October 24th of 50 Years Ago

Lord God of Israel, thank you for this new day of life you have given to Kie and me.

This week a certain day in my personal history comes to mind, which is this day, because on October 24, 1973, I left home for Vancouver with the intention of making my own way in the world. Today, of course, marks 50 years since that day which forever altered the course of my life

 

As I reflect upon this particular date of 50 years earlier, I realize that while I began my journey on a train and travelled alone across Canada, I never went alone, because God never abandoned me nor forsook me. This I know now with certainty, but I wasn't sure then.

 

On that Wednesday when Mom was driving me from Pierrefonds to CP Rail’s Windsor Station in downtown Montreal, she handed me a pocket-sized 1974 calendar about the size of a credit card. On one side of course is 1974 in miniature, but on the other side is Isaiah 41:10. 

 

“Fear not, for I am with you, be not dismayed, for I am your God; 

I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my victorious right hand.”

 

These 50 years later I still possess the card, and while the 1974 calendar became useless, and the world around me changed to become almost unrecognizable, and my grandparents, parents and loved ones were taken away, God’s word remains and has never changed. True to his words, God has always been with me. Even through the darkest days of my life, God has been with me, and likewise on the best days of my life, He has been with me.

 

Again, and now as an old man reflecting upon these 50 years gone, I have come to realize that I am a man who has been richly blessed by God, and yet so often lived as one griping about disappointments of unrealized aspirations; only because I failed on many days to recognize and acknowledge God’s goodness and favour upon me.

 

I have no idea what’s to come between now and Life's finish line, but I do know that the words of Isaiah 41:10 shall not change, nor shall all the other words from “In the beginning God…” through to “…Amen.”

With gratitude,

INJC

The Oddblock Station Agent 

Letting Go and Saying Good-bye

“As for man, his days are like grass; he flourishes like a flower of the field; for the wind passes over it, and it is gone, and its place knows it no more.”

(Psalm 103:15-16)

 

On September 29^th of 2022, this house situated as 5184 William Street in Pierrefonds, Quebec, left our family’s possession. 62 years earlier in April 1960, my parents moved into this newly constructed house.

 

My parents have been gone for a few years now, Dad was taken in December 2013 and Mom followed in March 2016, and as those Bible verses rightly tell us, this place remembers them no more, nor does it remember my sister, brothers and me.

In the final weeks leading up to the closing date of the sale, Alan recorded a few images. Without my parents present as well as absent their possessions, in the end a house remains just a house.

After stepping inside the front door...

Summer 2022... and the living room is devoid of furnishings except for this temporary plastic chair.

In an earlier time and in an earlier century, Ted was seated in this same corner.
Back then, Mom's knick-nacks and always present ivy adorned the divider.

Kimberly & David on Christmas Day 1983 in Grandma's & Grandpa's living room

The dining room in summer 2022... quite the contrast from Kimberly and David playing here on the living room floor in the foreground.

The dining room was empty when we first moved into this house back in 1960. A year later a carpet appeared (similar to the one shown), something which came from Dad's Aunt Annie's home Scotstown after she passed away in 1961.

Mom moved her folding card table and accompanying folding chairs in here, where they remained until Dad and Mom were able to purchase their Vilas-made solid maple dinging room set. I recall sitting in here at that wobbly card table, doing my Grade 3 homework. I'm not sure which I disliked more; the homework or the wobbly table.

Same dining room, but quite a few years earlier...

Christmas dinner 1965.

Dad is seated at the head of the table, but as this image reveals, he hadn't yet built those shelves and cabinets around the window. Ted is on the right wearing glasses and on his left Alan is next to him. Kathy is across the table and seated next to our paternal grandmother.

Moving right along...

The kitchen in 2022

Mom in the kitchen where she spent many an hour... and she always knew what to prepare for dinner. 

Shucked corn (ready on the counter) was waiting to go in the dutch oven. No date was recorded on this picture, so I'm guessing this scene was recorded in the early 1980's, when, as newlyweds, Kie and I would visit my parents on most weekends.

