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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2012-09-20, Page 15REWARDING OPPORTUNITY: Tell the story of your community. The Citizen requires a community correspondent to tell our readers of the news in the Auburn community. Small remuneration. Contact Shawn Loughlin, The Citizen, 519-523-4792 or email: editor@northhuron.on.ca 33-tfn BOGIE, Melvin. In loving memory of a dear loving husband, father and grandfather, who passed away September 13, 2009. I thought of you with love today but that is nothing new, I thought about you yesterday and days before that too. I think of you in silence, I often speak your name, All I have are memories and your picture in a frame. Your memory is my keepsake with which I’ll never part, God has you in His keeping, I have you in my heart. – Always remembered with love by his family Dorothy; Dianne, James, Emily, Colby, Jarrett and Davis Parsons; Paul and Kelly Bogie; Michael, Nicky, Skylar and Rachael Bogie. 37-1 TUTORING AND PIANO LES- sons available in Wingham area for elementary and high school students. Ontario Certified teacher. Contact Nikki at 519-357-4281 or nikki.howard.uoit2011@gmail.com 37-2 -------------------------------------------- SPARKLE & SHINE AUTO Detailing – wash, wax, interior shampoo, RainX windshield treat- ment, etc. For all of your car care needs call Shanann 519-440-7031 or email: sparkleshiner@hotmail.com 29-tfn -------------------------------------------- FAXING SERVICE We can send or receive faxes for you for only $1.00 per page. The Citizen, 413 Queen St., Blyth. Phone 519- 523-4792. Fax 519-523-9140. tfn TWO-BEDROOM COTTAGE WITH bunkhouse at Point Clark, includes fully-equipped kitchen, gas barbecue, fire pit, horseshoe pit and much more, close to lighthouse and beach. To find our more or to book your holiday call 519-523-4799 after 6:00 p.m. tfn -------------------------------------------- THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 2012, PAGE 15.Classified Advertisements Real estate Services All word ads in The Citizen classifieds are put on our webpage at www.northhuron.on.ca Help wanted In memoriam A great solid 3 bedroom, brick ranch style home on a large landscaped lot in Brussels. It would be well worth your time to view this home if retiring or upgrading. This home can be viewed on-line including details at www.gerryedwards.com or for a private viewing day or night call Gerry Edwards at 519-357-1868 anytime. Asking $219,900 753 Sports Drive, Brussels All offers considered. Gerald W. C. Edwards Real Estate Brokerage RR #3, Wingham 519-357-1868 acation propertiesV Religion can mean humble beginnings Thompson says deficit needs to be tackled first in the next 12 months Continued from page 1 along the way. The first thing she feels needs to be tackled is the deficit, which she says has interest on it growing by $1.8 million per hour. “We need to sharpen our pencils and figure out how to do things differently,” Thompson says, just as any household or business does when they encounter tough financial times. Thompson says that over the past 12 months she has been proud of her ability to “hold her own” with representatives from Toronto and other city centres throughout the province. She cites her experience at the Ontario Goat Dairy Co-op as one of the reasons why she’s able to keep up. She says, however, her goal is to keep things light while doing a good job. “I take this role very seriously, but I never want to take myself too seriously,” she said, adding that at the end of the day, she’s just Lisa Thompson, no more, no less, and she doesn’t want to let her position define her. One of the biggest moments for Thompson, she says, was her swearing-in ceremony at Queen’s Park where she placed her hand on the exact same Bible that every member of the 39 parliaments used to swear in before her. “There were over 100 people there. It was incredible,” Thompson said. “The Bible was worn on the front and the history behind that wasn’t lost on me. Stunning.” Thompson said she held the Bible up so her 100 guests could see it, wanting to share it with everyone, but one of her friends yelled to her to put it down before she dropped it. She says she’s proud to have kept politics personal in Huron- Bruce in engaging the everyday resident in what happens at Queen’s Park. Thompson, who was in The Citizen’s office on Friday, left just hours before dozens of teachers stormed her Blyth office in opposition to her stance on the current bargaining with the province’s teachers. Continued from page 12 I deserve to be treated like trash.’ We know this wasn’t how the father saw or treated his son. Instead of seeing him as trash, the father saw him as lost treasure that was found. The father took his son... took him when he was at his worst; took him when he was broken and damaged and transformed him into treasure. “But his father said to the servants, ‘Quick! Bring the finest robe in the house and put it on him. Get a ring for his finger and sandals for his feet. And kill the calf we have been fattening. We must celebrate with a feast, for this son of mine was dead and has now returned to life. He was lost, but now he is found.’ So the party began. (Luke 15: 22-24). How frustrating would it be if the son, after being forgiven and set free to live like a son, went back to his old ways of living like a starving slave, in the muck, feeding pigs. But he didn’t do that. Do you know why? He believed his father. This fact is an important key we often overlook in this story. The son came home hoping at best his father would accept him and treat him as a hired hand but the father accepted him and treated him instead like a son...and the son believed the father. If the son hadn’t believed the father, if he didn’t truly believe he was free to live as a son, then he would have kept trying to live like a slave even though his father accepted him back as a son. And we will do this. We feel unworthy. We know we don’t deserve forgiveness and freedom. But the truth is God will forgive us. He will accept us as His child and set us free to live as His child but we can struggle believing this is true. Tony Campolo once told a story that I think illustrates what we are trying to say: ‘Every Sunday, the ducks in a certain town waddle out of their houses down Main Street to their church. They waddle into the sanctuary and squat in their proper pews. The duck choir waddles in and takes its place, and then the duck minister comes forward and opens the duck Bible. He reads to them: “Ducks! God has given you wings! With wings you can fly! With wings you can mount up and soar like eagles. No walls can confine you! No fences can hold you! You have wings. God has given you wings and you can fly like birds!” All the ducks shout, “Amen!” And then they all waddled home.’ They heard but they didn’t believe. They heard the liberating truth but they didn’t believe it. How do I know that...because they didn’t live it. They didn’t fly. They waddled. And we come to God asking for forgiveness, and He says we are free to live like His son or daughter but some of us don’t believe Him. How do I know that? Because we are not living it. We are still looking back and living as if we are a slave. In his book, “Victory Over The Darkness,” Neil Anderson writes, “We need to understand who we are as a result of who God is and what He has done. A fruitful Christian life is the result of living by faith according to what God said is true.” Some of the most effective people we read about in the Bible were once the most ineffective people you wouldn’t expect anything good or useful to come from. But with God they were able to recycle the trash in their life into treasure. Think about it. Moses was a murderer: God transformed an outlaw into one of the greatest leader in Israel’s history. David was an adulterer. God transformed him in becoming the greatest of the Hebrews kings. God transformed Esther, a harem girl into into a queen who would save the Jewish people from history’s first Holocaust. Peter was a boastful fisherman who denied knowing Jesus three times. God transformed him making him the rock upon which Christ built His Church. God can take the greatest sinner, the least of the least, the bottom of the barrel person and transform them into treasure. God does this all the time. This is where that coffee bean comes into play. This Kopi Luwak coffee bean has quite a story that reminds me in many ways how God works in our lives transforming the trash in our life into treasure. Kopi is the Indonesia word for “coffee”… that makes sense. And Luwak is Indonesian word for cat...which at first doesn’t seem to make much sense. What does a cat have to do with this coffee you might wonder? Well, quite a bit in fact. A cat known as a Palm Civet or Luwak is directly involved in the process of harvesting this bean. The Luwak is about the size of a fox and it kind of looks like someone try to cross a cat and a raccoon together. What is unique about the Luwak is that it is the Juan Valdez of the animal kingdom. It loves coffee. It roams at night over the island of Sumatra and picks only the most perfect coffee berries to eat. The Luwak is a connoisseur of the finest coffee beans. You have got to understand that the Luwak would rather starve than feast on an inferior bean. It has the ability and it is absolutely meticulous when it comes to choosing only the best coffee berries to eat. Now the Luwak can eat the soft shell of the coffee berry but it can’t digest the actual bean inside. It digests the coffee berry but passes the beans through its digestive system and then defecates the undigested coffee beans in what looks like sausage links. Local harvesters go along the river banks, dig up wash the clumps until only the beans are left which are then dried in the sun and then roasted. Not only does the Luwak choose the best beans to eat but while in the stomach of the Luwak, digestive juices leech out many of the proteins responsible for the bitterness in the coffee resulting in a smoother sweeter cup of coffee. I served some to a handful of coffee lovers following the morning service and they loved it. The fact is that the most expensive and rarest coffee in the world is actually animal doo doo. I find is so interesting how the most exotic and rarest of coffee beans comes from the most humble of places. Isn’t it amazing how God works? God has such a great sense of humour. He probably sits up there in heaven and shakes His head watching grown people down here getting so excited and paying so much a coffee that is cat doo doo. But He has done this elsewhere too. Jesus was called the Nazarene because He was from a town called Nazareth which was considered to be a lowlife of a place to be from. When Philip told his brother that the promised Messiah had come and His name was Jesus and He was from Nazareth Nathaniel replied, “Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?” John 1:46. Where was Jesus born? In a stable. What goes in a stable? More animal doo doo. Jesus crucified at a place called Golgotha, which was actually built on a garbage dump for the city of Jerusalem. Jesus died among refuse and yet from this place millions of lives for would be forever transformed. I think God wants us to understand that nothing is beyond His transforming power. You may feel unworthy and beyond help but God wants you to know there is a transformation that takes place when you come to Him. You don’t have to live as a slaves to the devil and sin any longer. You are to live as a free child of God so break free from living like a slave to sin. Just as the father did with his son, God wants to take rags covered with pig manure and replace them with the finest robe. He wants to put a ring on your finger. He wants to put sandals on your feet. He will transform you. He wants to free you. My question to you is this, ‘Do you believe Him. Or will you waddle off unchanged?