Thursday, January 8, 2009

Day 242

the warm rain of the past day has devastated the fresh snow. in the lower parts of town, the streets are flooded like small canals and i hear from friends who work on the ski field that there are huge puddles on the runs and no riders.

i left the house earlier to go downtown to read and chill. there was a keen battle inside as i got into the garage. most of me wanted to ride the bike as usual. i told myself that i always ride the bike and it makes the trip goes faster. even with the rain i could avoid the bigger puddles and be sweet and not get my feet soaked like if i walked. still, strangely, i ended up walking.

on the downtown sidewalk i ran into a friend dave. he's from new zealand and works as a snowboard instructor on the hill and is one of the people in our ever growing group of friends. he had an off day too and he joined the trip to the coffee shop.

yesterday i'd said how a good day would include a solid conversation with a new person and as i left today i had no idea that it was about to happen again. the regular shops were busy in town cause no one was skiing. the tea house was full. we walked over to mug shots and found a table amongst a dull roar of chatter. we sat down with coffee and once again, for the thousandth time, i wished i had a little tape recorder in my pocket. i might just get one one of these days.

dave asked why i'd come to fernie and we started talking about the various little steps and troubles and then the way things were provided and developed. you know that same story by now but it was exciting to recount the faith of the adventure of it all. this paragraph is quite cheap to be honest and i'm sorry but i've still not managed to find a way to sum the big picture of all this into these situations.

he agreed that everything happens for a reason. ''i think running into you happened for a reason too,'' he said and he told me about how he'd been falling out of perspective of faith and relying on God and that our conversation and the story was stoking his faith. i told him that this was doing the same for me and i remembered the strange choice not to ride a bike and not get here faster and not miss him on that street corner.

there's a language i want to speak but can't at the moment and i'm left with plain verbs and nouns and standard past-tense sentences but i wish i could make more of this. for both our sakes.

so often groups are assembled under the name of a goal. i picture that kind of formation like the laying of a long base of a triangle and calling it something good like a ''bible study'' or ''small group." like any triangle, there's a tip at the top that might one day be reached and achieved ▲. that's all well and good and i've been a part of those before, but today dave and i decided to make a new kind of small group deal. except i picture it as being small and nameless and with only the loose goals of discussing faith and sharing how we've been seeing God work. fellowship and encouragement. like the tiny, bottom tip of an upside down triangle, we really have nothing at the top to reach but there's an infinite amount of room for expansion and growth. that excites me.▼

No comments: