. . . When it was Ray Triplett’s turn to share, I always knew his theme would be the imminent return of Jesus; the rapture of the church. It scared the socks off me, for there was so much I wanted to do with my life and Ray made it sound like Jesus was coming back before he finished speaking.

I now look back on those times and realize how important they were in shaping me.

One of the texts, which Ray often quoted from was Matthew 24:3 . . .

When I was in my late teens I had the opportunity to work at Algoma Steel for the summer, as my father was an employee; it was what the company provided, to the best of their ability, for the children of employees. So much has changed, that opportunity no longer exists. We may have had some clout in obtaining a summer job, however, once hired, we did not receive any favouritism and went where the foreman “stuck” us. One job was climbing inside a machine to clean it out . . .

A few years back, I wrote the following and also spoke on it. I recently was drawn back to the theme of “Perseverance” as we journey into the fall and also as I have a milestone birthday. Funny, how these dates come up sooner than you think.

In the country area, where I was raised outside of Sault Ste Marie, we had the best hockey team in the locales surrounding us; most of the players were from the 2 small Baptist churches, which our Pastor served with.
A local Fireman Captain, Doug, was our player coach and his son also played with us; when we were losing, especially going into the third period, in the dressing room, he would look at us and say, we are going to overcome them in this period and you guys need to be resilient.

Throughout our lives, we face “Giants.” They have different names: Fear, Discouragement, Loneliness, Worry, Guilt, Anger, Failure, etc. They do battle with what all of us need, hope, peace, joy, etc. There is a verse in John 14: 27 which are the words of Jesus.
“ I leave the gift of peace with you – my peace. Not the kind of fragile peace given by the world, but my perfect peace. Don’t yield to fear or be troubled in your hearts – instead, be courageous.”

On the side of a hill, about a twenty-minute hike in from a secluded bay on Long Lake, which adjoins the lake where our family “Sugar Shack” is in Northern Ontario, there is “Balancing Rock”. My grandfather found it many years ago, while hunting in the area and we have made numerous trips there. Don’t ask some of my family about a trip, I was leading, and we got hopelessly lost; that is another story.

One of the chores I enjoyed on the farm (there were not many), was cutting hay; the warm sun, the smell of fresh mown hay and I was in charge of the tractor; I loved being in charge. One particular morning, I was walking out to the field to pick up where I had left off the day before and I was listening to my transistor radio (I just dated myself).