Archive for December, 2011

The Sustaining Songs of 2011

Friday, December 30th, 2011

A friend of mine posted a question on her blog… “What song will always remind you of 2011?”  It got me thinking (and I did post a reply on her blog).

As most of you now, 2011 has been a rather difficult year for our family.  Oh sure, it was also a wonderful year with our oldest son getting married in July, but it was also a year of intense emotions for me personally and as a family.

I was reading back on my post from January 4th, 2011 and was chuckling over the list…

Here’s a few things that I’m sure will have impact on our family’s life over the coming 12 months…
1.  Our oldest son will complete his teaching certificate and embark on his search for a fulltime career.
2.  He will also get married in July, and so we’ll have another daughter!!
3.  Our third son will hopefully get his G2 drivers license, so we’ll never see the car again.
4.  He will also graduate from Secondary School and start his “post-secondary education” somewhere in some field.
5.  Our second son will enter his final year of university and have to decide on where his career will be heading.
6.  He will also, no doubt, continue to write and produce songs and have a blast doing it.
7.  Our daughter will continue to play sports, sing and just be the wonderful women that she is!
8.  Our family will continue to work with, and pray for, the sick in our midst, whether that be in our immediate family, or in our extended church family.
9.  Things will continue to evolve at the church and in our roles there.
10. God will continue to be present in our lives.

It all sounded great at the time, but quickly exploded when on January 11th we found out within 45 minutes of each other that:

  1. Nancy’s sister had left for work that Tuesday morning and hadn’t been seen or heard from since. (See this post and later ones for my thoughts at the time.)
  2. Three of our pastors at our church were let go for complicated reasons, leaving the church in complete turmoil

Throughout 2011 we were also dealing with my wife’s Dad’s chemo and radiation therapy, and eventually in the fall, a serious viral infection that looked like it might just lead to the end.  [On a very happy note, we are pleased to report that he is now doing *much* better now and the chemo seems to be doing the trick!]

Then in the Fall we decided that God was drawing us away from the church we’d been part of for 27 years.  It was like losing even more members of your family.

Through all this though, there were two songs that we introduced at church while we were leading worship and both were difficult to sing (because of the two bombshells in January), but were also very comforting.

The first is “You Never Let Go” by Matt and Beth Redman…

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
Your perfect love is casting out fear,
And even when I’m caught in the middle of the storms of this life,
I won’t turn back I know You are near.

And I can see a light that is coming for the heart that holds on,
A glorious light beyond all compare.
And there will be an end to these troubles but until that day comes,
We’ll lieve to know you here on the earth.

Oh no, You never let go through the calm and through the storm.
Oh no, You never let go in every high and every low,
Oh no, You never let go, Lord, You never let go of me.”

We introduced that song at church the Sunday before Brenda’s disappearance and the staffing shakeup. It was (and still is) a very trying time, but we hold fast to the promise, and have certainly experienced, “Lord, You never let go of me.”

Later on, after Brenda’s funeral we introduced the song “You Hold Me Now”. At the time it was hard to sing, but also VERY reassuring….

On that day when I see All that You have for me,
When I see You face to face, There surrounded by Your grace
All my fear is swept away In the light of your embrace
When Your love is all I need And forever I am free
Where the streets are made of gold,
In Your presence healed and whole,
Let the songs of heaven rise to you alone

In this life I will stand Through my joy and my pain
Knowing there’s a greater day, There’s a hope that never fails
When Your name is lifted high, And forever praises rise,
For the glory of Your Name, I’m believing for the day
When the wars and violence cease,
All creation lives in peace,
Let the songs of heaven rise to you alone

No weeping, no hurt or pain,
No suffering You hold me now, You hold me now
No darkness no sick or lame,
No hiding You hold me now, You hold me now.

Knowing the suffering that Brenda had gone through; the suffering that we were going through as we greived her loss; the pain and confusion that our church was going through; it was at sometimes almost unbearable.  But the promise of “knowing there’s a greater day” was what kept us, and still does, keep us strong.

Knowing that God’s weeping right along with us; Knowing that He is walking right along beside us;  Knowing that He came to this earth as tiny, innocent, fragile child, knowing that He would suffer the cruelist of punishment, and be seperated from His Father; and die so that we may be free, is what’s seen us through 2011.

