Dr. Harold McNabb

I heard Marianne call from the bedroom, “Harold, come here. I can’t find my jewellery box!” We had just returned from a brief visit away from home, following our move half way across the country.

Our family moved to Port Alberni, Vancouver Island the summer of 1980, where I had accepted the call to be a pastor in the community. We put our home in Manitoba up for sale, and moved into the church manse next door to the church on a large, steep and wooded lot overlooking the harbour and pulp and paper mill. The highway in and out of town turned into a main street at the bottom of the church property. 

By late summer we had settled into the house that was to be our home for several years, and the family next door had two girls about the same age which helped greatly in easing some of the loss they felt.

Marianne and I had close friends who lived two hours drive away near the community of Mill Bay. Their proximity was as welcome to us as Carolyn and Kathy were to Christine and Heather—friendly faces in a place far from what used to be home. One sunny week end we decided to visit our friends. We had acquired a box of pears from the trees of a generous donor and would finish the canning process upon our return. The house was locked and we set out for a brief day and a half away from home.

The highway was bare, not a car was in sight and bright moonlight on fields of surrounding snow on this January night made for easy visibility—I hardly even needed headlights.I had been away for the better part of a week and was eager to get home. So I pressed on the accelerator and sped up to seventy miles an hour. It was just past ten o’clock and there were few other travelers on the road. When I left the airport in Regina, Saskatchewan, the temperature was close to thirty degrees below zero, but with no wind and a perfectly clear night, I had the highway to myself.

I turned off the Trans-Canada highway, route number one, and was headed north and east on Saskatchewan route ten toward Manitoba and my home in the town of Dauphin. I would get home somewhere around two AM. I turned on my radio and settled in for a long uneventful ride home.

After about half an hour the thought struck me, “what a waste of time listening to the radio.”

As a pastor, I would encourage my congregation in their relationship with God and here I was wasting time which might be usefully invested. Pleased with the thought, I turned off the radio and began a dialogue with The Lord. I imagined Jesus in the seat next to me and began talking. I cannot remember a thing I spoke, but I do remember saying out loud, “OK, now it’s your turn if you have anything you want to say to me. I am willing to listen.”

A few moments went by then as clear as can be, not audibly, but in my mind or spirit, I heard these words: “Slow down.”

Research psychologists have found there are at least three situations when we are not ourselves. First, the average person puts on airs when he visits the lobby of a fancy hotel. Next, the typical Jane Doe will try to hide her emotions and bamboozle the salesman when she enters the new-car showroom. And finally, as we take our seat in church or synagogue, we try to fake out the Almighty that we've really been good all week.1

Have you ever done that?
I remember as a young man taking my date to a fancy restaurant and the waiter brought out some wine I had ordered. He offered it to me to taste first. Like I would have known a good wine from a bad one. But I played along and tasted it...waited a moment and nodded my approval. The waiter smiled and poured two glasses. I imagined him going back into the kitchen and pouring the last few drops back into the "wine left-overs" bucket where it had come from.

Do you ever do that in church ... pretend to God that you've really been better than you actually have been?
I would hope not.
I heard a saying once that I like: You don't have to put your . . .

The dishes, garbage, and dirty laundry would pile up for days when Cat and Harlan Barnard's teenage children refused to do their chores. So the Barnards—of Enterprise, Florida—went on strike, moving out of their house and into a domed tent set up in their front driveway. The parents refused to cook, clean, or drive for their children—Benjamin, 17, and Kit, 12—until they shaped up. "We've tried reverse psychology, upside down psychology, spiral psychology, and nothing has motivated them for any length of time," said Cat Barnard, 45, as she sat in a lawn chair at an umbrella-covered table. The strike took Benjamin and Kit by surprise. They came home from school Monday to find their mother outside with handwritten signs that read "Parents on Strike" and "Seeking Cooperation and Respect!"
Cat Barnard, a stay-at-home mom, and her 56-year-old husband, a government social services worker, decided their children needed to learn about empathy and responsibility. The Barnards slept on air mattresses in the tent and barbecued while their children fended for themselves with frozen TV dinners. The parents only went inside to shower and use the bathroom.

Passers-by from this bedroom community between Orlando and Daytona Beach shouted out words of encouragement. One woman driving past the Barnards' house rolled down her car window Wednesday and shouted, "Good for you! You should put the kids outside!"
Cat Barnard said she and her husband would . . .