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Have you ever wondered about the mythical creatures that tickle the imaginations of kids of all ages? Did you ever think that unicorns or dragons ever really did exist? Well, let me share with you the reality of a mythical creature of which we have all heard —church mice! Yep, church mice really exist. I’ve seen them in my country ministries and we also have church mice in the urban landscape of Toronto.

The reason we have mice in our building here at Keele is because part of our building goes back to 1890 and it has a solid rock foundation (what else would you expect for a church?). The foundation has been maintained and several of the tiny holes have been plugged with steel wool, but that does not stop the relentless rodents.

Thus we keep traps around the building and make sure we don’t have any food sources to attract them. Still, we have the odd mouse make its presence known. This week, though, has been downright weird. On Monday, I noticed a garbage can by one of the doors. This can had no bag, no food, and no garbage – nothing in it, except a live little squeaker. The can is about two and a half feet tall and I can’t for the life of me figure out how, or why a mouse would expend the effort to jump into it. All that I do know is that once they are within the confines of this can, they can’t get out.

Now, being the man of action that I am, and with a heart of cold steel, I had no problem dealing with the dilemma of the trapped mouse. I sent my son outside with the can in hand and he walked a couple of hundred yards down our back alleyway and released the wretched rodent to the elements. Why else have children if you can’t get them to do your dirty work? Now, wait, I realize the story is interesting as all get out, and I have you eating out of my hand, but it gets better. On Tuesday, as I lumbered into the kitchen to prepare lunch, I just happened to look in the garbage can again and, lo and behold, there was another mouse! I couldn’t believe it! I imagined that John had maybe lacked the heart to banish the mouse to said alley, but at the same time, it didn’t really look like the same mouse. This time I got David and Graham to walk down the street to the parkette and release the creature underneath a tree. This way it could take its last gasps in the beauty of nature. If you are going to die, you might as well have a nice view, right? Well, guess what happened today? Yep, today there was a third mouse in this empty garbage can. I released this one myself. Three days in a row, rodents have expended tremendous skill and energy to get into this empty waste receptacle. Why? What is the attraction? I am trying to reckon this out because I could make millions by building the better mousetrap; I mean three mice in three days, wow!

OK, here’s what I want you to consider: we are much like mice. We have two ears, two eyes, pointy noses and we eat cheese. Actually, these aren’t the similarities to which I was referring. We are like this trio of cheesers because we get ourselves stuck in situations for which there is no escape (at least from our perspective). We have all found ourselves deep in trouble with slippery slopes too steep to climb in our own strength. In other words, we are all powerless to help ourselves and we needed someone with a bigger heart than mine to help us out of the trap of our own making. Praise God that He was willing to help us. Paul, in Romans, puts it this way: “You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Rom 5:6-8) Did you catch that? At just the right time, WHEN WE WERE STILL POWERLESS, Christ, through His death, reached into the garbage pail of our lives and lifted us to a warm, safe, place.

If you’re Canadian, you know what “roll up the rim” means. If you aren’t Canadian, or have never been in Canada for more than ten minutes, let me try and explain. In Canada we have a chain of coffee/donut restaurants called “Tim Hortons”. Tim was originally a hockey player turned entrepreneur. Unfortunately he died before he could see his coffee empire cover the Canadian landscape like snow in January.

Put hockey and coffee and cholesterol together and you have a historic blend for success in Canada. The truth is that there are more “Timmy’s” in Canada than there are Canadians. If you have any doubt that coffee is a drug, you haven’t had a Tim’s. Canadians can’t travel, or drive, or make it to work, without first driving through a Timmy’s drive thru. Somehow Tim’s has become a national institution that all true patriots treasure. Americans pledge allegiance to their flag. Canadians drink extra-large Tim’s double, doubles.

Anyway, every year around this time Tim’s has a “roll up the rim” contest. Buy a coffee and then roll up the rim of the paper cup and you could win either a free coffee or muffin or cookie, or perhaps money, or a big screen TV, or a Toyota SUV. Of course the chances are quite slim that you are going to walk away with anything but a caffeine jitter, but still, the “roll up the rim” campaign creates quite a stir (at least for those who have sugar).

Recently two little girls were walking by a garbage can and they saw one of these roll up the rim cups. Someone drank the coffee but didn’t investigate to see if he had won anything. One girl picked it up, but was having problems rolling up the rim so her friend helped. It turns out that underneath the rim was a prize—a $28,700 Toyota SUV!

For the past while both families have been fighting over who is going to get the vehicle. Now the person who threw it out has entered the fight. His lawyer has requested that a DNA test be done on the cup to prove that the cup was, in fact, his client’s. The reasoning being that since his client actually bought the coffee…the SUV should be his, even though he threw the cup away.

How many things are there to be celebrated and enjoyed if we just took the time and effort to investigate and “roll up the rim” before we toss it away? Take the Christian faith for example—so many toss it without even rolling it up and looking to see what’s there for the taking. They make assumptions without investigation.

How many times do we throw things away? By our attitude, by our blindness, by our busyness, we throw a lot away. Sometimes we even throw away relationships, lives, and most of all, the greatest prize of all time, salvation.

Do you make a good first impression? For me, I think, probably not. My impressions don’t get good until I am at least into double digits and then I think there is only a small window of opportunity until they starts to go south again. Thankfully, my family HAS to love me.

First impressions, appearances, image. These are all words that make me cringe. They smack of superficiality. They feed the subjective and choke the objective. Having said that, whining about the impact of said impressions, appearances and image doesn’t make them have any less of an impact — even on the less superficial of our species.

For example, take a look at the picture at the top of this blog. This is a picture I took of a business or at least a used-to-be-business on the street in my area. Notice that this particular storefront is a restoration & home improvement business. Somehow I don’t think Toronto is beating a path to their door, do you? Call me judgmental if you want, but I just have no confidence in this business. I ain’t buying what they are selling.

All this leads me to one conclusion: sometimes our claims and our image don’t square. When that happens it is important that we take notice or we will never reach our goals or our potential.

For example, the Church represents Jesus. Jesus was a loving, accepting, healing, giving, joyous servant that loved, welcomed, and died for sinners. Meanwhile he fought against hypocrisy, judgementalism, superficial religiosity and prideful arrogance. That is the image we are to represent.

The Church is in the resotration & home improvement business as well. How is our image doing at communicating our product (for lack of a better word)? More to the point, how well are our actions squaring with our founding CEO’s intentions & passions?

Some churches are as warm and welcoming and non-judgemental as Olympic Figure Skating judges; they lack in the very areas in which they are supposed to excel.

We have earned, at least in part, our current image. Our only option is to stop whining about it and work hard at changing that image back to what was originally intended.