Robert Service’s poem, The Spell of the Yukon, describes the lure of gold that drew many people to the Yukon seeking to find their fortune. In their futile search for gold, and after “hurling their youth in a grave”, Robert Service describes the real treasure that was found; the beauty of the Yukon wilderness; a beauty that created a longing to come back.

Many of us have experienced spell of the Yukon. We’ve come, many have stayed, some have left only to return again. There is something about this land of rugged mountains, cool refreshing streams, and abundant wildlife that draws us back. If there is anywhere we could go to enjoy the beauty of God’s creation, it is here in the wilderness of the Yukon.

This is especially true this year as we are actually experiencing “summer”. The bright sunshine encourages us to take advantage of the great outdoors as often as we can. I know I look forward to any and all wilderness experiences. There is something special about the wilderness and the beauty of God’s creation that draws us to Himself. One of the songs we sing says, “Up to the mountain we love to go to find the presence of the Lord”. When Heather and I enjoy a few days on a remote river we certainly do sense the awe and presence of God. Perhaps that is why our Lord would go up on the mountain side to pray.

While it is true that the Lord withdrew himself to quiet places to pray, He was equally careful to connect with the people He came to seek, serve and save. He had quiet times in order that he would be strengthened and focused when he returned to the crowds.

We all need personal quiet time with the Lord. That needs to be a priority. We all need to “get away” and find strength and focus in the presence of the Lord. This is a good thing. But we need to be careful that we don’t live our Christian lives in isolation, that our outdoor adventures don’t keep us from coming together as the Body of Christ.

When someone is away on a weekend as part of their personal or family holiday, that is a good thing. However if we tend to be absent on frequent weekends because we want to experience the wilderness, I’m not sure that’s a healthy choice - even if we can worship God in the beauty of His creation.

As God’s people, we are the body of Christ. We are the Church. The word for “church” in the Greek means the people of God, the collective body of believers, the congregation or assembly. The Church isn’t a building or an organization, it is the coming together of God’s people. It is a living group of people who are collectively focused on the Lord. In other words, we don’t go to church, we are the Church. That’s why the writer to the Hebrews says (Hebrews 10;25), “Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another–and all the more as you see the Day approaching.”

The Church, the Body of Christ, can not be complete unless we come together. In the early days of the Church, Acts 2 tells us that the followers of Christ met together daily. David wrote in Psalm 122, “I rejoiced with those who said to me, let us go to the house of the Lord.” Why? Because there is something unique, something special, and something very necessary when we come together in worship. Proverbs 27:17 states, “As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.” Hebrews 3:13 also states, “Encourage one another day after day, as long as it is still called ‘today,’ so that none of you will be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.” Clearly, we need each other to keep us going.

Coming to church will not save you; only a personal relationship with Jesus can do that. However, as God’s people, as a vital part of the Body of Christ, missing an opportunity to come together, to worship together, to learn together and to encourage one another, will be the last thing we’ll want to do.

Unlike the original Fords, which you could purchase in any colour you wanted as long as it was black, today we have an onslaught of choices to make. We choose our flavour of ice cream. We choose what we want on our hamburgers. We choose the colour of our vehicles. We choose from among dozens of breakfast cereals. We choose the career we want to pursue and the university we want to attend. Salespersons may even tell you that you can choose your low monthly payments.

Some choices are trivial and some have life-long and even eternal consequences.

Having choices is one of the gifts and responsibilities that God has given us. We seen it when God created Adam and gave him the responsibility to name all the animals. We seen it in the invitations of Jesus, to follow Him. We seen it in Joshua’s challenge to his hearers to “choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve” (Joshua 24:15).

Having choices is a good thing. But with choices come responsibility. While all of us have the freedom of choice, the challenge (or the lie) that we face today is the mistaken belief that all choices are equally good; that it doesn’t matter what you believe as long as you believe sincerely. We’ve taken the slogan meant for hamburgers, “have it your way”, and applied it to matters of faith. We live in a culture which likes to pick and choose what we are going to believe, even if if means making a selection from a variety of faiths and putting them all together into our own personal self-satisfying combination.

In 1 Kings 18 Elijah, the prophet of God, was having a bit of disagreement with Ahab, the king of Israel. They decided to hold a contest between their gods to see whose god was real. Each person/team would build an altar and make a sacrifice. Whoever’s god responded to the sacrifice with fire would be known as the true god. The 450 prophets of Baal offered their sacrifice, but nothing happened. They shouted, they danced, they even slashed themselves with swords and spears in order to get their god’s attention. “Midday passed, and they continued their frantic prophesying until the time for the evening sacrifice. But there was no response, no one answered, no one paid attention” (1 Kings 18:29). On the other hand, when Elijah prayed to the Lord, God responded in a very dramatic way (see 1 Kings 18). Not only did God respond, but there were severe consequences toward the prophets of Baal. Who they chose to follow made all the difference in the world.

In an age when we think so much is relative, in an age when we think we can make up our own reality, do as we please, believe what we want as though we were making spiritual selections from a buffet, this lesson from Biblical history shows us that who you believe God is and what you believe about him makes a world of difference.

Each individual has the choice of whom they will serve, as they should, but we must never believe the lie that every choice is equally good. If the Lord God, the God of Israel, was fact the same god that the prophets of Baal worshiped – just with a different name, then there wouldn’t have been a problem on Mount Carmel. But the difference between Yahweh (the name of the God Elijah worshiped) and Baal is not just a difference in name, terminology or semantics. The two are worlds apart. Today, we need to be careful we don’t try to blend them, as so many are trying to do.

