Speaker: Jeff Jarvis

We were in downtown Kelowna on one of the last full days of our vacation this summer, enjoying breakfast with some good friends - when my cell phone rang. 

It was a close friend of ours...she was sobbing.  

Painfully she told me her son - 23 years old - had died from a freak accident the night before. I’m sure I went into a state of shock. I just couldn’t believe it… we had just golfed with him only weeks before. How could this happen...to him? He was such a good kid, in the prime of his life.  

Life isn’t supposed to happen this way.

I don’t know about you but I can have these stretches in my life where everything is going so well, and then something unexpected like this happens… news of a death, a diagnosis, a financial crisis, a relational breakup. And it shatters any sense of predictability in life. Tragic moments like these can make life seem so fragile and unfair and in some cases, almost pointless. I mean if bad things happen to good people - if healthy people can get sick and die, if honest people can get screwed over, why bother trying?  It can be hard not to get a little cynical about life -- to feel like it’s all a bit meaningless.

Our spiritual ancestors were well acquainted with life that, at times, felt meaningless. Amid their despair, though, an unconventional form of wisdom was born. Wisdom that could melt the hardest cynicism and offer hope in times when everything seemed so pointless.

This Sunday, I’m going to share some of this unconventional wisdom with you. I promise it will help when those difficult moments occur in your own life.

I would encourage you to invite a friend and plan to come. Not only will it be useful for your journeys, but we’re going to enjoy a “Back to Fall'' community lunch afterward - complete with donairs.  So it will be a great time to reconnect. We hope you’ll join us.  

To donate to this podcast and support the making of more of these please visit www.friendschurch.ca/podcast