Author: Nico Hoogenraad

Granddaughter is visiting us with her daddy, our son. We have fun together when she visits. When we got back in town she said: “Aha, my horsies are back again!” She is entirely thrilled by horses and ponies and opa and oma must be put ‘in the harness’ and we have to gallop around the house.  It is time for lunch. My wife puts together the food on the table and we sit around the table with the four of us, the little one on her throne, the children’s chair. She eats like a horsy herself and we talk and laugh. “Wow, she eats a lot”, is what my son says. Yes, that happens when you take the time and attention to sit around the table and enjoy a meal together! No phones, no laptops, no quick bite in between other activities.   Connection happens a lot more when we’re taking intentional time for it. That happens with families when they sit around the table. That happens with workers in a company when they listen to each other. That happens in a church where people get and take the time to meet. That happens in small groups where people get together to read the Word, share their lives and pray together.   We live in a very scattered world together, where attention is absorbed by many screens. And consequently, it can’t go to people. Look around you in the tram, train or the bus; about 80% of the people are looking at their phones, so they’re not looking at each other or the world that goes by. They don’t see an elderly person enters the bus and needs a place to sit or an helping hand to land safely in a chair.  I’ve learned that in Switzerland, when you clink glasses together and wish each other ‘Santé’ or ‘Prost’ or ‘Cheers’, you must look the other person that you’re clinking with, in the eyes. If you don’t do that, it is considered impolite. So, remember that next time when you clink glasses and there are Swiss people in the mix!  But much rather, let’s make it a habit when we meet people, to look them in the eye. Connect. See them. Appreciate them. The people that are right in front of you are more important for the moment than the people that are WhatsApping you, pinging you, messaging you or posting on social media.  Real connection happens a lot more when we take the time to see each other, sit down, talk, exchange, swap stories and listen.   Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your friendliness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. – Philippians 4:4-6  Let your friendliness be evident to all. Through that friendliness, it will be easier to rejoice in the Lord and not to be anxious about anything.  

I read an article about Advent Calendars on the Dutch news site NOS. It is quite the thing these days. “When Advent starts, I start every day with a laugh. I enjoy it every day. Every morning when I get up, I get a present. Not all of them in one shot, that is not how it is supposed to be done. In the little cubicle for the 24th of December–Christmas Eve–there is usually the biggest present.” If you think this is the ‘testimony’ of a child who finds chocolate behind every little door, you’re mistaken. This is a grown-up who has an Advent Calendar from some beauty shop. The little presents are eyeliner, eye shadow, foundation, mascara, perfume, lotion, lipstick and the like. It seems that the Advent Calendar originates from 19th-century Germany. The little doors or drawers of the calendar contained Bible verses or Christmas figurants like shepherds, angels, wise men and of course baby Jesus. It helped to catch the attention of the children to help them understand what the Christmas story is about. This concept was commercialized quickly. Soon, chocolates or sweets were included behind the little doors and nowadays we also have Advent Calendars from pet shops, so that the dog or cat can also celebrate Advent. The dollar, franc and euro soon took over quickly and decisively. In the article, some psychologist also puts in her two cents worth: “We have little control about the things that happen around us. An Advent Calendar offers some security. It can be comforting, such a ritual. Opening a little door every day can give you some rest.” Wow… security, comfort and rest… from an Advent Calendar! We have an ‘Advent Calendar’ too in our home. Look at the picture and meet our Santa. It doesn’t offer security, comfort and rest, just chocolate calories. Since my wife and I both don’t really need the calories and we don’t have our granddaughter living at our house, at the end of the Advent season, many little drawers are still chocolate-filled. I prefer to get my security, comfort and rest from another more secure source. Here is the best Advent advice I can give you, for myself and for everybody who wants to take it to heart: Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. (Matthew 11:28+29). The good thing is that His kind of rest is not only good for 24 days in the last month of the year. It is good for every day, every sleepless night in which things look dark and gloomy, each rainy and grey day, in good times and bad times. Happy Advent folks! Hope came into our world and wants to invade it permanently!