God is an amazing god.  There is no one like Him.  None more worthy of our praises.

As 2011 draws to a close, we look back on all the sadness (and the joys!) and know that God has gone before us.  He’s “Been there. Done that”.  And he’s got great things planned for 2012!

Let this coming year, be a Happy, God lead, New Year for you and your family!!

TTFN

Posted in Church, General, Personal | 1 Comment »

2011 Christmas Letter

Wednesday, December 21st, 2011

The Lahn Family Christmas Letter has been posted up on our family site.  If you want to read it you can go the Christmas Letters page of the site, or you can simply click here for direct access.

Merry Christmas!!!

TTFN

Posted in Church, General, Personal, Work Related | No Comments »

Getting Closer

Monday, December 12th, 2011

Of course some of you think the title refers to Christmas, don’t you.  Well, it is, but it isn’t.  What I’m really referring to in this post is our search for a new church.

After looking at numerous churches over the fall, I think our family has narrowed the choices down somewhat.  I think we’re now down to either Summit Community Church, or The Bridge.  Our plan now is to check them each out for a few Sundays and see where we think we would best fit and and where God wants us to be (we’ve only been to each one once so far).

It’s been a very interesting process.  We’ve been to churches that we’ve been real impressed with in terms of their Sunday services (format, sermons, etc), but have found their doctrines not what we’ve been hoping for.  We’ve seen others that are doctrinally sound, but seemed quite dead, or unfriendly.  We’ve seen others that sit in the middle, but didn’t impress us enough to want to go back.

We’ll see where we end up, but it’s been an interesting journey and God has been teaching us many things in the process.  It’s also left us more free to decide when and where to go on any given Sunday which in and of itself has been very refreshing (for instance we were able to go to a church we wouldn’t normally have chosen, except that two of our daughters friends were being baptised and it was great to be able to share in that experience).

Anyway, we’re off to one church this week, and another on Christmas Eve and then back to the other on Christmas Day.  We’ll see where God leads us after that 🙂

TTFN

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Where Did “Piss Poor” Come From?

Friday, December 9th, 2011

Some of you may have seen this before as I know it’s been running around the Internet for some time.  I tried to find out who first put it together, but was unable to find “the original” author.  I got it from my wife in an email this morning (who got it from someone else).  I also tried to determine if the facts were actually correct, but even if they’re not, it makes for a wonderful story, especially around Christmastime as we all are thinking about what we want to GET for Christmas.  Remember that life wasn’t always so abundant, and in many parts of the world, it’s still very much as this article describes.

So…. Why not make someone’s life a little better, so they aren’t “piss poor” and consider sponsoring a child from Compassion 🙂  (See how I was able to work that in ;))

Where did “Piss Poor” come from?

Interesting History.  They used to use urine to tan animal skins, so families used to all pee in a pot and then once a day it was taken and sold to the tannery…If you had to do this to survive you were piss poor.

But worse than that were the really poor folk who couldn’t even afford to buy a pot… They “didn’t have a pot to piss in” and were the lowest of the low.

The next time you are washing your hands and complain because the water temperature isn’t just how you like it, think about how things used to be.

Here are some other facts about the 1500s:

  • Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May,and they still smelled pretty good by June. However, since they were starting to smell, brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odor.  Hence the custom today of carrying a bouquet when getting married.
  • Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water.  The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, then all the other sons and men, then the women and finally the children.last of all the babies.  By then the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it.  Hence the saying, “Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water!”
  • Houses had thatched roofs-thick straw-piled high, with no wood underneath.  It was the only place for animals to get warm, so all the cats and other small animals (mice, bugs) lived in the roof.  When it rained it became slippery and sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof. Hence the saying, “It’s raining cats and dogs.”
  • There was nothing to stop things from falling into the house.  This posed a real problem in the bedroom where bugs and other droppingscould mess up your nice clean bed.  Hence, a bed with big posts and a sheet hung over the top afforded some protection.  That’s how canopy beds came into existence.
  • The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt.  Hence the saying, “Dirt poor.”
  • The wealthy had slate floors that would get slippery in the winter when wet, so they spread thresh (straw) on floor to help keep their footing.  As the winter wore on, they added more thresh until, when you opened the door,it would all start slipping outside. A piece of wood was placed in the entrance-way.  Hence: a thresh hold.
  • In those old days, they cooked in the kitchen with a big kettle that always hung over the fire.  Every day they lit the fire and added things to the pot. They ate mostly vegetables  And did not get much meat. They would eat the stew for dinner, leaving leftovers.  In the pot to get cold overnight and then start over the next day.  Sometimes stew had food in it that had been there for quite a while.  Hence the rhyme:

Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old.

