeping, and eating, yet nothing is more available. In accordance with God’s commandment, love and faith are no less essential and common to our spiritual needs, and so the difficulties cannot be so great as we imagine.” Pg. 55, The Sacrament of the Present Moment by Jean-Pierre DeCaussade

Jan. 29/06 - Prayer for a new Canadian Government

Dear Lord,
Your Word tells us to pray for our government "so it will go well with us."
Lord, I feel I live in a country where it is already going so well for us. The morning after the election this week I baked a coffee cake for work, just to celebrate that we had excecised the gift of democracy, and peace and hope had marked the process. The country felt marvelous - it felt like we should have a party in the street. I thought too of my Member of Parliament, who had served my town for 12 years, and as a Liberal, Paddy Torsney had lost. I called her office, they sounded so sad. I pray you will comfort her and all the other MP's who served so hard and may be hurting that Canadians voted for change. I thought of my friend, Darrell Reid in Vancouver who ran hard to get his first attempt at public office, and lost. I pray for all who threw their heart and soul into making Canada a better place, but didn't get the victory they wanted. God, thank you for those kind of people in this land - huge, courageous hearts that they have. Grow those hearts in our land. Our system shines as a star as I worry over headlines of Hamas victory in Palestine - a campaign whose attack ads contained actual footage of suicide bombs wrapped about the waist of their followers. Elected by the will of a people ?
We do pray God for things to go well in Canada. We pray for a country where our Prime Minister is mentally, physcially, and spiritually strong in the wisdom You provide. For the vulnerable and weak to be cared for with compassion. We pray for the ideologies that shape our future to be aligned with your heart God. We pray for each member of Parliament and the Public Service, for their families, their health and their well being. Thank you for this land, glorious and free.

Amen

I'm writing from Vancouver this week, busy at Mission Fest, Kelowna, speaking on media and the Message, shooting up in Barriere BC on an amazing story of forgiveness to a man who accidently set a fire that burned down 68 homes an the town's largest employer. There is no crisis that God is not able to interrupt and heal.


Dec. 23/05 - Lorna’s take on “Longing for Belonging”

My kids have me wrapped around their finger. They just edited out what I wanted to say about them, (family can be sensitive eh ?) they’re19 and 17 and I’m going to enjoy them immensely this Christmas. I’m taking the week off just going to cook and visit. My brother and sister in law and their three kids are flying in on Christmas Day, the first time in 12 years we’ve had family company stay with us for this holiday. As you’ll see on the Christmas show, this week family issues dominate our hearts. In the emotion of our taping, I said on the show I’d share my birth story on this blog, and then I got thinking, “I can’t do that ….its so complicated, so many people could get hurt feelings, etc. etc. its not a story for the internet” ……I do tell it often, but I’m not quite up to posting it on the web. Let me conclude this though, if you think God has forgotten you and you are one of the throw away kids who has no place to belong, hang on. God wants to move in and love you. I say this from personal experience, I know it, I’ve lived it. Try this; push back your chair and say, “okay God, I’m ready, can you please love me”. Pray it often, and listen to what begins in your heart, and even write out your thoughts. Our prayers in putting the show out this week were that you could discover that whatever your family wound is, God wants to heal it. It was a miracle on the show taping, all four of us speaking were crisis pregnancies, unwanted, and left at state care. All of us found love, God took care of all us, even when it didn’t feel like it, God was working all the time. Don’t be afraid of adoption – of giving up your crisis pregnancy to the big purposes of God, or of taking one of the many children in care, (even though the red tape is immense), of persevering through the forgiveness and healing you may need for the family issues in your history.

You may feel like you are a stranger to us as you read this site – but you are close in our hearts, I’ve been praying for you, our whole team has been praying for you. Feel free to write us your story, listenup@listenuptv.com we’ll answer you early in the New Year. Merry Christmas friend, Merry Christmas.


