New Post March 10

Well so much for keeping my blog current. No I won’t give you “the dog ate my homework” excuse but I do have a poor excuse never the less. You see I received a little promotion at work about 7 weeks ago and it has had me going flat out ever since. Since I last wrote, my job has had me go to Hawaii (and before you say poor Simon having to go to Hawaii life sure is bad for him). In the 4 days I was there, I got out of the hotel room for a couple of hours after the sun had gone down. Linnet has a better tan than me. I’ve also been to California 3 times and next week I’m off to Alaska (-10F). Not exactly ideal weather to be looking at wastewater projects. My new job title is territory manager southwest (and before you ask how Alaska made it into the south look on any USA map. Alaska is normally shown in the bottom left corner. ) What it really means is that I spend a lot of time driving around the countryside talking poo. Some would say a perfect job for me. Seriously it is a great job with heaps of opportunity to make an impact on how people deal with stuff we don’t normally talk about in polite society. Linnet is still maintaining her lady of leisure status but has a full time job keeping me sane with all the running around that I am doing. We are probably looking at buying a property closer to Eugene late summer, once I can get a credit rating, and then she can look for something in her field up there. On a brighter note we are going to daylight savings this weekend so I guess I survived my first Oregon winter. A little longer and a little colder that Oz but not as bad as everyone made it out to be. I’m still suffering culture shock and I now have a bloke at work named Joe who is taking great delight in correcting my Aussie-isms when I talk to customers. I make gaffs daily so he has plenty of material to work with. Seriously, it does exhaust me having to make sure everything I say isn’t misinterpreted and then still mucking up. I would kill for a BBQ snag or a meat pie at the moment and I am missing the beach a fair bit (of course I’m missing you mob, but that goes without saying). Anyway that’s about it for now. I will do a small update after Alaska.

Mercy

The other day I found myself after falling for what felt like the 100th time that hour saying to God, “Thank you for grace but I really wish I could do better and not rely on it so much.” Or in other words, “I am better than this and I should be able to stand on my own by now. So thanks for the help but…” My intentions were to say to God, I love you and I should be more obedient by now, and I will try harder next time to be perfect. But what really showed up in my thinking was a belittling of what Christ did on the cross. In that one thought I had put myself above grace. Paul knew this. In 2nd Corinthians 12 Paul goes to great length to point out his failings. The thorn in his flesh is not there to punish him but to show through his weakness that the power of the Cross was sufficient and in him. God fully remembers that we are clay. His provision on the cross of His own son proves that he knows how to deal with that issue very well. Through our failings his grace is made manifest to the world. So what is the application of this? Should I fail often so grace may abound? (Stop me if you have read this in Romans.) Heaven forbid. Grace is definitely not a license to sin. If I am being rebellious then I need to deal with that ASAP. However, if I do sin then there is provision and I should embrace it. Christ’s sacrifice on the cross is of such magnitude that if we claim to not want to tap into it (lest we drink in to much), or deny that we need it (showing a lack of understanding of our sin), or worse still, say we are beyond forgiveness (denying the cross full stop), then we don’t allow the Creator’s love for us to make its presence known. Shame on me if I don’t embrace Jesus when he lifts me to my feet after I have fallen. There is one final reason for my non-reliance thinking, and please hear me well on this one. The manifestation of God’s grace in me can only be when I give mercy. I don’t want mercy at times because I don’t want to give it. The full power of the Cross is shown to the world when as a Christian I embrace my failings, surrender them to God, accept forgiveness and then act as a conduit for that forgiveness to others. Why, brothers and sisters, do we suffer with guilt and shame so much? Because we expect it in others. How dare she walk around with such arrogance? I’m surprised that he can show his face in public. He better not come over here I’ll give him a piece of my mind (like we have a piece worth giving). And I am the chief abuser. In my mind, I don’t want to forgive people, or show them in their best light for fear that I will suffer for it. We worry so much about grace abuse that we abuse the very one who called us from sin in the first place. Christ made it very clear that those who wish mercy need to show mercy. So please join with me this month and show mercy at every opportunity that you can. And if you fail, remember that through your weakness he is strong. You just might receive mercy from an unexpected source.

Update Mid Jan

It’s Sunday and rather than enjoying a warm sunny summers day outside in Perth I am inside in my office with it currently sitting on 30F (that’s -2C for you metric types). Not in my office but outside that is. Winter is well and truly set in the land of Yank. We have snow on the ground. I have chains in the back of the car (just in case) and it is not expected to get much warmer for at least a week. The other morning it dipped into the teens briefly (-7C). They tell me that it is unusual for Roseburg to get snow but we have had it twice now in the space of a month so I think they are hopping that I don’t see through “the lie!” I now have an appreciation for only living at an elevation of 495 feet. When we moved here in the USA summer elevation didn’t mean a lot to me. After all, how much elevation is there in Perth? If someone tells you your house is at 500 feet you don’t have a concept of what that means, but as you watch the news and see snow level ( a code word for freezing) drop to 1000 feet and then 500 feet. You get an appreciation really quick. On the work side, well life has pretty well dropped back into routine. I am quite enjoying the stability for a change. Well that’s about it for this fortnight. If you send me an email I will shoot you a couple of photo’s from the back of our house so you can see what a real winter looks like. Oh by the way below is another spiel repeat. I’m sorry but, a) I wanted to get a lot of the old one’s up on the blog, b) it was a new-years one and c) I’m only just getting back into the swing of things after Christmas and so I’m a little lazy at the moment. Next time maybe a new one.