  • Sometimes they could obtain pork, which made them feel quite special. When visitors came over, they would hang up their bacon to show off.  It was a sign of wealth that a man could, “bring home the bacon.”
  • They would cut off a little to share with guests and would all sit around and chew the fat.
  • Those with money had plates made of pewter.  Food with high acid content caused some of the lead to leach onto the food, causing lead poisoning death. This happened most often with tomatoes, so for the next 400 years or so, tomatoes were considered poisonous.
  • Bread was divided according to status.  Workers got the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle, and guests got the top, or the upper crust.
  • Lead cups were used to drink ale or whisky. The combination would sometimes knock the imbibers out for a couple of days. Someone walking along the road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial.  They were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up.  Hence the custom; of holding a wake.
  • England is old and small and the local folks started running out of places to bury people.  So they would dig up coffins and would take the bones to a bone-house, and reuse the grave.  When reopening these coffins, 1 out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realized they had been burying people alive.  So they would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell.  Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night (the graveyard shift) to listen for the bell; thus, someone could be, saved by the bell or was considered a dead ringer.

And that’s the truth

(or so this email said :))  TTFN

UPDATE: It appears that a fair chunk of this post is “rubbish” 🙂  But I did warn you!!!!  There are two articles on Snopes.com that seem to dispute the etymology of some of these phrases…. here… and here.  But you have admit, it’s a FUN read!!! 😉

TTFN (again)

Posted in Compassion, Entertainment, General, Personal | No Comments »

Charlie Brown Christmas: The Special That Almost Wasn’t

Monday, December 5th, 2011

A friend of mine sent me an email the other day entitled “The only part they didn’t like was all of it”.  In it he highlighted some of the story behind the creation of this season’s most loved television specials…. A Charlie Brown Christmas.  In his email he had exerpted from a National Review article entitled “The Gospel According to Peanuts – How A Charlie Brown Christmas almost didn’t happen“.  It’s a fascinating read.  It starts off…

Few headlines about network television make me giddy. Fewer still make me hopeful that all is good in the world. But back in August of 2010, I read the following headline from the media pages with great excitement: “Charlie Brown Is Here to Stay: ABC Picks Up ‘Peanuts’ Specials Through 2015.” The first of these to be made, the famous Christmas special, was an instant classic when it was created by Charles Schulz on a shoestring budget back in 1965, and thanks to some smart television executives, it will be around for at least another five years for all of us to see and enjoy.

It seems that the special was completely a rush job, with Coca Cola calling on Wednesday and wanting an outline for the story by Monday.  Then when it WAS done, there were numerous things the network folks didn’t like:

  1. there was no laugh track
  2. the voice acting was all done by children, not adults
  3. they didn’t like the choice of Jazz music. “They wanted something more . . . well . . . young.”
  4. “Last but not least, the executives did not want to have Linus reciting the story of the birth of Christ from the Gospel of Luke. The network orthodoxy of the time assumed that viewers would not want to sit through passages of the King James Bible”

There was a standoff of sorts, but Schulz did not back down, and because of the tight production schedule and CBS’s prior promotion, the network executives aired the special as Schulz intended it. But they were certain they had a flop on their hands.

“They were freaking out about something so overtly religious in a Christmas special,” explained Melendez. “They basically wrote it off, like, hey, this is just isn’t going to be interesting to anyone, and it’s just going to be like a big tax write-off.”

When the CBS executives saw the final product “they were horrified”, but…

The half-hour special aired on Thursday, December 9, 1965, preempting The Munsters and following Gilligan’s Island. To the surprise of the executives, 50 percent of the televisions in the United States tuned in to the first broadcast. The cartoon was a critical and commercial hit; it won an Emmy and a Peabody award.