Dec. 10/05  -   Lorna’s take on spending less 

It is hard to say no to our own insecurities.   This week has been a whirlwind including getting the Questioning Consumerism program to air, a show that made me personally evaluate my spending habits, especially at Christmas.  I just finished dunking some pretzels in chocolate for home made gift giving, and finished off two wreaths I’ve made as gifts from a huge pine bough that crashed in the back yard off our tree. I worry my friends will think this is cheap and corny that I’m doing homemade gifts.  (trust me, at my schedule, these do not have the Martha Stewart wow appeal)  But frankly, it’s a victory for me personally to say, no, its better to spend less.  Like I wrote in the wrap on the program this week, for me, these spending things hit me on my hang ups about my image.  For some people, that’s no big deal, they are secure, confident, certain they don’t need to impress anyone or be accepted anywhere.  I think some of us struggle more with that issue because its part of God’s way of stirring up our attention.  It reminds me of Psalm 139.    BibleGateway.com - Passage Lookup: Psalm 139    About 17 years ago, I started reading that Psalm “religiously”.    I read it dozens and dozens of times, I explored it theologicially and journalistically,  I wrote about it in my diary, I cried through it, I prayed through it.   It was a walk with God that changed my life.    I still read it very regularly.  If my life is about being known by God every day, as Psalm 139 claims, then life here is about being in a relationship with God first.  I don’t think we consume God, rather, we are consumed by God.  Our image and identity invaded by God.  Check out Psalm 139, it’s good.

Dec 1 - Narnia:

I’m trying furiously to get all my work done and a day off this week so I can stay home and decorate the house.   Even if the work doesn’t get done, I’m doing it anyway.  Christmas has a mystery in it that brings great peace and its very easy for working career moms like me to ruin it.   I must guard against that and devote time to pulling out of the ratrace and be a home – maker about Christmas.  Speaking of mystery,  I’m excited about our program this week on Narnia, the new movie.   
    The CS Lewis books have always been a favorite of mine.   What I love on our program is the Lewis scholar interview.  On why explore children’s tales when it comes to Christianity, Dr. Gerry Root says:   “image is so strong and powerful it somehow it breaks through and communicates to us in ways that maybe propositional language won’t …..we feel our way through the story ……as a matter of fact Lewis believed most people reject spiritual truth not by virtue of reason but by virtue of emotion……he believed it’s as though we have dragons standing sentry over our hearts and the story can pierce past those watchful dragons and can move us most deeply if we have ever attempted to fix our own lapses we are deeply moved by what has occurred.” 
 (see our full transcript of his interview with Dr. Lon Allison at the weekly page)
I experienced abit of the dragons this week in the letters to the editor on my article in the Globe – ouch.   Goes with the territory, a lot easier than the territory of 2 Corinthians 4.

Nov 27 - Faith Based Election Activism:

The rumblings are louder than I’ve heard before, veteran faith activists and observers say they’ve never seen anything like it, and political money and machinery have moved into motivating what once was Canada’s silent Christian majority. Five years ago this crowd was heaped with mockery and derision in the electoral process and they’ve been learning ever since. After a plethora of alternative media messaging, millions of web downloads, hundreds of rallies, targeted ridings and full page ads later, its safe to say the sleeping giant is wide awake this election.

In looking for a common theme on what’s tripped Bible believing Canadians into activism, the only thing you can conclude for certain is that people of faith all have a vote and they will use it. Globe and Mail columnist Lawrence Martin wrote that the Liberals will bait the ideology trap, thinking right wing values will implode the Conservatives, but in fact, faith based ideology is hitting all three of our political parties. Most election issues have moral implications and if you hope to integrate a theology of a perfect God with the imperfect process of politics, you can’t assume the vote will fall either left or right.

Consider the mess that’s brewing over at the NDP where they’ve put forward the need for a Faith and Justice Caucus. Some there have concluded that faith based political activism is being ignored at their peril. When there’s a 21 % increase in the use of Ontario’s food banks, that’s a bread and butter Christian concern and the NDP knows its social justice platform has an audience in the church. This is the same church crowd that is actively campaigning against NDP members because of their votes on the same-sex marriage bill.

