Blog & News

Last Sunday we heard from Dr. Samuel Sarpiya as he shared how the tribe of Issachar “understood the times and knew what Israel should do” 1 Chronicles 12: 32. To use Samuel’s line of reasoning to tie back to our series on spiritual maturity, it seems many of us have good clarity as to what “these times” might consist of – we’ve been watching the news, we’re spotting trends, paying attention to many troubling facets of society right now. What we lack, if I may offer us, including myself, a little finger waggy critique, is a failure to allow these “times” to grow us up.
Sweetgrass, we learned, is sometimes called kindness medicine. It’s a plant used in ceremony and teaching, a gift from the Creator that helps people remember how to live with grace for one another. As braids of sweetgrass were passed through the congregation, the community touched it, smelled its sweet vanilla-like fragrance and noted its two-sided nature – rough and smooth.

This past Sunday, we continued our Spiritual Maturity series with something a little different – a hands-on exercise focusing on kindness, courtesy of the Anishinaabe Sweetgrass teaching.

Sweetgrass, we learned, is sometimes called kindness medicine. It’s a plant used in ceremony and teaching, a gift from the Creator that helps people remember how to live with grace for one another. As braids of sweetgrass were passed through the congregation, the community touched it, smelled its sweet vanilla-like fragrance and noted its two-sided nature – rough and smooth.

Another week, another borrowing of some profound insight I came across on the Internet…
Sarah Bessey is a favourite Canadian author of many in our community and if you haven’t heard of her or read anything by her, then do yourself a favour and check a Bessey book out of our library. You won’t be disappointed. I’m not sure if the below excerpt comes from some previously published work or if these are just thoughts off the top of her head but they were shared on her story and I was so captivated by them that I typed them out for you to read as well:

Rhonda and I have an ongoing thing in which we rate coincidences that come up in our lives on a scale from 1-10. 1 is basically a “huh, that’s cool” but could happen any day. A 10, though, happens exceptionally rarely. I think to date, maybe once in our 21+ years together we could point to what was such a bizarre coincidence that words fell short and we were convinced there had to be more going on beneath the surface. This past Monday morning we didn’t experience a 10, per se, but certainly a story worth sharing.

By now, you’ve no doubt heard that Charlie — the conservative commentator and founder of Turning Point USA — was shot and killed while speaking at an event in Utah, which is just wild. If you didn’t know much about him beforehand, you almost certainly have learned of him in the days that followed. And if you do, you likely hold a strong opinion one way or the other — and chances are, so do the people in your feed. The man was certainly a divisive figure.

Here is the introduction for the 2025-2026 Annual Outlook for our church community. This provides a bit of perspective on the past 12 months and a high level look at what is to come in the year ahead. Enjoy!

“Lord, we pray this day mindful of the sorry confusion of our world. Look with mercy upon this generation of your children so steeped in misery of their own contriving, so far strayed from your ways and so blinded by passions… Amen.”