Saturday, September 14, 2013

74 YEARS AGO TODAY







On September 14th, 1939, Margaret and William Wilson rejoiced in the arrival of baby Ian at the Holgate Nursing Home in the city of York in England.

After 74 years on planet Earth I think I qualify as a survivor.

Why?
1939 -40 was the coldest winter in a hundred years so I received a chilly welcome into this world. For the next three months I clung to life with an un-diagnosed bowel infection. For the next four years my city was bombed flat by the German Luftwaffe.

Tickling matches with my elder sister almost killed me.

At 16 years old I was expelled from my Alma Mater, Nelson Grammar School.
At seventeen I almost succumbed to a vicious bout of malaria in Africa.
By 22 (by then a Christian) I narrowly missed being  failed at college for interrupting my professors' lectures.
The redeeming factor in my life has been my patient and gracious wife, Pauline, who can truly claim to be a survivor after 45 years of marriage to Ian
We both survived raising three teenagers and are currently involved in our latest survival course helping raise 10 grand-children.

Then let us senior citizens agree, that surviving seven decades on this Earth, IS to succeed, despite your bank balance saying otherwise.

Jubilate.

Ian





Thursday, September 12, 2013

NINE ELEVEN 12 years and counting.





I was in Seattle, Washington when the twin towers were destroyed that fateful day in 2001.
I was preaching in a crusade and when I made the appeal that night  every single person in the audience stood to their feet either to receive Christ or to re-dedicate their lives to His cause.
It continued that way for the next month in Alaska and later when I preached in Edmonton, Alberta.

They were momentous days in which to preach the Gospel. Such attention, such reception, such readiness to listen and respond to the offer of God's mercy and forgiveness.



Twelve years later, the images of downtown Manhattan under clouds of smoke and dust have faded from the public memory; the screams and pandemonium are but a distant echo.

Life goes on and all things have returned to "normal". The challenges of making ends meet, of raising a family, of paying the mortgage, of managing the daily affairs of life have superimposed themselves upon the stark horror and (for thousands) the finality of the event called 9/11.
As for myself, I continue to preach the same Gospel of God's mercy, God's grace and love in Jesus Christ.
Yet strangely enough I no longer enjoy the same rapt attention and focus upon the message that I experienced in those few memorable weeks that stretched from 9/11 to 10/11 and beyond.

Is it that we have simply drifted back into the shallow slumbers of life that easy routine brings upon us all?
If that is the case, pray that we do not receive another wake-up call from God that will remind us that Eternity and the world to come are still but a heart-beat away.

Jubilate 

Ian


Monday, September 9, 2013

The power of reconciliation

This is the last in the series on "Archives".
The bottom photo brought a tear to my eye. It tells us that the power of reconciliation is greater than the forces of hatred that divide man-kind and set brother against brother and nation against nation. 





We might also add that this lesson seems to come more easily to eighty year-olds than it does to twenty year-olds. 







At the battle of Gettysburg the average age of the combatants was twenty one. Fifty years after the great conflict we see two of the veterans at a Civil War reunion. Time and the love of God working in their hearts had taught them to beat their swords into plough-shares and to pledge allegiance to the flag of "One Nation Under God."

Jubilate.

Ian