Fiscal policies wade through the same quagmire. While the Prime Minister and aboriginal leaders gathered in Kelowna on the moral issues facing the native summit, Liberals were running a deficit with the locals. The small city is overwhelmed with the problem of drug addicts roaming their streets. At the Christian agency of New Opportunities for Women, their 30 bed shelter turned away more than 400 women on Kelowna streets in just the previous month alone. Meanwhile, a Christian employer in Kelowna who put millions into charitable endeavors complained economic growth is getting impossible because no one wants to work anymore and considers shutting down his business. He’s says he’s tired of contributing to a tax base in a country that in his mind is going to hell in a handbasket.

In Richmond, BC a faith based conservative candidate, Darrell Reid, formerly of Focus on the Family, is trying to unseat Liberal Raymond Chan. If marriage was a hot issue in this riding, he’s finding more concern now on keeping the public safe from the growing crisis with law and order. An ecstasy drug lab recently busted in the riding had enough chemicals inside to blow up a city block.

How will faith based activism influence these campaign issues, and will the big issue of same sex marriage shape the upcoming election ? All part of the landscape as Canadians pray, “God, keep our land, glorious and free.”

I’m writing more on this for publication at commentary for the Globe and Mail this week – there must be a better way to break the fear factor that Christian activism in politics is a harmful thing.

Nov 18/05 -- Intelligent Design

Perhaps proof of God is the just the sheer argument amongst humanity that continues over God’s existence.  God is not so easy to dismiss.  The legal wrangle over Intelligent Design, the fear that such science might introduce the Divine,  these are mysteries well worth taking a deeper look at.  Our producer Susan Ponting has done a great work this week making her way through the landmine of discussions on this, and check out the resources on our home page links on this.  

If I need evidence of God,  I’m just looking at my life.   In my life I can see what the Bible describes in Romans 1:19   “For the truth about God is known to them instinctively.  God has put this knowledge in their hearts.  From the time the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky and all that God made.  They can clearly see his invisible qualities –his eternal power and divine nature.  So they have no excuse whatsoever for not knowing God.”    

Knowing God begins with a heart that says  “show me, God, I want to know you”  - and then the next step is reading God’s letter, the Bible.   Any questions on that, drop me a line, I’d be happy to reply.
ldueck@listenuptv.com

Nov. 3/05    Lorna’s take on Our Jobs:

Did you hear that incredible French quote this week from our current Prime Minister, Paul Martin ?  He said that a legacy he lives with from working with his former boss, previous Prime Minister Jean Chretein, is painful stomach ulcers.  It was a biting moment as our government reels from the Gomery Inquiry and a $300 million dollar scandal in the Liberal Party.  

One more illustration of how stressful our jobs can be.  This week, Listen Up TV examines “Labour Pains” – the tensions of Unions and agreements between employers and employees.

I’ve only been part of a labour union once, it was the federal government employee’s union, CUPE.  I had left broadcasting because I found it poor paying and too hard a job, and had taken a comfortable administration post.   I liked my Union, it gave me all kinds of security, and while I was waiting for a job transfer, God interrupted me.  This is a true story; I was praying, on my knees, (unusual at that time), asking God to lead me.  Clear as a bell I heard a voice tell me to go apply at a TV station in that city.  I phoned the TV station immediately, and surprisingly, the news director had just had an employee quit and told me to come over.  I had no experience in television, just in radio.  At the end of the a two hour interview, he walked down to his program manager and said,  “I just hired a Bible thumper.”

That was 20 years ago, and God has continually gotten into my mind and heart about my work ever since.  Interesting that after creating the world, God’s first gift to humanity was work.   So why, when humanity chose to sin, did God make work part of the first curse, the first punishment?  We’ve been fighting to be happy at work ever since. 

My theory about my work is to keep going back to the ideal and avoid the curse.  So I examine the perfect character of God and measure how I’m doing at work based on who I know God to be.  This is my journalist’s approach (not a theologian) to what I’ve discovered about who God is.  Apply these qualities below and ask yourself if they are active in you and your workplace.  Please take a minute to do the survey.  If you or your employer scores less than 10, I’d recommend you get a new job.

On a scale of 0 to 5 (zero being not at all; five being very high), rate yourself and your employer in light of the characteristics of God

God's Character	My Score	My Employer's Score
Love
Joy
Peace
Patience
Kindness
Goodness
Gentleness
Self Control
Strength
Justice
Mercy
Forgiveness

 

Please click on the link below to do a short, two-question survey.  See how you and your employer rated.

Click here to take survey

Oct 21 --   Lorna’s take on Marijuana

Last week I had an interesting trip to British Columbia, watching women interact with God’s invitation to their life.   I was at Camp Stillwood at beautiful Cultus Lake, where about 250 of us gathered to learn together from the Bible, specifically, from the last words Jesus taught in John 15.   I spoke and interviewed on the truth that God wants us to be connected to Him, growing in love, and reaching out to the world.

I also had a good time freaking myself out riding a 30 foot zip line through the woods.    We laughed, ate well, prayed, and thought deeply about our walks with God.  What does it mean for a woman to give her heart to God ?    A huge discovery of surrender, and peace.  Of letting go, of finding life.   

While there I interviewed a single mom who has had a remarkable turn around in finding purpose and healing with God.   She had been addicted to marijuana for seven years, and marijuana was a huge obstacle for her.   I have been repeatedly told that weed is not addictive, but I just keep running into life that has a different story. 

On the flight home, a young woman beside me asked me what I did, and the talk turned to our topic of this week’s program, marijuana reform.   She had once been a weed smoker herself, a former national athlete, and now was deeply concerned for her brother, whom she described as addicted to marijuana and said it was ruining his life.  

She explained that marijuana use was about “checking out”,  avoiding what life has – trying to find a way to avoid reality, and just relax.  “Stoned”  she said, “is just like it means – you want to be a stone, to not feel or think.”     

It reminded me of the story where Jesus said to a woman getting water,  “if you knew me, you would never be thirsty again.”      Think about that.    Jesus is inviting us to know Him so well, that He meets our longings.    We won’t ache to be stoned to reality, or to fill ourselves up with any thing else.   Not with marijuana, not with compulsions, lies, things, shopping, food, relationships, work ….all the ways we seek to hide or escape.   Jesus asks rather that we take Him into our longings and start there, start with Jesus, rather than whatever else it is we reach for.     

I begin with an honest prayer;   “Jesus,  I need you.  Jesus, I accept that you want to be number one of everything in my life.   Take over Jesus.”   

If you want to talk more on this – drop me a line at ldueck@listenutpv.com 

Thanksgiving Thoughts 2005: 


I’ll narrow my thankful thoughts to the most recent things going on in my life.  I am thankful for:     

Thankful that the Bible speaks to teenagers – a group is gathered behind a closed door in my house doing their own thing with it while I write today.   No mothers are welcome.  Thank you God that you speak to teenagers through the Bible.  

Thankful for home office flexibility.

Thankful for an amazing production and administration team.  I’ll cry if I say anything more. 

Thankful for travel to see what God is doing in lives other than mine.  I’m recently back from Los Angeles where I met with my small group for intensive mentoring.  This is a gift led by the Billy Graham Center, all of us in the group lead Christian organizations from areas all around the world, there are nine of us in this group of soul friends.  It renewed me.  It gave me a reminder again that God is real and far bigger and smarter than I’ll ever understand. 

Thankful for the internet – this blog helped reunite some lost friends due to Hurricane Katrina, and is helping others pour generosity toward them.

