Thank you

Thank you Lord,

Thank you.
Thank you for making me.
Thank you for giving me parents who followed you.
Thank you for helping me see you early in life.
Thank you for helping stay true to you in most ways throughout my life.
Thank you for allowing me to learn servanthood.
Thank you for continuing to teach me servanthood.
Thank you for teaching me.
Thank you for my house, it’s a really nice one.
Thank you for my van, you brought it along for my family.
Thank you for my wife, I love her dearly.
Thank you for my kids, all three of them. They are truly a blessing of unimaginable size.
Thank you for a church that was willing to take a risk on a young pastor.
Thank you for your faithfulness to me.
Thank you for your patience with me.
Thank you for showing up.
Thank you for showing up to do good things despite what we deserve.
Thank you for giving me luxury compared to many in our world.
Thank you for health.
Thank you for loving me.
Thank you for all the little things that sometimes I notice and sometimes I don’t.
Thank you for all the people praying for me.
Thank you that I am loved by you.
Thank you that I am loved by more than just you.
Thank you for the things that usually, I just take for granted.
Thank you for my freedom.
Thank you for all these things and the ten thousand other things I need to be thankful for today.
Thanks.

A sound byte from Bob

I also read Bob Hyatt's blog. Who's Bob Hyatt? I don't know exactly, but he's a pastor with a young church and struggles through things on his blog. So I read...

In a old post today I read this:

...If our mission was to reach these people, we wanted the offense to be in the Gospel, not our polity, ecclesiastical structure, bad coffee... whatever....

Makes sense to me.
(although bob is discussing women in ministry in that post, i think this quote bears repeating on other issues as well)

Of Christmas Trees and Anyways...

I enjoy reading Randall Friesen's blog. He's a pastor in Prince Albert, he writes way more than I do. Here are some from the last while that I appreciated.

O Tannenbaum, O Tannenbaum

Anyway

If you only want to read one, read the "Anyway" one.

Back in the saddle again...

Okay, so I'm back in the office after having a two week break. Do I feel rested? Yes and no. Yes, as I haven't been thinking about church stuff for two weeks, physically no. I have a newborn, and two other kids.

I want to contemplate the church. You know we spend a lot of time kicking ideas around about church. We spend even more time looking at what is wrong with the church and what it needs to have happen to make it better. I was reading a post here about a pastor who was ranting a little bit about the negativity aimed at the church. It got me thinking about a bit about what we want and are and don't like about ourselves. I still believe the church is still of the utmost of importance in our world. It has the only message that will make things truly better. I don' try to say that as if we in the church are intellectually superior to those outside the church, I don't say that because we have everything figured out and those outside the church are messing things up, I say that because we are getting started a relationship with God. We were found by God. We have had him change us from the inside.
But then again, that's just me...

She's here!

Well, finally (or so it feels) we have an addition to our family! Olivia Joy Robertson came into the world on December 8th 2006 at 7:30am. She was 8 lbs 14 ozs and all in all everything is going well. We all came home on Sunday and she met her big brothers. They think she's the best little sister ever (she brought them a gamecube).
Everything is going well at home except for sleeping.

We feel blessed. May you have as much Peace and Joy in your home this holidays as we do.

Later.

PS: There are more pictures on my Flickr account (link in the sidebar). For family who have access to my other photo gallery there's even more there.