Dr. Cook Extended Care – Wednesday Chapel

Today, I gave a short 10-minute talk to a packed room of extended care patients at the Dr. Cook facility in Lloydminster, AB.

As the basis for my address I read Joshua 4:1-7. I highlighted the idea of the importance to find or see symbols of God’s activity in the world. To introduce the idea I told a story.

The story involved a conversation I had with my elderly grandfather. I don’t remember what sparked the desire but I had never been that close to him and thought I would like to talk and find out more about this man, my mothers father. The conversation covered everything from his upbringing and his sentencing to 1-year of Sunday School by a municipal judge as punishment for a break and enter charge to the death of his only son, his wife and his own knowledge of the brevity of life. He told me stories about logging, farming, running a mill, driving horse-drawn carts, his first truck, and starting his own gravel pit. He talked about honour and respect, work ethic, and loving a woman who had not know love in her childhood.

Don’t get me wrong, the stories were brief and lacking in vibrant detail, my grandpa was not a talkative guy. I remember going to visit him with my wife. He asked if we would stay for supper and spend the evening. As fare he offered corn on the cob and we shared our banana chip-loaf. Then we sat silently, breaking the silence with a Saskatchewan Roughriders game. I loved it and I heard from my mom later that he did too.

I shared in my talk, I asked him what it was that he figured was most important for a younger man like me to know. His answer, though not offered as poetically I summarize here, build good memories and then take time to remember them. It was good to hear.

I segued from this to Joshua and the Israelites building a memorial of stones to God’s past action. The memorial was intended to remind the people of the truth so that they might live according to it in the present and have hope for the future. The application is ready. For those who sit, often because they can do little or nothing else, for those who can do little but think and often are best at remembering one of the things that they can do to strengthen themselves for today and give them hope for tomorrow is to look for and find symbols of good times and of God’s past action.

God is the creator, the sustainer, the redeemer. Experiencing and then remembering these truth’s is important, nay essential. For these blessed seniors whose lives are so limited I suggested that some of lives purest experiences might facilitate this experience and remembrance. Noting the creation of every new day, Embracing the sustenance of the warmth of their rooms and the helpful hands of their caretakers. Finding in the hearing of God’s Word the seed and plant of redemption.

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