Over the Christmas period last year, I left my car lights on while parked, and returned to find the battery dead. My son arrived to rescue me with jumper cables in his car to "boost" mine. Once I got started, the car recharged itself, but because of the loss of power and the energy surge when the batteries were connected, the car clock lost all sense of time and had to be manually reset.

As we come to the end of the year 2000 — which began with much anticipation of the adaptations needed to computer clocks in our mechanical world — I wonder if I have been equally aware of the real miracle that changed the world forever 2000 years ago. In the birth of a child to a transient couple housed in a stable was a force that would reconnect the world to a creative power beyond our wildest imagination. Like the power charge that calibrated a car clock, the child named Jesus, through becoming the Christ, The Chosen One, also calibrated our temporal clock. Through creating a new connection between the temporal world and the eternal realm, God created then, as he does now, a new connection to all people, in all times, which, a bit like connecting jumper cables to a dead battery, brings mankind — and each of us — life anew in Christ Jesus.

Prayer: Lord, we acknowledge that through worshipping the things of this world we have allowed ourselves to become spiritually run-down. Help us to remember to turn to you, the eternal source and power of all life in openness. We thank you that, when we open our hearts to You, we begin to feel the quiet rejuvenation that Your Holy Spirit brings into our lives. Amen.

Seventy years after the birthday it was written to celebrate, I discovered a hand-written letter from a father to his son at college in 1929.

Congratulations to you from your Mother and the other members of the family upon the attainment of your 20th Birthday. May your course through life be full of joy to yourself and others and when your own star shall set at life's close, may it set as the morning star that goeth not down behind the darkened west but melts away into the brightness of Heaven.
Lovingly,
Dad

The father was not known as a poet — he was a Nova Scotia farmer who rose at 5:00 a.m. in starlight to care for the creatures in his charge. Watching his cattle gradually return from their evening pasture in the dew-rich orchard, I can imagine that the rising dawn and the morning star were a familiar and moving part of his day — possibly as moving as seeing his eldest child and namesake approach adulthood.

Accidentally discovering the letter exactly 70 years to the day that it was intended to be read causes me to reflect on why I would find this simple message on yellowed paper written by my grandfather just when my eldest son, away at college, in a few weeks is turning 20 himself. The coincidence moves me to ponder the lesson within these events, and reminds me of the loving parental kindness described throughout the Bible as an example of divine love, a love we see reflected in so many wonderful ways.

No card quite captures birthday wishes as well this year as the 70 year-old words. By e-mailing the same wish to our son, a cycle of love becomes complete and a new one begins. The wish to share God's love has come full circle. I realize that perhaps this same wish, often unstated, has passed through all generations of every family, and that it is carried from every loving parent to each child. I give thanks for loving parents who conveyed that wish in their own ways and who saved a letter, so that it would see a new dawn. Through the eyes of loving parents, we also learn that God's wish for us remains unchanged through all time: to glorify God, and to enjoy him for ever.

Prayer: Lord, although the means we use to convey our words of love may change, we thank you that the foundation of all love comes from your eternal love for us. We give you thanks for parents in every generation who, like bright mirrors, have reflected that love. Help us to shine with your love, so that others may also come to know the source of the greatest love in the world. Amen.

Family history introduced me to an ancestor named Experience Powers, who helped establish Newport, Nova Scotia. Her name, like that of her contemporary, Consider Fuller, seemed unusual. Then I discovered that, in 1760, Experience and her husband had come from Newport, Rhode Island, a community which had experienced the Great Awakening in the United States. At the same time, the Alline family, with their young son, Henry, made the same move as Experience Powers, bringing the community name with them. Rev. Henry Alline eventually led a revival known as the Great Awakening in Nova Scotia or the New Light Movement, beginning in 1776. During both revivals, people placed great value on individual religious experience.

The people of the Great Awakening knew that we must experience the power of God's love in our hearts if we are to become the people that he calls us to be. At that time, children might be named Experience Powers or Consider Fuller in earnest hope that not only the child, but many others hearing the name, would reflect on a deeper message. This way is possibly a bit more dramatic than some of us would choose today to help prepare a community to experience God's power, yet God's love remains ready to enter hearts — today, as then — if we will only open the door and let that loving power enter in.

Yes, each of us in our own way, through experiencing the power of God, is changed. Through the Holy Spirit we are heirs to a wonderful community of faith, a community that is connected through time — and beyond time — and finds even today a great awakening to a new light, a new light that is older than time itself.

Perhaps that is the command for us as communities, as well as individuals, to actually experience the power of God renewing our lives and, through the sharing of that experience, to become the force in the community, the world, that Christ would have us be.

Prayer: Lord, help us to turn to you with open hearts, knowing our faith is renewed when we seek you. We thank you for your word. In our search to experience your power, help us to feel anew the wonderful ways that, through your Holy Spirit, the lives of others who walk in your light can touch our hearts — knowing no bounds of time or space. Amen.

