Hammers and Nails...

Our house is slowly shaping up - it feels like we've been working on it forever! Anyways, here's some new pictures, taken just yesterday:

Looking from the kitchen into the dining room (of course, because there's no walls, you can see into the master closet & bath)...


The master bedroom, already partly insulated!


The "workshop" also known as the living room...


The new garden doors to the very large deck - it's going to be awesome in the summer!


...and this is our pile of maple flooring. We bought it at a flooring auction they had in town - it's basically the same stuff that's already on the floor - which is incredibly hard to find at a cheap price. We were pretty excited!

AND, we have some pictures from Matt & Scarlett's wedding on the July long weekend. It was in Chase, BC, and it was absolutely beautiful:




We will post some more under the "photos" sidebar on this page soon...

Love and Nonresistance

"The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.
"Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it. (Matthew 13:44-46)

The sermon at church today was based on the above 2 parables. This is an incredibly challenging teaching of Jesus! It's hard to even understand the huge implications of it. The men sold EVERYthing they had to by the treasure they had found. Think of the man with the pearls. He had probably been a merchant for a long time, collecting many many valuable pearls in his travels. Then he finds this ONE pearl that is so valuable that he gives up ALL of the other pearls he had found just so he could buy it. This goes so completely against our society - why would he want only one pearl when he could have many others?

Garth really challenged us to search our hearts on this issue. Do we truly value Jesus and the Kingdom of Heaven above everything else? That means above our posessions, above our relationships, above our reputations... Imagine what the world would look like every Christian truly believed this teaching and practiced it!

Sigh. Speaking of values, the escalation of violence in Israel and the reports in the news of so many Canadian soldiers and civilians killed in the middle east makes me so sad. I really don't get it - will we never learn from the past?. I'll leave you with this:

and this: http://www.mbconf.ca/believe/confession/love.en.html. I am still struggling with the implications of pure Christian pacifism, but I love that my church stands up as an almost lone voice on this issue when so many others are silent.
--Sharon