Souvenir Anyone?

*warning: RANT
I would just like to announce that I rid myself of the accursed green magnet today. I miraculously got an exam date on the day that I was allowed to do so and after an overly stressful forty-five minutes, he said "you passed," and I said "sweet".
I don't know about most of you, but there were at least two days when I was ready to ring the neck of the nearest politician for allowing such a system to come into play. The first of these occasions happened when coming home one night from a lovely soak at Gabe’s house. I was simply driving three of my buddies home and happened upon a police roadblock on the Freeway off-ramp. I knew I was done-for when I saw one “N” driver already pulled over on the side of the road. So I got a ticket for driving my friends home and managed to talk my way out of a ticket for not having my stupid magnet on the back of my car. Both were infractions that arose solely from this clever little cash-grab scheme thought up by our loving friends at ICBC and promoted heartily by our Provincial government.
I would like to go (not as far as you might think) out on a limb here: I think ICBC is patenting it’s discriminatory programs against responsible young people after Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany. I mean after all isn’t our very definition of discrimination painting an entire people with the same broad brushstrokes? And then comes the mandatory public identification armbands… I mean green magnets. Giving foggy large generalizations as reasons for their actions, for example, “Young people street race”, or “Young people submit to peer pressure”.
Since when is the government responsible for attempting to increase the maturity level of an entire generation? Why not sober up the drunk and high fools and the street racers (mainly males, which makes me think that if I were a female I would be quite a bit more perturbed) who go around killing families, by enforcing some laws that have some punishments attached? I think that the Asian world has their heads screwed on straight. People caught selling drugs are executed… guess what, most Asian provinces don’t have drug problems… Now I’m not suggesting executing drunk drivers and street racers, but if they don’t see their lives as valuable enough to treat them with respect and by doing so, endanger or end other people’s lives… there has to be more dissuasion than staying overnight in the tank or staying a year in prison.
So, then I think, “can you really send a kid to prison for five years because he made a bad decision?”. Well maybe he shouldn’t go to prison, maybe he should be sent to a labour camp where he can learn to become a productive member of society and rethink the value of life. But isn’t grace better? Well does grace remove consequence? Should a judicial system be based on grace? Is the realization of what they just did enough punishment? I think it's largely circumstantial...
Well enough of that rant.
My second day of severe disgruntlement came after the first, when at 18 years of age, I had to ask my MOTHER to come with me to pick up three of my friends to come over for a barbeque! I very well could have broken the law, I would have gotten away with it I promise you. But I guess I wasn’t willing to take the chance at having to swallow another $125.00 ticket for being a nice guy.
So now ends this era of simmering anger in the life of Stewart Reimer. If anyone wants a souvenir green “N” magnet, I don’t want it (don’t mind the dart holes).

Feeling Behind

So I'll do my best to catch you up...
I'm still working as a part time canoeing instructor and loving it. That will be wrapping up at the middle-end of June and then I'll be back to full time construction. I'm on a very new site barely into Vancouver on Victoria and 37th (if you're in the area and care to pop by we take lunch at 1:00). At the same time as construction I will be working part time during evenings and weekends and sometimes during a week day guiding hikes, teaching canoeing, guiding canoe and kayak tours, and running my evening kids rock climbing program for the city of surrey Outdoor Rec Department. Fun times all around. My car hasn't broken down yet (thank you Lord), I am relatively healthy (thank you Lord), and I am learning to better love Jesus every day despite the fact that I certainly don’t love Jesus more every day (maybe like every month or something...). I can very clearly see that I have been very blessed this year and I have nobody to thank for that except my heavenly Father. It seems like I never run out of work, and every conceivable need that I have, is taken care of without fail.
Isn't it so easy to believe in times like these? Whenever something is easy in this walk it sort of scares me because after all "wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it". But then Jesus told us to follow him and take his yoke because it was easy and the burden was light…
But it is, in a way, exciting for me to think ahead and know that this time of seeing God's hand so clearly in my life will be an experience that I know I will draw on down the road when it just seems like nothing is going right and God is no where to be found. I think to myself that I ought not to let this time of calm pass by without being used to fully as a training ground for what is to come. To start layering on the Armour of God. To learn to trust God with my finances so that when it is much harder to do so, I have already set a pattern in my life to follow in obedience. To learn that no matter what comes my way God has made promises that apply to me right now.
I have confidence that if I embrace this time in my life as a time to learn to live by the Spirit, that when trials come, I will consider them pure joy knowing that the testing of my faith will produce in me perseverance which must finish its work so that I will be mature and complete not lacking anything. I think that’s one thing the Spirit does isn’t it? Adding the perspective of eternity to life…
Oh the fun of the theoretical Christian walk, so smooth yet complex and well articulated… I guess we’ll never run out of things to strive after. It’s a journey and I pray I’m stronger tomorrow.