Simon

New Years Spiel

Threats of war, unspeakable persecution of God’s people (200,000 Christians martyred last year alone in the Sudan with more expected in the year ahead), plague (AIDS) due to wipe out 2-3 million in Africa, natural disasters, drought, earthquake, the buying and selling of souls (just check out the internet), one world government and a mixing of religion. These are some of the things we can look forward to in the coming year. (I didn’t even mention the weird stuff like alien cults cloning human’s). The thing that I find so amazing is that God told us all of these things were going to happen and because of this we can have hope. Now I could understand if you looked at what I’ve written and you called me a nut. “Hope? Do you see how bad the world is and what we have to look forward to? I mean what kind of world are we leaving our children?” I can answer that—exactly the one God intended us to. In Revelation 1:1 Jesus himself tells us that these things must shortly come to pass. The feeling you get from the passage might be paraphrased, “All the stuff that you are about to read concerning the final days will not just happen. Similar events will come about with increasing rapidity until the really big ones happen.” Now I am not saying that the world ends at midnight tomorrow. Nobody knows the hour or the day. But I do know that we are one day closer than yesterday so I would expect the world to be getting progressively more screwy. It doesn’t mean I throw my hands up and go “Oh well, that’s it then, nothing more to do here.” No, it means that this year, when the nightly news comes on and the fear mongering starts over another peace plan that has failed or how your neighbor might be a terrorist, then I know I can ignore it. Not the problems but the fear. No, this is where my hope and purpose lie for this new year. I can trust Jesus because what He says is what comes about. And this is the good news. He said that he would leave me in this world of death and decay, not because He is a big meanie but to minister to those who He cares so much about. If I do not fear but place my trust in Him then, no matter what I see or hear, He is right there with me, protecting me. He says that He has my best interests at heart. That I can make a difference through him. That I will know peace. And that I need not fear.
This new year as you look at the world and it’s future, I challenge you to throw aside the scare mongering that various interest groups will put up. Don’t buy into the fear that so many would have cripple you. Instead, as you see a broken world falling apart, remember that God tells us that He chose us before the world began for this time. We were made for it. So I encourage you to get equipped for the challenges this year will bring and to reach out to those hiding under a weight of despair with the hope and truth that are within you.

Twas the day before 2007

Well I can’t believe that it has been over a month since I last updated the blog. My apologies all round. My only excuse is that it has been a fright busy over the last four or so weeks so here is the recap. California. Linnet and I had the opportunity to visit California for four days at the beginning of the month to see if it would be a good fit for us and the company to move down there. I did an additional trip the following week making 9 days of driving averaging 300 miles a day. It was fantastic to go from the trees here, to the snow peaks down in Shasta and then into the warmth of the bay area in Cal. All in the space of a day. If there is one thing I am still having trouble getting use to is, how close completely different states and ways of living are to one another. In the end we just wasn’t going to work. It was a bit of a shame as the area and the people are fantastic. That leaves me in a bit of limbo at work as I am still in an internal role until something else presents. I keep getting reminded that we are only just heading towards our six months in the USA but as you all know. Patience isn’t in the Cartwright lexicon. Fortunately for me Orenco is a great company and they are not about to feed me to the wolves anytime soon (I hope).
Linnet is still a lady of leisure at the moment taking that well earned rest that she deserves from running the shop and putting up with me at the same time. She has however been Christmas mode since we got back and she did her best to make the place look sufficiently like a Kinkade painting. We didn’t get snow unfortunately and it seemed very weird for me to have Christmas day in the wind and the rain. Speaking of winter it has been like a full winter in Australia already since we have been here. Unfortunately they tell me it will continue until May. (Ah I knew the job was dangerous when I took it Fred.) My skin is taking on a wonderful Oregon tan (pale white) and I have got use to going to work in the dark and driving home in the dark.
I’ve finally started reading books again. I know it sounds weird but I really needed a break from reading and writing over the last couple of months to get it from being a job back into perspective of being a pleasure. I’m currently reading Dave Crowder’s book “Every one wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die”. It’s a little weird and is strictly for those who like off the wall stuff. Anyway that’s a little of what has happened over the last month. One of my resolutions for next year is to try and do short quick fill ins on the blog to bring you up to speed when weird and strange things happen over here. Until 2007 then. God Bless.