I come from the land of tulips, wooden shoes and windmills. Nowadays, the wooden shoes are almost gone as they are too uncomfortable. And most windmills are museums or kept up by some Stiftung to retain their historic value. Tulips are still very much a thing though. Most tulips that will be flooding the supermarkets in the next months will have been produced in the Netherlands. With big trucks, they are sold to Coop, Migros, Lidl, Aldi and distributed all over Switzerland. For the Dutch wholesalers, Switzerland is an attractive market; good prices and a great payment morale. Probably, the picture you get in your mind when I say ‘tulips’ is the wrong one when we are talking about a bunch of tulips you can buy in the supermarket. They have never seen any soil or dirt in their lifetime. In huge tulip brooding greenhouses, the tulip bulbs or ‘Schwiebeln’ are put on big tables, with their bottoms in fertilized water. The bulb is activated by the temperature and the water, starts growing roots and produces a tulip at the top. When it is about to open up, it is cut off and put into a bunch with other tulips. But what about the tulip fields then that are widely advertised and shown as a tourist magnet for you to come to the Lowlands in April or May? These fields are not to produce tulip flowers. They are to produce tulip bulbs. As soon as the tulips reach full bloom, the flowers are cut off and thrown away. Over the next months, the one tulip bulb with the decapitated stem starts multiplying in the ground and grows four, five, six new bulbs onto the old ‘mother’ bulb. When the process is done, the farmer digs up the bulbs, throws out the mother bulb and prepares the new bulbs to ship all over the world for good money. Production might happen totally differently than you might have imagined! We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives,so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience (Colossians 1:9-11). Growth in your life – whether spiritual, mental, emotional – might also happen totally different that you have imagined. Like growing through difficulties. Spiritually growing through your experiences in the workplace. Mentally growing through your input at church. Emotionally growing through what your teenagers tell you. If we think that the only way that God teaches us is through Bible study and listening to sermons – how good and worthwhile these are – think again! I’ve heard God speak through my agnostic brother-in-law. God has taught me things in the workplace about following Jesus, that I’ve never heard anywhere else. The ‘production’ of godliness in our lives can take many shapes and forms. What it takes from our side is a willingness to grow and flourish and see God at work in many different places and speak to us through many different channels.

When I walk to the church on weekdays, I inevitably come across kids going to school. If it is the right time, I come across many, many kids walking to school and they all have a backpack on their backs (Rucksack) and the fluorescent sash around them, front and back, so that they are visible in the dark winter months.    Have you seen the size of the backpacks that some of them are wearing? With some effort, they could fit in it themselves and be on someone else’s back. Then I wonder: what is in the backpacks that are so big? Are they carrying a library to school? Clean clothes? What?   I used to carry a briefcase to work in my former lives. Back then I had a very big, fat briefcase so that I could fit paper dossiers in it and review them at home. Later, the big fat briefcase gave way to a laptop case, but that online access made even bigger dossiers possible. Not just one or two of them, but all dossiers. A smaller briefcase is not the same as smaller work.   When I came to Switzerland, I decided that I would be a Swiss man and purchase a backpack. One blends in well when there’s a backpack to put your things in. If you doubt that’s true, just look around on the street, in the tram, in the bus: Swiss men are decked out with backpacks. They start out with backpacks as young kids, they have one when they’re going to university and they still use one when they are getting along in age.    I still wonder what everyone has in them. Especially when the backpacks are big. The contents of my backpack are humble. Just some necessary things and sometimes I use it as a small shopping bag when I have to pick something up.    All people carry backpacks around in the figurative sense. Let’s call them ‘life-backpacks’. Some are big, some are small. There are memories in them. Good ones and bad ones. Especially the bad ones take up a lot of space. Among the bad ones, there are a few notorious ones that fill up too much space: rejection, abuse, or disappointment. They weigh heavily and slow us down when we have to schlep them around.   Every so often, I take my real backpack and empty it completely. I shake it out; if necessary, I take a cloth and wipe it out and then I take all the items that came out of it and one by one, I put them back, or I decide I don’t need them any longer, or they’re not worth carrying them around.    When it comes to our life-backpacks that we are schlepping around, hear Jesus’s words: Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls (Matthew 11:27+28).    When our life-backpacks are full of heavy things, we get weary quicker, and it often feels like we are carrying around quite a burden. Go to Jesus, unpack that backpack with him, clean it out, and then decide which things need to go back and which things don’t need to go back. Definitely leave behind the rejection, abuse, disappointment and bad memories. Leave them with Him. Find rest for your soul. The Lord Jesus is gentle and humble in heart. If you can leave your garbage with anyone, leave it with Him!   So, next time you see the little peats going to school with big backpacks, I hope this will come to mind again. No need to schlep a lot of debilitating garbage with you. The yoke of Jesus is light.  

Often, you hear politicians make claims that they have created an x-amount of jobs when they were in power. Or that when they are elected, they will create so many jobs. This happens in all countries. With politicians from the whole political spectrum. No one exempt. These are unfounded claims. How can a president, a prime-minister, a premier, a party, or a minister prove that there is a cause-and-effect connection between the number of new jobs and his government? The only jobs that can be directly attributed to a government are when new government jobs are formed. But often, that is not the intention of a government at all. Usually, they want less government workers and, in that way, spend less money on government. It is businesses that create jobs. Businesses are willing to create jobs, when there are good business opportunities, and the business environment is stable enough for the companies to have the trust it will pay off. Government meddling with new rules and regulations during the process will only scare businesses away from creating new jobs. Governments might often be the reason why no new jobs are created, or less than what could have been. Businesses like stability and predictability. Politicians therefore shouldn’t make that claim at all. At the most, they can make sure that the business environment is stable, and they shouldn’t come up with too many changes and no sudden hiccups. What goes for politicians also goes for people in the workplace. Don’t make claims about your accomplishments that are farfetched. Perhaps you played a role in what has been achieved. Maybe even an important role. But probably a few people or perhaps even a lot of people have played their part. Success has many fathers, but failures are always orphaned. What goes for politicians and people in the workplace, also applies to pastors and church staff and volunteers. No pastor can say: “Because of my excellent spiritual leadership, this church has grown by so many people.” Or, “Finally we’ve gone deeper then ever before.” At the best, the pastor has played a facilitating and leading role. But mostly it is because many people are facilitated to play their role. Romans 12:3-5 speaks to this: For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you. For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. Sober judgment for politicians, for people in the workplace, for pastors, and for church staff and church volunteers. We all play our role. We all celebrate the success. And a really great leader is willing to be the father of the failure.

