Assorted
When there is smoke…
You think you know someone.
Five years – truly, has it already been five years that we have spent morning, noon and night working side by side? How many meals, how much laughter, how many truly delicious accomplishments we have achieved together only to arrive at this Easter morning and have you, the oven I’ve grown to trust, inexplicably burn the bacon beyond recognition?!! The betrayal runs deep.
Now, hopefully there aren’t any readers who are questioning the underlying necessity of bacon in the life of the believer. If so, go read Nehemiah 8 and then come back. I’ll wait. A large platter of bacon, crisped to perfection, is my weekly gift to my people, the reminder of all the wondrous things we mortals can experience this side of paradise.
Over the years, I have moved through many different seasons and methods of bacon prep. In the newlywed years, I attempted bacon on a paper-towel-ensconced plate in the microwave. This works better, I admit, if you hadn’t thought it a brilliant idea to register for large, square dinner plates that, when placed in the microwave, aggressively prohibit the rotation mechanism, thus producing bacon that is highly, almost toxically cooked on one end and raw on the other.
I then spent multiple years employing the electric skillet on the countertop method, which was largely fine but had two predictable problems I never seemed to entirely stay ahead of: I buy cheap griddles (yes, that technically makes me the problem, so make it three predictable problems) and they always seem to have large dead spots in the center, thus requiring a complicated mosaic of fatty meat scattered about that can cook approximately three pieces at a time, and the grease catch always has a tendency to break, which I consistently fail to notice until the grease has dripped all across the counter and floor, leaving an exciting patch for walking on days after the bacon has been consumed.
Then I was introduced to cooking bacon in the oven and, dare I have the hubris to say, I shall never go back? It has now become a part of my own personal Sunday morning liturgy. To get the family up and out to worship without a stressed atmosphere, I wake up an hour or so before the rest and go cook bacon. Later, when everyone is up, I pop the already cooked bacon back into the now cooling oven to warm it back to perfection and voilà – eat the fat! This was my plan on Easter morning...
And then the oven betrayed me.
Now, if ovens could speak, mine would probably say (and for some reason, I hear this in an Australian accent), Whoa now, Missy, I am not the one who broke the pattern, you did! You acted the dingo (again, Australian) and left the oven on for too long and you did not pay close attention when you warmed the bacon back up, which is why your family had to eat LIMP TURKEY BACON on Resurrection Sunday! At this point, obviously, I would push random buttons on the oven that would make it stop talking and probably clean itself. Ha, and so there.
But then... I would have to acknowledge that the oven, while unnecessarily preening and self-righteous and sporting a cooler accent than mine, was correct – I assumed the bacon was safe. I stopped paying attention. Smoke always ensues when we stop paying attention.
It is really no different in our daily walks with Christ. We have areas that we let our guard down (you know the one, that guard we are told to keep up with unceasing vigilance because our adversary the devil roams about like a lion seeking one to destroy?). We feel safe, spiritually, and fail to pay attention to the faint aroma of singed flesh that is beginning to permeate our relationships, our thoughts, our homes. One such example that leaps to mind for me is that brief window of time at the end of a long day when you and your spouse finally get to go to bed. How many thoughtless words have been spoken in those last moments of the waking hours? How many misunderstandings could have been avoided, how many apologies would not have become necessary, if we were to go to bed, spiritually, with a knife under our pillow, ready to spring to the cross at the first sign of temptation?
Because that is the only recourse when you light God’s good gifts on fire: Christ. He is your only protection, your true security, the only place you can and must turn again and again in the midst of temptation, of failure, of opposition, of smoke. Some kitchen fires... some relational fires... leave an aroma in the air that lasts for days. I spent a solid 48 hours haunted by the Easter bacon. But with each acrid whiff, I am given the choice to turn, and return, to the Gospel and put my hope in His unfailing protection. He is not done handing out bacon. So, I cannot be done standing guard, in His grace alone.
News
Saturday Selections – April 4, 2026
Woody takes on screens?
I wasn't expecting much from Toy Story #5, but with Woody and the crew taking on tech, I'm looking forward to this...
3 dodges that can derail any discussion
Apologist Greg Koukl on the how skeptics will use "the ad hominem fallacy, the genetic fallacy, and the straw man fallacy" to avoid having honest discussions. And he shows how to get discussions back on track.
