June 10, 2025
Dear Friends,
He ran into our back yard, panic on his face, eyes frantic, and came right toward me. “Sir, can you help me? There’s some really bad people chasing me and they’re trying to shoot me!” I immediately exercised appropriate concern but, if I”m honest, I was having a bit of an internal chuckle — not at this poor man’s expense but because of God’s sense of humour.
Let me back up. I should have known the day would be “unusual.” It began with the Lord very clearly drawing my attention to this verse at the beginning of Proverbs 27: “Don't brag about tomorrow! Each day brings its own surprises.” It was a good word for me as I have an unusually heavy week scheduled. I thought that the Lord was good in reminding me to stay focused and to stay on task. However, …
Before I had a chance to finish my quiet time, a neighbour came up to me to insinuate that I was the cause that one of her internet cables was “fried” (to use her word). Coincidentally, her internet had gone out last week at about the same time I was working to lay an empty conduit into the Telus box on the edge of our property. To make a long story short, I took about twenty minutes to explain to her that I hadn’t touched any wires and to show her that the inside of the box was a rat’s nest of tangled wires, the legacy of a history of repairmen who didn’t seem to care much about their work. I commiserated with her and she left mollified.
No sooner had I finished my quiet time and sat down at my computer to work than my mouse died. I could not revive it. My loving wife offered to go and purchase a replacement so that I could keep working. She brought the replacement home but I couldn’t get it to work. After an hour, my original mouse experienced a miraculous resurrection and began to work again (the new one still isn’t working!!). That allowed me to get on with things I had needed to do for a presentation I need to make to a church staff today.
I took a brief break to go to my shop and was standing on my patio when the aforementioned desperado came around the corner. (Did I mention that all of this happened in the space of about three hours?) Anyway, I tried to calm the man down and asked about who was chasing him. I invited him to sit down in a chair and assured him that I would protect him (though he was much younger than me and probably outweighed me by thirty or forty pounds). Suddenly, he said, “You’re not one of them, are you?” I assured him I was not. He cast a glance toward the kitchen window of Tim’s house, where Tim happened to be standing, observing the byplay, and said, “I can see them. They’re already on the radio.” Then, in the same level of agitation, he took off around the side of the house and that was the last I saw of him.
What did I learn from all this? Mental illness is a serious and tragic reality and it is not nearly as distant from us as we imagine. As I tried to comfort the stranger, I thought of my brother-in-law, whose mental illness led to his murder at the hands of another mentally ill man. You do what you can in the moment. Making peace with a neighbour is not always easy and can by both humbling and frustrating. Finally, I was reminded to hold all plans loosely and be open to what God might have in mind. I’m grateful that he gave me a heads up before all this unfolded. I hope your week is filled with living in the present and accepting it as God’s surprising gift!
Blessings!
Doug