Tracy's Blog

Yesterday we celebrated Pentecost - the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the Church visible as tongues of fire.  I thought I would change my blog look since we are in a new season of the Church Year (Ordinary Time, I think it is called) and I used a picture that Noah took tonight.  It was a beautiful sunset and I thought that the colours were suitable for speaking about fire. Isn't it interesting that when you pass a flame from one candle to another, the flame from the first candle isn't diminished?  It was Abigail who pointed this out to me during Earth Hour on March 23rd.  I thought, "That is such a good insight.... and it applies to the Holy Spirit."  When the Spirit is passed on from one person to another through the use of the gifts God has given us, the Spirit in us doesn't somehow become less.  Just as a flame doesn't die when shared, the life of the Spirit isn't snuffed out when we give God's love, grace, encouragement, exhortation, healin...

"Spring is not a season!” Timmy announced from the back seat of our car. “Why?” I asked him. He thought that there were really only two seasons: Winter and Summer. I tried to explain to him that Spring was the season of transition between Winter to Summer and that there were things that it had things that were particular to it... crocuses for example. Well, my explanation didn't seem to impact him as a week or two later, he made the same announcement. Now, it is interesting to note that he said this back when the calendar said “Spring” but there was still plenty of snow on the ground and here we are a few weeks later with the snow melting almost overnight and temperatures in the 20's. How am I to convince him now? I'm encouraging him to look at the trees which are just starting to bud. They have to go through the growth of Spring before they are ready for the fruitfulness of summer. Timmy's pronouncement got me thinking about the need for “spring-like” ...

I've been busy working on some projects with our local women's shelter these past couple of weeks.  And somewhere in that busyness, I started losing my perspective.  Human error were irritating to me and if the mistake was mine, anger and shame would quickly follow.  Obviously, I was not walking in God's grace and this needed to change.  Then I had a very interesting day.  It was two weeks ago today - Wednesday, April 24th.  Although I didn't realize it at the start of the day, it was my day to choose between shame or grace.  Between viewing life with judgemental, harsh eyes or with God's perspective towards us - unmerited favour. Three things happened that day.... First.  In the morning, I went to the church that I had organized an event at the day before.  I was quickly running to get something that my boss had forgotten and I realized that there were women washing the floor of the hall.  I chatted with them and realized that ...