Worth A Thousand Pictures

I grew up on a farm. We called it Glen View Acres. We kept hoping somebody would ask us why we called it Glen View Acres. If they had, we would have taken them to the kitchen window, pointed across the road and said, “See that trailer? Glen lives in that trailer. We see him, sometimes.” Nobody ever asked. We thought it was hilarious, but unless you were in on the joke, you don’t even know there was one. I’m starting to think that Easter is like that. Those of us who are Christ followers look at the pink bunnies and pastel cardboard tulips and chocolate SpongeBobs and shake our heads sadly and go to church. We wish somebody would ask us why we’re shaking our heads, why we’re going to church on a Friday morning so we could tell them. Because we really do have something to say. Something that matters and is good and true. But nobody asks. We really, really, really need to ask ourselves why nobody asks. r

After Adam and Eve left the garden, Eve became pregnant and gave birth to Cain. Cain's name means "To get". Later, Eve gave birth to his brother, Abel. Abel's name means "Life". Abel was a shepherd. Cain worked the soil. In time Cain brought some of his harvest as an offering to God. But Abel chose the best from the best of his flock. God was very pleased with Abel's gift, but not so much with Cain's. So Cain was very angry. God asked Cain, "What right do you have to be angry? If you've done something wrong, make it right. Don't let yourself be hijacked by sin. You can overcome it." Cain wasn't in the mood. While he and Abel were out of sight in the fields, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him... Cain was exhausted. He sat alone in the near corner of the field, a nearly empty waterskin on the ground beside him. It was his best field, freshly harvested and turned over, under the stars, alone with the moon and the cricket...

You know how it is when you read about something and hear about it and see it on TV and it seems kind of cool, but not something that will ever actually cross the horizon and enter your world? And then it does? So you try it? And you end up asking yourself either, “Where has this been all my life?”, or else “What was I thinking?” Been there, done that. Recently. 1. We were in our usual favourite grocery store in TO recently (NASR Foods, Lawrence Ave. E.) Very middle eastern and interesting. The shelves are full of stuff in cans with labels written in what I, as a very white person, assume to be writing. Many of them seem to be varieties of fruit or coffee. They also sell hookah pipes and belly dancing regalia along with the appropriate music. We found in the cooler a thing called Laheem Ageen. Kind of a meat and spices on bread thing. We gambled on a bag and we love it. 2. Down the road is a major chain grocery store that caters to its ethnic microcosm and often has the same kinds of e...