Salvogesis

Psalm 25 is an acrostic poem which means that every line begins with a different letter in the Hebrew Alphabet. If it was our alphabet, it would run A through Z in sequence. It is a poem written during some very difficult times. We, now, are in some very difficult times: Flooding around the province, fires in the summer, the plague that still ravages the world and seems to mutate almost at will (if that were possible); our economy is in shambles and we are making it worse; our country is more and more involved in many -at best- questionable aggressive international actions; our country is divided over things like vaccine passports and vaccine mandates. People are scared. People are mean. People are uncertain. All of this is coming across on social media and in person. I have heard multiple stories of people ‘losing it’ and I think we have each probably encountered someone ‘losing it’, getting noticeably upset in public when they never would have before. That person ‘losing it’ in some ...

The other week the kids and I were able to join Susan and her parents in the BC Legislature as they honoured her father for all the work he did for the people of BC. It was nice to have everyone’s names mentioned too.   We then got to stay for question period and that was ‘a whole nother matter’. It started off innocuous enough. It actually reminded me of when I was in Grade 6. We each took turns public speaking. Someone would have a timer. You had to be as close to 2 minutes as possible and not go over. The MLAs were doing this very well. I am sure they must have all passed Grade 6 with flying colours... And then it got interesting.  The clock was set for half-an-hour or so but unlike the 2-minute speeches, this time limit meant… absolutely nothing. The time was done and the politicians were not done; so they kept talking. The opposition, all except one lowly Green Party member who obviously didn’t get the memo, were all asking the same question over and over again about...

 The Exodus passage that we read from today references the Passover. The Passover was deliverance that God brought to His people through some terrible times. We have been struggling through the plague of Covid-19 since about March of 2020. The Passover occurred after the people had suffered through, not one plague (like we are struggling to do now) but 9 plagues. Can you imagine? Can you imagine if when we get through our current plague there are 8 more of these things waiting to greet us? …Each arguably worse than its predecessor? The Israelites suffered not one plague of Covid-19 but 9 plagues of various kinds:  1. The Nile River turns to blood (7:14–25) 2. Plague of frogs (7:25–8:11) 3. Plague of gnats (8:12–15) 4. Plague of flies (8:20–32) 5. Plague on the livestalk (9:1–7) 6. Plague of boils (9:8–12) 7. Plague of hail (9:13-35) 8. Plague of locusts (10:1–20) 9. Plague of darkness (10:21–29)  It was after the Ninth plague, when I am sure that everyon...