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I Saw Israel

10:46 PM - Feb. 22, 2008 - Wild Thoughts {1} - Add to the Wildness

Have you ever seen something that just made it hit home that God is real and at work in the world? This winter, I did.

I spent the Christmas holidays in Montreal with my brother and his family (a very expensive present from my hubby). One evening that week, driving back from the day's activities, my sister-in-law took the scenic route home. She's great for showing the beautiful side of the city, and that night was one of the most amazing I've experienced in my travels anywhere.

She took us to a Jewish neighbourhood. "You can tell the Orthodox homes," she said, "because they have a little tablet thingy on the doorpost. I don't know what they call it--look, there's one, did you see it?"

I knew what she was talking about. My eyes stung with awe as I picked out the small object.

Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one! And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart; and you shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up. And you shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontals on your forehead. And you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
(Deut. 6:4-9)

A rush of emotions overtook me. Memories of reading those Scriptures, of hearing and reading about Jewish life, something that in my world was either long ago or far away, or both. As we drove along the street, studying the close-crowded brick homes with their warmly glowing windows, I was overwhelmed with a sudden, undeniable wave of reality.

Life is pretty monochrome out here in a prairie small town. Most people are French, English or Ukranian in background. Most have lived here for generations, since the homesteading days. Most are drenched in a strange, plaid-jacket-and-cap-clothed mix of pop culture and rural localisms. Except for the First Nations, most trace their ancestry to somewhere else.

We're not really a nation, here in Canada. You won't find our New World ancestral grounds in Genesis 10. We're an odd amalgam of nations--which the Bible defines as linguistically distinct people groups genetically descended from the original families which spread out from ancient Mesopotamia. My infant homeland, like the United States of America, is an artificial political entity, nothing more.

There, on a snow-lined Montreal street, I felt the heartbeat of a much older land, half a world away, at the centre of all the earth's doings. The tablets on the lintels bore silent testimony that the God of the Bible is real, that the Scripture's history did happen and is still happening today.

I saw Israel.

Under beards and wide-brimmed black hats, I saw the DNA of a man named Jacob, and he became real to me. I thought of all the promises God made to him, and while I knew before that they will be fulfilled, suddenly, I really knew. Just as Levi paid tithes to Melchizedek while he was still in Abraham's loins, these people in twenty-first century Montreal received the promises of God while they were still in Jacob's loins. There is a land that's theirs by divine decree, a decree never experienced by any other nation.

What caught my heart most on that street was the sense of waiting. A wondrous sense of promises whose depth is unknown to the people themselves. They are a nation holy to God, and their purpose did not end with the death of Messiah. There is a purpose in their existence, even in a foreign land, halfway to the other end of the earth. Here, thousands of miles and years away, these people spoke to the heart of a passing Gentile. Silently, they said, God is true. They are Israel.

And you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates, so that your days and the days of your sons may be multiplied on the land which the Lord swore to your fathers to give them, as long as the heavens remain above the earth.
(Deut. 11:20-21)

Thus says the Lord, who gives the sun for light by day, and the fixed order of the moon and the stars for light by night, who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar; the Lord of hosts is His name: "If this fixed order departs from before Me," declares the Lord, "Then the offspring of Israel also shall cease from being a nation before Me forever."
(Jeremiah 31:35-36)

Balfour Declaration, 1917

Who has heard such a thing? Who has seen such things?
Can a land be born in one day?
Can a nation be brought forth all at once?
As soon as Zion travailed, she also brought forth her sons.
(Isaiah 66:8)

© Copyright Cathi-Lyn Dyck 2005-2008

In Search of Saturn in Earth's Shadow

1:28 AM - Feb. 21, 2008 - Wild Thoughts {2} - Add to the Wildness

We witnessed a lunar eclipse tonight. It was crisp, clear, the stars standing out of the bright sky. There is such a thing as a bright darkness; just combine a full moon with miles upon miles of ice-coated snow.