In my former job lives, there were always computer guys around. A system manager who is responsible for the IT system, the servers, the backups, troubleshooting for the users, keeping an eye on security and admonishing everybody that we shouldn’t click on links that might be dangerous. There is always a bit of a love/hate relationship between a system manager and the users. You can’t go with them, but you also can’t go without them. You can’t go with them, because they are strict in what you’re allowed to do and what you’re not allowed to do. At the most stressful moments, they must shut down the system, because it | “needs a reboot, in order not to crash”. You can’t go without them, because they fix your problems with your laptop, the printer, the access to your files and when things just don’t work. Here’s the most hated IT advice of IT specialists: “did you try to turn it off and on?” You’ve got a zillion programs open with all the files you’re working on, and this irritating ‘specialist’ says you have to close all the files, close the programs, shut down the computer, turn it on again, open all the programs and open all the files. That takes at least 15 minutes, which you don’t really want to spend on it. You just want the IT person to fix it… now! But, strangely enough, the most hated IT advice often works wonders. Just as if somewhere in the computer or the system, a bit or byte was laying crooked and by turning it off and on, it straightens itself out. Basically, the system manager only kicks into action, once you’ve tried this tested ‘remedy’. Probably, we should apply this hated, but tested IT advice to more areas of our lives. Like in our relationship with the Lord, our devotion times, our giving to ministry. Or when we start a new day that turns out to be a difficult and cumbersome day. Or with relationships that run into difficulties after which unexpected and unmeant harsh words are spoken. Or with a colleague that we start out with on the wrong foot. “Turn it off and on.” A pause, a reset, a moment of contemplation and downtime, a new start, doing it right a second time. Or a third time. The Lord specialises in new moments. I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall. I well remember them, and my soul is downcast within me. Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. I say to myself, “The Lord is my portion; therefore, I will wait for him.” Lamentations 3:19-24 Things don’t work out as you wanted them to work out? Had a bad start? Something is laying crooked somewhere? We are not consumed. There is new compassion EVERY morning. Not just once.

It is the time of the year again; the health care premiums for next year are made known. They only know one direction and that is up! The people living in Basel-Stadt will only see an increase of 1,5% of their Krankenkasseprämien. Perhaps the only time that Basel-Stadters come away cheap! People living in Baselland have to live with 5,3% increase and if you’re living in Solothurn, you’ll have to reckon with 5,8% more. The news is full of interviews, opinions and explanations why the premiums are going up: we’re getting older on average, new treatments, new medicines, life expectancy goes up but with increased medical care needs. In the next months, the health insurance company carrousel is going to turn its annual cycle. Is it cheaper with another company? Is the grass greener on the other side of the fence? The telemarketers are lining up to shower you with their unwanted and unsolicited phone calls! A portion of the increased premiums can be ‘blamed’ on people in our church community! New, expensive medicines, new medical treatments… sounds like the results of some of your jobs! I have watched first-hand with my own parents in their last days, how some of the medical treatments are not wanted by the patients, but almost forced on them by medical professionals. As things become medically possible, it sometimes seems like it is anathema to not accept the treatments. To force it unto people that qualify, regardless of their age, health and desires. I know there are lots of discussion and moral questions around treatments, and I don’t want to make light of it. When we’re talking about health care, costs and treatments, we’re looking at our own finiteness on this side of reality. What can medical treatments do for us and what can they not do? There are other things that confront us with our limited years on earth: drawing up a will, talking about succession, discussing how we want to live after our retirement, how we want to be buried or cremated. Yes, perhaps a bit morbid, but very real. Listen how the apostle Paul reflects on the end of his life that is coming mighty close to him: For I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time for my departure is near. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day—and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing. (2 Timothy 4:6-8)It helps a whole lot in life if you have an eternal perspective like Paul has. There are more and greater things to come and we live our present lives in that perspective. Don’t forget that when you’re requesting new offers for another health insurance. Yes, health is very important and good to take very good care of. But your spiritual health and care are equally important. How about finding a better policy for that? Better and fuller coverage. Less deductible. Direct contact with the Provider!