Linus’s recitation was hailed by critic Harriet Van Horne of the New York World-Telegram, who wrote, “Linus’ reading of the story of the Nativity was, quite simply, the dramatic highlight of the season.”

A Charlie Brown Christmas is equaled only perhaps by the 1966 How the Grinch Stole Christmas! in its popularity among young and old alike. Thank God the Grinch-like executives at CBS chose to air the special back in 1965 despite their misgivings. If it had been left to their gut instincts, we would have had one less national treasure to cherish come Christmas time.

And now, so many years later, this is one of the most endearing and wonderful Christmas specials there is.

I was sitting with a friend on Sunday, as she recouperated from some surgery, and we flipped through various “Holiday Specials”.  None could hold a candle to “A Charlie Brown Christmas”.  In fact, MOST were visualizations of the mass consumerism the world has come to hate about Christmas.  And almost NONE had anything to do with Christ.

Thank goodness for Charles Shultz, and his tenacity in not backing down from the network execs.

Let’s remember this Christmas season to remember what Christmas is all about.

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TTFN

Posted in Church, Entertainment, General, Music, Personal | 1 Comment »

AIDS and Poverty: World AIDS Day 2011

Thursday, December 1st, 2011

Today is World AIDS Day 2011.  The following was cut/pasted from the Compassion Website (http://blog.compassion.com/aids-and-poverty-world-aids-day-2011/) and was written By Chris Giovagnoni.

You’ll also want to read this article (http://blog.compassion.com/hiv-in-children-the-last-days-of-an-hiv-positive-child/) which tells the story of the last days of a 10 year old girl in Uganda who died of AIDS and was cared for by Compassion.

Do you want to make a difference in a child’s life?  Why not sponsor a Compassion child today?

=======================================================

AIDS and poverty. Poverty and AIDS. One doesn’t cause  the other, but for children and families living in extreme poverty, AIDS  is especially devastating.

aids and poverty

Several factors multiply the devastation caused by HIV/AIDS in developing  countries.

One is the lack of prevention education.

aids and poverty

Another is the high cost of treatment and the difficulty of getting the  lifesaving medicinal tablets that travel 10,000 miles to travel  that last mile, into the hands of the people who need them.

aids and poverty

To travel beyond the clinic and into the slum. To travel down the dusty roads  in the rural areas. And up the hills and down into the valleys to the  out-of-the-way places.

aids and poverty

Other factors of poverty contributing to the incidence of HIV/AIDS  include:

  • poor health facilities
  • communication and transportation difficulties
  • unstable governments
  • the prevalence of environmental diseases

Currently, less than 10 percent of HIV-positive children in need of treatment  are being treated.

This year the World AIDS Day global focus is on zero new HIV infections,  zero discrimination and zero AIDS-related deaths.

Which is a big deal when you consider that more than 6,800 new HIV infections  occur daily, worldwide, and more than 5,700 people die of AIDS each day.

aids and poverty

But beyond the death and physical illness, among the many challenges facing  people living with HIV/AIDS are the stigma and discrimination that come with it.

aids and poverty

People living with HIV/AIDS in extreme poverty are still feared, avoided and  ostracized. People who overcome their fears and get tested for HIV are often  still afraid to speak out and educate or advocate for others – which is why  we have this blog post.

AIDS and poverty. Poverty and AIDS. If you care about releasing children from  poverty in Jesus’ name, then that means you should care about fighting AIDS.

So get out there and fight.

Do one thing today (World AIDS Day), one thing with purpose, one thing to  help the world get to zero and bring some glee to a child.

Sources: www.childinfo.org, www.unaids.org, www.unicef.org

Courtesy of Compassion International:  http://blog.compassion.com/aids-and-poverty-world-aids-day-2011/

Posted in Compassion, General | No Comments »

Shoolie has a new website!!

Thursday, December 1st, 2011

I’ve been working with a friend to get his website up and running, and I think it’s all set.

Henrick ‘Shoolie’ Sales is a Spoken Word artist here in Toronto, and a great one at that! He’s competed in International competitions and has even collaborated with Every Spare Second to put one of his poems – Love Like This – to music.

Be sure to check him out at Shoolie.com.

TTFN

Posted in General, Personal | 2 Comments »