We watched the earth’s shadow drift across the pale moon. I tried taking some digital photos of it over the course of the evening. None are wonderful, but the event is documented for posterity. We got out the telescope and tried to see Saturn, a golden speck to the left of the shadowed satellite of Earth. I had hoped to see the rings. However, we never did quite get it all sorted out before the brilliant white sliver began crossing back onto the moon’s face. But we did look at some lunar craters.

Click here for a large composite image of the eclipse phases we recorded.

The Daniel Academy has good shots of the moon in shadow during the eclipse.

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© Copyright Cathi-Lyn Dyck 2005-2008

Dave and I Have Officially Lost It

1:19 AM - Aug. 25, 2007 - Wild Thoughts {2} - Add to the Wildness

Nearly two weeks ago, I clicked on a button on my computer screen. Unfortunately, I should have been more careful, because it was an eBay button. That particular eBay button was worth several thousand dollars.

However, I was not careful, nor am I repentant. That particular eBay button was accessorized with photos. Green, shiny ones. With yellow striping. With water and a blue sky. That particular eBay button resulted in a trip halfway across the continent, a mad three-day dash to Michigan's Upper Peninsula and back.

Somewhere south of Sault Ste. Marie, we found the far end of the invisible thread to which that eBay button was attached. The far end of the invisible thread in which we were so thoroughly tangled ended (as is fitting for such things to do) at a small trailer. On the small trailer was this:

We have now rerolled the invisible thread all the way back to our house. This thing, right here, is not a new addiction for me. I was first hooked thanks to an uncle or two with a similar habit, and spent many long hours out on the river in a little 12-foot sailboat.

This thing right here is 23 feet. It sleeps almost six, at least, it will while the rug rats are small. Dave and I have formed a policy that the worst-behaved child will be thrown overboard at bedtime to ease the crowdedness of overnight trips.

This thing will move in almost no wind, heel to 55 degrees without capsizing, and dock in 18 inches of water. Not to mention easily trailering anywhere we may wish to go. She is a cutter, which means that she has a mainsail and two foresails. In the red, you can see the main. In the blue is the jib. In the yellow is the staysail. The blue one is clubfoot-rigged, which means it's tied to a small spar that fastens to the deck. It can only move so far, and thus does not need to be yanked about with ropes.

The yellow one is specially rigged with things called cam locks which pinch the ropes (sheets) and hold them in place, allowing one person to run all the lines. Of which there are only three in total. Very easy to do.

As far as tipping over, the reason she doesn't is that she has something called a swing keel. This is a big slab of iron weighing 600 pounds. It is on a swivel point, and winches down to 4 feet below the hull. When the sails are furled, it winches up out of the way, and her shallow draft (depth in the water) allows her to dock, beach or trailer easily.

We didn't make it out on the lake today, but we were out last night in almost no wind at all, skating along until just after sundown. I piloted her, after a small tiff with my dearly beloved, who was being an incorrigible backseat driver. Dearly Beloved sat up just under the mast, and allowed the Rat Pack to take turns sitting out on the bowsprit. (That would be the little piece of wood sticking out the front, with a metal railing around it.)

There is no way to describe the feeling of sailing. We are all irrevocably in love.

She is a MacGregor Venture of Newport, designed after the cutter pilot ships of the 1800s. These were quick little boats which guided big transatlantic ships into the harbour. They also provided priority landing for high-paying passengers who did not wish to wait for the ship to lay in and unload.

For now, her name is Margaret Ann, but we have plans to rename her Whispering Hope, for a song David knows, and for a testimony. Because a sailboat does whisper things in the wind.

"The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit." -John 3:8

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© Copyright 2005, 2006, 2007 Lazy Creek Online. This blog content is not authorized for reproduction outside of the HomeschoolBlogger.com hosting site and Lazy Creek websites. Violations may be reported to Cathi-Lyn Dyck at: www.Lazycreek.net

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