It might be a nice thought that all religions lead to the same God, that the only thing that matters is that you are sincere, but it simply isn’t true. Joshua said it best, “as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord”.

Recently I had the privilege of attending a band concert at the Yukon Arts Centre. What may have been assumed as “common knowledge” at one time is apparently not so common today and as such, the concert organizers felt it necessary to include a page in the program called “Concert Etiquette.” If a concert requires a certain etiquette (as it should), how much more should we be striving for excellence in our worship services. To that end, I’ve taken a page from their book and offer for your consideration, “worship service etiquette”.

Concert Etiquette
As the audience, you are an important part of tonight’s concert. The audience’s responsibility at formal concerts is to honour the efforts of the performers by providing a listening atmosphere in which the performance can be appreciated by everyone. To that end, we ask your cooperation with these few requests:
While the performance is in progress, remain seated and quiet. (If it becomes necessary to leave the auditorium, please do so between musical selections).
Please stay for the whole show (less than 90 minutes in total). All performers deserve a full audience for their performances. Listening to other / better players is a big part of each student’s Music Education.
Remove your hat, so that the people behind you can see easily. If you have outside clothes with you, remove them prior to the start of the show to restrict noise, movement and distractions.
If young children become restless and disrupt others’ ability to listen, please take them from the auditorium until they are quiet.
Trips to the bathroom, to get a drink, etc. should be made prior to the start of the show or at an intermission.
If you enjoy what you see and hear, please clap enthusiastically; at no time is yelling nor whistling acceptable at a formal concert.
Please turn pagers, cell phones and watch alarms off.
Thank you for making this evening enjoyable for the performers and for the audience.

Worship Service Etiquette
As the congregation, you are an important part of today’s service. The congregation’s responsibility at a worship service is to honour the One whom we worship by worshipping and providing an atmosphere where others may also worship. To that end, we ask your cooperation with these few requests:
While the service is in progress, remain seated and quiet. (If it becomes necessary to leave the sanctuary, please do so during transitions in the service).
Please stay for the whole service (less than 90 minutes in total). Our Lord deserves our full participation for the entire service. Also, our participation in worship encourages others who are just learning to worship.
Remove your hat, so that the people behind you can see easily. If you have outside clothes with you, remove them prior to the start of the service to restrict noise, movement and distractions.
All persons; children, youth, adults, should be careful not to hinder or disrupt other peoples ability to worship.
Trips to the bathroom, to get a drink, etc. should be made prior to the start of the service or after the service.
If you are blessed by what you see and hear, praise the Lord enthusiastically. Saying an “Amen!” or “Praise the Lord!” is welcome.
Please turn pagers, cell phones and watch alarms off.
Thank you for making this service enjoyable for everyone in the congregation.

Three weeks ago Heather and I had the pleasure of driving down to Calgary for our oldest daughter’s graduation. It occurred to us that this was the first time we were driving on a long trip without our kids, so we decided to take a few extra days and take our time heading south. We were excited about travelling 5000 kilometres, round trip. We didn’t even make it out of town. The van just didn’t feel right and no sooner did I decide to stop the van and turn around that the van broke down.

Those of you who have been with us for a while know that we had all sorts of frustrating, time consuming, and costly vehicle problems on our Christmas trip to California. Upon return to Whitehorse we had further trouble with our Caravan. And just when we were heading out on our trip to Calgary, the transmission broke again. We had the van towed to Whitehorse and took the Toyota on the trip. As if that wasn’t annoying enough, the very next night we found out that the transmission on the Suburban had also failed (turned out to be a crack in the housing).

Usually I could be fairly calm about most things, but I can’t say I was overjoyed about having two vehicles dead in Whitehorse. What was supposed to be a relaxing trip started off with a good measure of stress.

While I was “relaxing” in our motel room (grumbling to my wife and talking to God about our situation) it occurred to me that vehicular breakdowns are not the end of the world. Yes, they can be very costly, inconvenient, and very frustrating, but in the end, a car breaking down is more of a nuisance than it is a tragedy.

I’ve come to conclude that we are masters at getting frustrated. We get frustrated over broken vehicles, airport delays, vegetable gardens damaged by frost, a bad haircut, missing the bus, losing a wallet, a crack on the windshield, web pages that take too long to load, missing a hunting trip, and my favorite (which I completely made up, so please don’t think I’m pointing fingers) - there’s only room for one car in my garage. Such tragedies!

We elevate each of these situations to a major crisis, we lose sleep, we complain to our neighbours, we worry and get upset, we get all worked up, when in reality, most of these situations are nothing more than an inconvenience, even if they are costly ones.

The truth of the matter is that broken vehicles are much easier to deal with than broken lives. The parent who has the police show up at their door late at night with news that their intoxicated child had injured a pedestrian, or the woman who finds out they or their loved one has a terminal illness and has only weeks to live, or the parent who sees their child being addicted to drugs, or the man or woman who is going through divorce proceedings, or the child who is used and abused by a relative. Any one of these people would gladly exchange the cost of a vehicle repair to repair a broken or damaged life, but they can’t. They would look at our inconveniences and wonder why we are so worked up about something so temporary, so insignificant.

I know it’s never good to trivialize someone else’s frustration but it seems that we get overly anxious about things that are really nothing more than nuisances (at least, I certainly can). I wonder why that is. Can it be because we are spoiled adults? Can it be because we have so much and it is never enough? We are so used to having things our way, we have the mind set that we have the right to do anything and have anything when we want and the way we want; so much so that when something doesn’t go the way we like, when something does go wrong, we consider it such a major crisis.

Jesus said, “Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?”