Northwest Baptist Seminary

Over the Christmas holiday, Rita and I received a long distance call from our eldest daughter Trish in Aberdeen, Scotland . With great excitement she announced, "Pete and I are engaged!"

The journey to this moment of family joy has been nothing if not exciting and a challenge to faith.

From their very earliest years, we as parents have tried our best to nurture Trish and her sister Jenn in the faith. Part of that nurture and instruction was the gentle but insistent reminder that best marriages are made where Christ is truly at the center. They should have an eye out for that "good Christian boy."

In 1987, our family went to Aberdeen Scotland where I pursued my PhD. It was, we were convinced, "The Lord’s will for us." We were there for five years.  While the doctoral studies were rigorous and demanding, our experience of church family, neighbourhood, school and friends was idyllic.

In 1992, I returned to Canada a "Doctor of Philosophy" with a much grown up family. We celebrated God’s goodness and the family’s achievement and began the process of taking next steps.

Then came the troubles.

There were many difficulties in settling down in Vancouver for each of us: unusual challenges at church, deep troubles for the girls at school and in relationships, mounting tensions at home. We began to wonder whether Aberdeen, notwithstanding its success and many dear friendships, was a reason why things were not going well. If you do what you believe in your heart is God’s good pleasure, shouldn’t things go well?

Had Aberdeen been a mistake?

The road from that place to the present has on many occasions tested Rita’s and my believe in God’s goodness and his oversight through and against crises of various kinds as we careened forward in the haze. How could God be working in what we were seeing and experiencing?  I wondered whether this was how Abraham felt, and Joseph, in their troubled times.

Today, I’m standing at a peculiarly high vantage point looking back. Had someone said when we left Scotland that Trish would return some 15 years later and discover the "good Christian boy" of her (and our!) dreams, I would not have believed it.  Yet, after taking a course in London this past summer, she did return to Aberdeen, Scotland. She stayed with her friends Morven and Joanna (I remember the Sunday when the three of them each gave their testimony and were baptized). She met Peter, another "preacher’s kid" with stories to tell, who had, like her, come through pain in pilgrimage to a place of renewed commitment and love for Christ.

Pete’s a wonderful fellow and will make a great husband for Trish and a delightful brother- and son-in-law.

The view that I have just now through the rolling clouds is a gracious gift from God. It seems to me to be something like the view Joseph had as he stood with his brothers humbled before him and second in power only to the Pharaoh of Egypt. From his vantage point, Joseph, reflecting upon the pain and trouble of his life, could say, "God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives." (Genesis 50:20)

As I turn to look ahead into the New Year, it is with a prayer. "Lord, help me to entrust myself to You and to believe in the reality of Your mysterious working as I go forward. Fortify me in the memory of this glorious view from the height."