A few weeks ago I read Bruce Waltke's book Finding the Will of God: A Pagan Notion?. In it, Waltke examines the rather superstitious ways that modern Christians in America tend to try and find God's will for their lives ... or at least find ways to justify what they already want to do as "God's will". He then contrasts that with the ways that the Bible gives for knowing God and what he desires from and for us. It's a really good book, and opened my eyes to a few ways in which I'd been soothsaying rather than actually listening to God.
I also inspired me to find superstitious reasons for the calling I feel to share the Gospel in St. John's, in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. Looking back it's all so clear how God was giving me signs my whole life!
1. I'd rather be cold and wet than hot and sticky.
If you hate hot, humid weather, Alabama's a miserable place to grow up. I've always liked the cold, which I'm sure was God in his infinite wisdom preparing me for my calling. How else would a boy raised in Alabama and Florida come to hate anything over 70F? Precipitation is nice, too, and St. John's is the wettest/snowiest/foggiest/best-if-you-have-gills major city in Canada.
2. I attended a college where hockey was a varsity sport, but football wasn't.
In Alabama, a college without football is like a Wal-Mart that doesn't sell beer and ammunition: there's just no good reason for it to be there at all. Despite this, I spent two semesters at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, where everybody did Space Math and guys who weren't good enough to play hockey up north got full scholarships to lose games down here. As a member of the school band, I attended a dozen or so hockey games, which is a dozen or so more than the number of college football games I've been to. Clearly, this is a sign that I'm destined for a place where hockey is king and football but a distant rumo(u)r.
3. The metric system makes more sense.
Sorry, but it's true. We should decimalize everything, including the orbit of the earth so that years, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, and seconds are all based on powers of ten. This doesn't make me very popular here, but I bet it'd go over great in a place that alrwady sells gas by the liter ... or "litre".
4. I look good in a beard and a heavy coat.
Actually, I've found that the more I cover up, the better I look. Everyone says so. Here, though, I look like a fool all bundled up, especially after the heatstroke kicks in. No one looks cool with heatstroke, but no one gets heatstroke in Newfoundland.
I'm sure you can see the irrefutable evidence just as clearly as I can. There are other signs as well, of course. My wife hates snakes, and there are no snakes native to Newfoundland. My kids like speaking in weird accents, as does everyone in Canada, apparently. I love Rocky and Bullwinkle, and the whole province is lousy with moose and squirrels.
Honestly, you'd be a fool to ignore the signs. All that's left is to decide how much money you want to send me for the Lord's work every month, right?
Too funny! A few comments:
ReplyDeleteYou get lots of great points here for starting the conversion in your spelling! And for knowing about the cold damp weather in St. John's (you can have it!)
You're right about the metric system. We weren't metric when I was growing up, so I speak as one thoroughly familiar with both systems, and it's definitely metric all the way! (Although before we were metric, we still had a bigger gallon than you! Ours was 4.54 litres and yours is 3.79, I believe.) (Spellcheck is telling me I just spelled 'litres' wrong!:)
Oh, and be prepared that all WalMarts up here are like colleges with no football. No beer or ammo to be found . . .
Thanks for the early morning grin!