Thankful I sleep so well.   Thankful I have time to exercise regularly.

Thankful for newspapers.   

Thankful for my clothing and hair sponsors.  They are the best – Munroe’s and Village Salon in Islington Village of Toronto  -  thank you.  

Thankful I get to ask for money on behalf of the poor this week on our special project, the Christian Blind Mission. 

Thankful I will be able to cook and have people over for a big meal. 

Thankful that I am deeply loved by God and that what God wants most is to be in relationship with each one of us.   

Saturday September 23, 2005

Fatigue is already setting in. Fatigue from the reality that hurricane victims are going to need our help. I can see it happening here in Canada and across North America, I saw it on the plane as I flew home from the disaster and I fear people really aren’t going to care for their neighbors long term. Incredible how we watch it like a reality show, we love the dramatic pictures and tensions of “will they make it, will they not?” but is that all?

8 year old Gabrielle Gill wonders how the family will build their destroyed home in Waveland, Mississippi. Photo courtesy Deb Dennis

The purpose for being able to see each other in a crisis is not voyeurism, it is for neighborliness. “If we could harness the spark of love and what it can do, we would once again discover something as valuable as fire” – is something I read recently.

Katrina and Rita victims need prayer for grace and patience. That they will be able to wait and endure while the aid comes their way, the rebuilding is so mammoth. We need to pray grace that the rest of us will live in a 2 Corinthians 9 way to help these people.

I hope I can meet some of you at our Katrina Benefit Concert on Oct. 2 in Burlington – for the rest – check out how you can be part of helping the church bring Jesus’ love to those that need it in hurricane recovery. 

Hope needs to be restored one family at a time. The photo below is what remains of the home of a special family I’m concerned about as they recover from Katrina. Veronica, Greg, David, Alex, Gabrielle and Gregory Gill have so much rebuilding to do. Pray for them and the many thousands like them.

Pray for the Gill Family as they start over, for patience, strength, grace and love.. Photo courtesy Deb Dennis

Saturday September 17, 2005

My trip to Waveleand, Mississippi, a community which took the brunt of Hurricane Katrina’s force, is fresh in my mind. In twenty years of reporting I have never seen such dramatic spiritual activity underway. Here’s a photo of Brian Mollere, we’ll feature his remarkable survival story and my trip on the Sept 25th program week.

Pastor Jimmy (left) and Rev. Don Young pray for Brian Mollere (center), a Waveland, Mississippi resident who rode out Hurricane Katrina, surviving a 30 foot storm surge that destroyed his home as he was hiding in it. Photo courtesy Deb Dennis

Veronica and her family will also be featured – just one of the many thousands left without homes.

Veronica Gill explaining to me her family's loss in Katrina. Photo courtesy Deb Dennis

What is going on when Pastors pray for Brian like they’re doing ? I haven’t stopped praying for Veronica, her needs break my heart.
Who are we praying to and why ?
On this week’s (Sept 18th) Listen Up program we explored that. How do you know your religion is good and true and worthy of your hopes and trust ?
Truth and experience is how I’ve decided to stake my claim on Jesus Christ. Journalistically, it helps me to know Christianity is not some flaky system I’m just pulling out to feel good. “Scriptures”, or the Bible I sit and read most every day has two credible parts:
Old - It describes the reality that God wants a relationship with people and is preparing a way to get right to our hearts and minds. Written over a period of 1500 years from a wide range of cultures, it contains stories of people exploring God.
New - I’ll agree that this portion of the Bible is the most influential book in the world, translated into more languages and read by more people than any other book. It begins with eye witness accounts of Jesus. And the New Testament is about Jesus – the Old scriptures point to Jesus, the New makes it specific. Jesus is the Son of God who will live in our inner core, our mind and heart, and bring God into our lives.
For more on this, check out some links to spiritual help at churches we like at www.listenuptv.com/meaning.shtml
Experience -- I cannot deny that praying personally to Jesus, just throwing up my broken heart, my needy self and saying, “Jesus, I need you” has changed my life. I first did this about 30 years ago, and find myself doing it almost every day. I describe myself now as an “evangelical Christian” . It means I pray to live a Jesus –centered life, I read my Bible and attend a Bible teaching church.
(www.cmacan.org is my church group, www.cmalliance.org for our U.S. friends)
My son tells me to keep my blogs shorter, “blogging is a quick hit thing mom”. Exploring Jesus Christ is not a short journey, its not a quick hit to do it right. I’m so deeply thankful for Jesus’ patient, gentle chase on my life and his deep love. Write me if you want to talk more about this. ldueck@listenuptv.com