Through family research I discovered an ancestor named Experience Powers who had moved from Newport, Rhode Island to help found Newport, Nova Scotia in the 1760's. "Experience Powers" seemed such a odd name to give a little girl, until I realized the name might require punctuation to be understood. "Onward! Christian Soldiers" is punctuated as a command. Perhaps in naming their child, these Christian parents were expressing a great wish or even a command that she might "Experience Powers!"

Perhaps that is the desire that God, whom we sometimes describe as a parent, also wishes for us — to actually experience the divine presence in our lives and through that experience to become the instruments by which the power of the Holy Spirit does God's work in the world.

We so often play it safe — putting faith into a convenient corner, or expecting God's power to come in impressive form with worldly might — and we neglect to notice the mysterious and wonderful ways that God's power works quietly among us and within us. Maybe when we forget what we want or expect God to do, and begin to experience God's power in every form it takes, we will truly begin to know and serve.

Prayer: Lord, we call your name, and we open our hearts to experience your powers and your will for us. Help us to see and experience the many ways you work in the world, and, in seeing those ways, we ask you to transform us to serve your will. Amen.

In Newfoundland there is a bay called Bay d'Espoir, which means Bay of Hope.

As a first time devotional writer, I finish what I think will be a series of four and prepare to send them to the Daily editor, when I hear of a loss in our extended family. Finding words to send condolences is hard, but I know that the same Bible search engine which finds verses from fourteen translations for devotional topics will help. From one word submitted, return many scriptural verses through the Internet. In reading, I find strength to express my condolences and eventually return to my writing.

Finishing each devotional, I activate the spell check. Each time I come to the word "d'Espoir", I am asked if I want to change the word to despair. Even the computer, which has been so helpful in writing, blindly suggests that hope should be changed to despair. Each time, I quickly click on the button to ignore the suggestion, until I realize I can change the words within the spell check memory, and my own. I can make a decision to choose hope and not despair. By clicking "learn" to add the word to memory, I know that I have made an important choice, and I have acted on that choice. The Bay of Hope has given me another gift.

Yes, there will be times of mourning in life, and it is natural to experience the pain of those times. Within our grieving process, we discover that we have a choice to let the pain of loss lead us into a darker life-denying despair or to be led through that time of pain into joy.

Prayer: Lord, we thank you for the inspiration we find within Scripture. As we face pain, help us to remember to open our hearts to You in prayer. We thank You for the healing you nurture in us, allowing joy to eventually blossom out of our pain. Help us to make choices to act, so that we may comfort any who mourn or suffer today, that they too may know peace. Amen.

As I learn about the people of Bay d'Espoir, I realize what an inspiration they are. Their bay had several names over the centuries: French fishermen called the spectacular fjord the Bay of Hope, but for a time it was called Bay Despair. The bay is much more than geography; it is wonderful people.

Christians living along Bay d'Espoir have learned that there is hope in the privilege of sharing. In 1996, when an Anglican congregation realized their Roman Catholic neighbours needed a place to worship, they decided to offer them full use of their building. The Church of the Ascension in Morrisville is now a true community church. Their generous spirit shows that barriers can be overcome when hearts are open to exercising the privilege of sharing.

Often we discover that we have gifts that others need. The people of Bay d'Espoir recognized a need in their midst and opened their hearts to share their gifts, a living lesson of hope from a bay named for hope.

Prayer: Lord, we give thanks for the love and hope we find when we open our hearts to sharing. Help us to share our talents and gifts, exercising the great privilege we are all given to share in ministry. Bless this Internet ministry that it can continue to reach more people in meaningful ways each day. Amen.

The grand Newfoundland bay stretching over 50 kilometres in length and one time called Bay Despair, although named Bay d'Espoir (Bay of Hope), continues to inspire me.

I am amazed that the great drainage basin which guides raindrops can become a means to carry the message of hope through the world. How can a drop of water carry hope? Well let's follow that drop through the brooks into swifter streams until it reaches the great turbines that generate electricity before it rejoins the sea at Bay d'Espoir, the location of the largest generators on the island of Newfoundland. It is this electricity which sends Internet material from Newfoundland to me, as I seek it.

That's a bit like prayer, perhaps, although we dare not suggest that a mechanical model of any kind could be a fair comparison to the awesome power we know in God. Yet because of the nature of God, it is often the many expressions of that power in nature that are for us, as they were for Paul, a window into the invisible.

Paul's letter, which now can come to us in fourteen wonderful translations through an Internet search engine, using the combined efforts of single raindrops, speaks powerfully today of the force invisible, yet seen through all creation.

Yes, a single raindrop that turns a turbine in a new found land can bring us a new understanding of hope and help us learn that we are never alone today — or ever.

Prayer: Lord, we give thanks for the power, hope and wonder we discover when we let our souls drink in the richness and grandeur of this amazing universe. You create a universe of possibilities within a single raindrop, and through discovering your renewing power, we become capable of so much more than we ever thought possible. Help us to be good stewards of this precious planet. Amen.