What Are You Celebrating This Week?

Since the Lord's saving me I've never felt right about celebrating a demonically inspired pagan "holiday". I know we have freedom in Christ, however we are also cautioned to not use our freedom as a license for sinning.  Putting a "Christian Face" on it by dressing Trick-or-Treaters as Esther or Jesus doesn't get my vote either, because it attempts to Christianize a pagan festival no matter how you slice it.

Some think the answer is having a "harvest festival" at church, so that the children can have fun in a safe environment and thereby won't be deprived of candy, fun, and games, as if those were the most important things children should learn to base their lives on, not that I'm against "fun" or "games", etc., but how many Christian families even know that the day we celebrate as "harvest festival" or "Halloween" , on the 31 of October in 1517, Martin Luther posted his 95 thesis protesting the abuse of indulgences by the Roman Catholic Church?

To celebrate this pivotal time in history, let's not "celebrate" with pumpkins and ghouls and witches, but instead turn our hearts in prayerful remembrance of what the reformers went through to bring light to the world that was darkened by an almost Christian religion.

R.C. Sproul has an excellent series on this topic. I hope you will have the wisdom to take the time to listen to these lectures. These videos are packed with information, including some facts about Luther that surprised me, and helped me let go of some popular myths about this wonderful man.

The embeded link below will continue through all 10 videos, but if you desire to watch them separately, you can find them here:

Youtube link to Luther and the Reformation

A Spiritual Revolution

In the following videos Pastor R.C. Sproul gives a very helpful outline in understanding the times we are living in.






He delineates the difference between morals and ethics, today used interchangeably, however, the two are different in an important way, and help to show what is going on in North America.


In the next video Pastor Sproul explains the difference between following Jesus and legalism. The two often get confused for each other.








So, then, in order to avoid legalism, many fall into the opposite and equally wrong problem of antinomianism. What in the world is that???? you might be asking. Well, Pastor Sproul has a very good video that explains it as well :)

Is America a Christian Nation?... Was it a Christian Nation at it's Founding?

This short (30 minute) video is the first in a series given by a much younger (than he is now) R.C. Sproul. Although this was given many years ago, it is just as relevant today if not more so than the day he gave this. That to me is a testament to the truth of the content, that it has stood the test of time. Right at the beginning he cautions his listeners to the mistaken idea that the U.S. is a Christian nation. It is a nation that has been largely influenced by people that believed in the Bible, however having a Christian influence is other than being solidly Christian through and through. I hope you take a listen as he establishes his case for why he says what he does, and gives historical evidence to support these ideas.

Realizing Time is Short

September we had the opportunity to take a trip out west. It was beyond wonderful. While drving along my husband would often pull to the side if there was a good pull out spot. One of the times he did so, I noticed something that looked like a cross at the other end of this lookout spot.

so of course I had to investigate this...

and a closer look revealed...

None of us knows when our time is up. I pray that when the time comes for the Lord to call you home that you will join Him gladly full of thanksgiving for all the goodness He provides, and for the glad moment when He brings us home to be with Him, forever.

Recent Trip Out West

One of the reasons I haven't blogged much lately is because we have had the fortune this year of doing quite a bit of traveling and sight-seeing. One of our recent trips has been to Alberta, Canada. There was so much to see and do! We must have exclaimed "wow!" more than a hundred times each, it was truly spectacular. How anyone can see such awesomeness in God's creation and doubt that there is a very wonderful Creator is truly beyond me.

Today I'll blog a little about the Columbia Ice Fields. This was one of the bigger highlights of that trip. My husband had been planning this trip for more than 6 months, it is something he has been wanting to do for a long time so he wanted to make every second count.

The Columbia Ice Field is located in Jasper National Park in Alberta, Canada. It is the largest ice field in the North American continent.

We took the "Ice Field Parkway" to get to this, our first destination in our trip out west.

These photos do not do the actual real-life experience of the drive justice...

..but they give you a glimpse of the incredible splendour of what we saw

This chalet style building housed the ticket counters for our icy adventure

as well as two cafeterias (one of them an all-you-can-eat buffet)

washrooms and a gift shop (of course)

and a room where you could watch a video that told all about this ice field

This was our view of the glacier from the parking lot of the "chalet".

From the tour we learned it has diminished by quite a lot from the time it was first discovered

From the above image you can see how much it has receded

in the recent past, and that goes for the depth as well as the length of it 

Our guide explained that the ice reached way up and connected some

of the surrounding mountains halfway up to their peaks 

when it was first discovered in the 1800's.

He showed us an old photograph which was taken at that time.

This is me on the glacier next to our ice field bus. It was gigantic!

The guide explained that the Canadian company which made these buses

made only 23 of them, 22 are used by Brewster

which is the company which provided us this tour. 

The 23rd bus was used by the U.S. for an expedition to Antarctica.
These vehicles reach a maximum speed of a whopping
12 mph!!!! :)
and each tire costs $5,000

I have many other photos that were taken with my camera (these were taken with my cellphone)

however I haven't uploaded them onto my computer yet...so this is all you get, for now...

The ice of the glacier is incredibly thick, several hundred meters thick, 

and contain deep cracks that are covered with snow.

Our guide cautioned us to remain within the marked areas to be safe

because if someone happened to fall into one of these crevasses

 they might not be able to recover him or her. 

Of course we played it safe, but there were a couple adventurous (or stupid?)

people that went beyond the marked areas, however we all made it back to the bus safely.

 It felt much colder on the glacier than it did by the "chalet" building. It must have been

at least 20 degrees colder and the wind blew incessantly.

The guide told us these katabatic winds blow continually over the glacier. 

We also did the skywalk while we were there.

I only took two photos of this with my cellphone:

We had to take another bus to this location. 

This is what the walk looks like upon entering it.

They gave us this hand held device that explained what they wanted to tell about this walk

however I mostly looked at the magnificent landscape

and read a few of the  signs that were mounted along the walk.

link

This is the picture of it that Brewster has on it's website (link provided above)

So, I hope you enjoyed this portion of the incredible journey that we were able to experience on our excursion out west. I hope it inspires you to save your pennies and see this for yourself. You won't be disappointed!

I'll post more highlights of our trip as time allows me. In the meantime, here are some links if you'd like to learn more about this beautiful natural wonder:

http://www.earthsciencescanada.com/geovista/PDFs_en/vistas8_agci.pdf

 http://www.britannica.com/place/Columbia-Icefield

 http://www.pc.gc.ca/eng/pn-np/ab/jasper/activ/explore-interets/glacier-athabasca.aspx