I'm grateful to Mom for teaching what she knew to Kie, and today I'm all the more grateful to Kie for having learned Mom's recipes and using them these many decades later.

Christmas Day in the late 1980's saw Mom and Dad in the kitchen having just stuffed the turkey and readying it for roasting. 

Christmas dinner was a yearly and much anticipated family event until Mom was unable to do this, having been afflicted by the onset of Alzheimer's disease.

Kitchen scene circa 1995

Kimberly & David playing cards with Grandma (and their Dad)... in the kitchen.

And now down into the basement...

Summer 2022 and an empty playroom in the basement.

Dad began finishing parts of the basement after Alan was born, and he started first with what would become my bedroom. Afterward, he started with the playroom. These many decades later I can boast that I helped Dad in those evenings by nailing together some of the framing.

I can't tell you how many hours Ted and I spent down here in the playroom playing pool and ping pong between the mid 1960's and the early 1970's, and I can't tell you how many friends during that time visited and joined us down here too, but I can tell you those days and hours were many.

Summer 2022.

Dad's work bench (built in 1960) had already been disassembled and removed when the basement was being emptied in preparation for the sale of the house.

I wish someone had taken a picture of Dad working at his bench in the basement.

I think people tend to confuse home and house and use the terms interchangeably, but as passing years that soon become passing decades shall in time reveal, a house is just a building and only the people who dwelt within the structure created the home. 

Remove by time and life circumstances, and then the eventual deaths of those loved ones, that remaining empty structure called a house becomes nothing more than an empty shell capable only of evoking many memories.

The Oddblock Station Agent

Who Will Speak Out for Our Voiceless Victims?

Lord God of Israel, thank you for this new day of life you have given to me, and I am truly grateful to you for this second chance at life. 

 

Through your chosen servant Isaiah, you have declared to all, “I am God, and there is no other; I am God and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose.” (Isaiah 46:9-10)

 

Lord God, you are from everlasting to everlasting, and Jesus declared, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.” (Matthew 24:35)

 

In your unchanging word you have said, “Woe to him who says to a father, “What are you begetting?” or to a woman, “With what are you in travail?” Thus also says the Lord, the Holy One of Israel and his maker, “Will you question me about my children, or command me concerning the work of my hands?” (Isaiah 45:10-11)

 

Lord God, your words here have with clarity included begetting and travail, and these two particular, unmistakable in meaning words you have chosen in speaking to us here, no doubt addresses every human life that exists, and has existed between conception and birth. You have claimed the unborn are your children, and you have challenged us about questioning what you have made. Too, you further call us to account about commanding you concerning the work of your hands.

 

Lord God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, your words to us cannot be clearer about the sanctity that you bestow upon the lives of the unborn, whereas we foolish clay pots who write the insane laws to allow and permit abortion are without a doubt commanding against you and the works of your hands. 

 

You Lord God, commanded us, “You shall not kill.” (Deuteronomy 5:17)

 

Lord God, here in this godless nation we call Canada, we are all collectively guilty of killing your children, and therefore we are rightfully under your wrath for this great evil of planned premeditated systemic murder and destruction of early lives. The blood of those unborn who are murdered and have been murdered cry out to you for justice, thus we are rightly under your judgement to come. 

 

From the very beginning, you Lord God have stated to us in your word that the blood of the innocent have voice, “The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground.” (Genesis 4:10)

 

Do we dare oppose what God has said by saying the blood of the unborn have no voice? 

 

This for certain is a blatant mocking of God at its worst and can only invite His further wrath which has already come upon us.

Shall there ever be an acknowledgement of the genocide of the unborn?

Forgive us Lord God because we are not doing what is right in your sight. Forgive me Lord for not choosing right and speaking up against this great evil for what it is. I have been blind as well as willfully blind, but my eyes are now open. We are guilty. I am guilty. Forgive us O Lord for we are all without excuse for this ignored genocide of the unborn that goes on day after day.

 

Your servant David knew your truth when he said, “For thou didst form my inward parts, thou didst knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise thee for thou art fearful and wonderful. Wonderful are thy works!” (Psalm 139:13-14)

 

Again Lord God, these are words that acknowledge and speak of the work of your hands, your wonderful works which David declares are the unborn.

Your servant Solomon, and the wisest of men, informs us, “As you do not know how the spirit comes to the bones in the womb of a woman with child, so you do not know the work of God who makes everything.” (Ecclesiastes 11:5)

 

Who is man today that we would speak against you, strive to pervert what you do and then kill what you make, whom are children in the wombs of women?

 

Lord God, in your sight we are doing a great evil and then in our utter baseness of mind we are calling it good. Forgive us Lord, for as a nation we are guilty, and as an individual in this nation I am guilty too for my silence.

 

Lord God of Israel, show mercy upon me, for I am a sinner without excuse or recourse because of my silence. 

 

O Lord, when we pray these words, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” (Matthew 6:10) in our blind foolish pride we afterward turn around and then work to conspire against You, O Lord, and against your will. 

 

Do not allow our lips to parrot these words of Jesus in asking for your will to be done if and when our hearts and actions lie… that our prayers to You become lies also. We are all guilty of doing this and we are without excuse. 

 

“We have wearied the Lord with our words. Yet we say, “How have we wearied him?” By saying, “Every one who does evil is good in the sight of the Lord, and he delights in them.” Or by asking, “Where is the God of justice?” (Malachi 2:17)

 

Lord, please deliver us from this great evil of our day in which righteousness is denied and justice is perverted at every level.

 

Lord Jesus, your servant Paul whom you yourself chose understood through you, your words, and in what he has written he tells us what has become today’s news, “For this reason God gave them up to dishonourable passions…” (Romans 1:26)

 

We are surrounded in a world filled with these dishonourable passions that foolish men declare as good. 

 

“And since they (we) did not (do not) see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up (gives us up) to a base mind (insanity) and to improper conduct. They are (we are) filled with all manner of wickedness, evil, covetousness, malice, they (we) are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.” (Romans 1:28-31)

 

“Though they (we) know God’s decree that those (we) who do such things deserve to die, they (we) not only do them but approve those who practice them.” (Romans 1:32)

 

One only needs to look, hear and see what is going on in the world, in this country, in this city to know what Paul wrote back then in Rome is what is going on here today. What we are seeing is evidence of God’s wrath that is unfolding upon us, because we have been given over to our evil desires.

 

“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of men who by their wickedness suppress the truth.” (Romans 1:18)

 

Lord God, we suppress the truth, your truth O Lord, and we do this by denial of every single one of your never changing Ten Commandments which You have given to us to define and discern good from evil; right from wrong; just from unjust. 

 

Why does every aspect of the world we live in, including many in our churches, seek to disavow and repudiate your timeless, unchanging, immovable definitions of what is just and right?

 

Lord God, your wrath is rightfully upon us and our world because we’re blind to and further corrupted by the insanity that now envelops us.

 

Lord God, the one true and living God of Israel, we are guilty of all these words you have spoken against us and in how we live now as well as how we have been living until now. Please have mercy upon us and forgive us.

 

Last year for my birthday Kimberly gave me a mezuzah, and while inside that item are God’s words to be placed on the doorpost of my home, my true desire is that You, O Lord God, the one true living God, shall take away my heart of stone, and in its place write Your words upon my new heart of flesh that You shall give. (Ezekiel 36:26)

 

Lord God, if what I have penned here accuses me of hate by the insane worldly standards by which your servants are accused, and of being intolerant because I have repeated your words of truth, then let me labeled hateful and intolerant, because I know in my heart that what you have spoken to all, O Lord, is true, inerrant and immovable.

 

Lord God, I may one day be silenced for speaking out your words, but I shall no longer be silenced by the fear of quoting your truth.

 

Forgive me, O Lord, for I am a sinful man in your sight and a greatly troubled man in seeing the increasing evil spreading throughout this world.

The Oddblock Station Agent