US vice president thinks aliens are demons
J.D. Vance took that position based on his Judeo-Christian worldview. Creationist Gary Bates agrees.
The Netherlands House of representatives just passed legislation that would tax unrealized capital gains at 36 percent. That means, if your retirement stock portfolio grew from $50,000 to $150,000 this year, you would have to pay government $36,000 on that $100,000 increase in value. One big problem? You don't actually have any of that money yet – it's still invested in your stocks. So, as this article shares, a "person would either have to sell the stocks, dig into their savings, or take out a loan to pay the government." And, as anyone who has stocks knows, that $100,000 increase could take a sudden drop at any time too.
So what does such a tax encourage? To steer clear of investing, where the losses will still hurt, and your gains will be taxed before you've even realized them.
If you think a tax on unrealized gains could never happen in Canada, consider the similarity behind our property taxes. As I spotted on the 'Net, from a fellow named Ron Rule:
"Imagine if income taxes were based not on how much you made, but how much your town decided you could have made. That's basically how property tax works. The assessor decides what your house is worth, then taxes you as if you paid that price."
Property values in places like Hamilton and Toronto have doubled in a decade, which means that people who bought homes before the market went crazy are now getting taxed on gains they won't "realize" until they sell their house. And if they bought a $500,000 home in 2015, and are now paying taxes on a house worth $1 million, the taxes may well force them to sell – their assessed increases, never actually seen in their bank account, might just drive them out of their home.
A biblical case for border security
US Speaker of the House Mike Johnson wrote this back before Donald Trump became president again. There is a certain sense in which I would suspect all readers would be united about border security. We lock our house doors, as Franklin Graham put it, not because we hate those outside, but because we love those inside. So we'd all be united in wanting to keep the drug and sex traffickers and other criminals out.
But what of those who have no nefarious intent, and are simply looking for a better home? The practical observation in that case is, we can only start to consider those situations once the border is secure, so we can then sift the latter from the former. I wonder if Mike Johnson would support sponsorship programs, so that the individuals he speaks of, perhaps working through their churches, could act in rescuing some?
Pierre Poilievre tells Joe Rogan he supports letting doctors kill their patients
Last month Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre made an appearance on the most popular podcast in the world. Federally, his party has been leading the opposition against euthanasia for the mentally ill, and we can be thankful for that. But, in an appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience, he told Rogan that he actually supports giving people the choice to murder themselves.
That's a problem, and for the mentally ill too, because if euthanasia is a right and is good medicine for some, then how can you deny this treatment for others when it could instantly alleviate their affliction? If it is mercy to kill some sufferers, why isn't it mercy to kill other sufferers too? What fixed standard can Poilievre (or Joe Rogan) appeal to that would permit death to be used to "help" the physically ill, but not the mentally ill? What immovable line can you draw once you've decided killing is caring?
The lady below is coming out hard against Poilievre, and makes a very compelling practical argument against every form of euthanasia, highlighting the many enormous abuses underway in Canada's euthanasia culture. But the problem with her practical argument is that it invites a practical solution. Have better laws. Spend more on palliative care. Making the waiting time longer, etc.
But no practical solution will safeguard life so long as a culture doesn't value life. And we will only value life when we no longer thing its value comes from us, or from others, or from what we can do or experience. It is only when a culture looks upward and understands that life – our own life – is not ours to dispose of as we wish, but is entrusted to us by God above, that it can draw a fixed line: Do not kill (Ex. 20:13).
(This woman, Kelsi Sheren, takes God's name in vain several times, and drops an f-bomb or two, but I'm sharing the video anyway, because she presents here, in 20 minutes what you may not have heard in months of the mainstream media's euthanasia coverage.)
Today's Devotional
April 5 - Seeking greatness
“For who is the greater, one who reclines at table or one who serves? Is it not the one who reclines at table? But I am among you as the one who serves.” - Luke 22:27
Scripture reading: Luke 19:37-40 and Luke 22:23-30
On Palm Sunday Jesus rode on a donkey into Jerusalem. Being on a donkey makes a statement. The donkey is not >
Today's Manna Podcast
Whatever is pure
Serving #1167 of Manna, prepared by Rev. D. deBoer, is called "Whatever is pure".