Saturday September 10, 2005

Seven days ago we begin to pray, Lord, how can we cover Katrina and the crisis of the suffering ? Nothing is on our docket ...... God moves in. Susan, Mel and Karen pull together the most amazing broadcast in 24 hours and less. Darren goes into time warp on editing - Sunday's show is done. Christine gets a benefit concert booked and publicized. Our Board Chairman, Franklin, gets on the phone on our behalf, moves his connections in the U.S. and I find myself all expenses paid leaving with a two person crew for Mississipi tomorrow to be able to partner with churches helping care for the crisis in Waveland, Mississipi. Wow, this has gone so fast. Just a personal proof that God cares about the suffering and moves agents and resources in to help them.

Wednesday August 31, 2005

What would I do if ……. ? If New Orleans were my home ? The devastation I’m watching on the news is causing me to pray into how can Listen Up cover that story in a way that will help those in need. Stunning loss, utter brokenness and despair and such a mammoth cleanup, oh Lord, you are really needed in Mississippi now. I liked reading of the lady from Slidell, LA, who was trapped in her home, in her wheelchair who prayed, “ ‘God, I can’t believe you’re ready for me now. Don’t let me die in this water here by myself.’” The report from Cox News Service as printed on the front page of the Globe and Mail said she climbed from her wheelchair onto her small kitchen table and “Miraculously, the water stopped rising just as it reached the top of the table.” The entire Hurricane Katrina tragedy is a sad reality of the vulnerabilities of the human experience. It reminds of something I learned while covering the story of Christians who faced dramatic fears for their life – one time I heard this while reporting in Sierra Leone, the other time in Cuba, in both cases, people facing death have told me how they shouted out to God a desperate plea of Psalm 91 . They shouted at God this Psalm as a prayer ….”This I declare of the Lord: He alone is my refuge, my place of safety; he is my God, and I am trusting him. For he will rescue you from every trap ….” It’s a great Psalm to tuck into memory.

So what would I do if it was me ? I would shout this Psalm at God just to survive the incredible mental stress such a tragedy must be. I hope I would anyhow. One thing I’ve noticed in interviewing people in stress – taking God at His word to have a thankful spirit does produce amazing results in people’s ability to persevere. This sounds so harsh, but it is a fact I’ve seen time and time again. It reminds me of how a few weeks ago when I was at the Willow Creek Leadership Summit I was listening to the founder of Project Hope in Detroit tell us how she reacted when a hurricane wiped out $18 million of her life’s work and devastated thousands. She had said to God, “get in the car, we’re going for a drive.” And she let it all out …… God gave her what she needed to rebuild.

In other thoughts about Katrina’s devastation, in a few weeks, it will be time to volunteer in labor and help. This link attached, Mennonite Disaster Service, is a great agency my husband and his family have volunteered with, you go for a short time – even a week, and work hard to shovel hope back into a victim’s life. Check it out.

In other thoughts, it’s the last day of August, what a great summer it has been. This week I’m in some of the final stages of taking two independent kids shopping for back to school, tagging along with my credit card really, feeling sorry for myself that its time to let Adam go back to Calgary for a second year, and our daughter is counting only 302 days until she too gets to leave home. The years have gone so fast. Guess I better use that credit card for a Katrina donation instead.”