Fire!?

Monday, May 23, 2022

This Way Is Blocked.

How To Break Through?

Zechariah 13:9

And I will put this third into the fire, refine them as one refines silver, and test them as gold is tested.
They will call on my name, and I will answer them.
I will say, ‘They are my people’; and they will say, ‘The Lord is our God.’

1 Peter 1:6-7

In this you rejoice, even if now for a little while you have had to suffer various trials, so that the genuineness of your faith—being more precious than gold that, though perishable, is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honour when Jesus Christ is revealed.

Words of Grace For Today

This world does provide an ample sample of suffering for anyone who chooses to live ‘eyes wide open’. While some may say it is ‘now for a little while’, the suffering never seems anything like ‘little’ to those who are caught in it.

The image often referred to in scripture, as in these two passages, is that through our suffering our faith is refined, and it becomes more precious. This may be a great philosophical perspective on other’s suffering, though I’m not sure it helps those who suffer now. Yet it is repeated, and repeated, and repeated … as if the repetition would help or that the writers and thinkers just cannot come up with something more helpful.

Maybe there is nothing helpful!

That would, of course, depend on one’s perspective of towards what end, what goal, what value, those who suffer will be helped.

If the end, goal, and value is to not suffer, then there seems (as history well attests to what we humans are capable and eager to do to others) to be no shortage or end to suffering.

What if the end, the goal, and the value is something else than ending suffering?!

What if it the end, goal and value is how one lives, when one is in the midst of suffering, when one is free from suffering, and in fact in all circumstances of life?

Say (given the scriptural witness to this) that the end, goal and value is that we humans live in a love with God, and therefore we love all people, even our enemies and ourselves (which is usually the most difficult kind of love, since we know how little we deserve love.)

This first long weekend of the summer the crowds returned to the random camping area, first dribbling in on Wednesday already to secure a campsite for themselves and their group, most often a group using at least 2 camping units and numerous tents, trucks, cars, and noisy cycles, quads and side-by-sides. By Friday night all but the chilly spots along the lake (all well within 30 metres of the water) were overfilled, most bursting with drink, drugs, and loud music though a few had children and kept a quieter presence.

My nights’ sleep was more than once disrupted by the throbbing base of a piece of ‘music’ that spoke to a visceral, instinctual encounter with nature (having nothing to do with the peaceful nature that surrounds this lake until it is so disrupted by humans trying to escape reality.)

Saturday the kicker came. I made my usual walk along the high road and immediately saw something was wrong. A camping unit sat in the trees where no vehicle had ever sat before. A family had moved in two shorter, older campers, parked them on and on each side of the road easement that forms the border between crown and private land. The easement is only a trail passable by careful off road driving of something more robust than a 4×4 truck. They camped on each side and across the road that is the only way to bring in a camping unit to this end of the random camping area and into the private land where I rent and camp. There is another lower, closer to the lake roadway, with tight turns, many roots and holes where stumps have been removed that exits in the lake side of the random camping area. There everyone sees me coming and going, and it’s impossible to bring water in and out since the rough road spills more water than not. In other words they were blocking my roadway out and back in.

The father said they were not completely set up yet, claimed they (with weed and alcohol in hand) that they wanted to camp away from the noise and partying of the other campers because of the children with them, and refused to consider moving to other established camping sites that were still available where they could fit both their campers.

The threats voiced towards me, the belligerence and profanity, the open threats, and the orders to leave belied … well it belied a fear in them. And an animal that is caught in fear can be unpredictable and destructive. I could well be caught in their unpredictable violence that certainly more than bubbled to the surface of one young man.

I returned a second time later, after continuing to work on the writing due that evening, as I had been before this unwelcomed surprise. I asked how long they would be there. The young man, bursting with profanity and incomprehensible challenges, came so close to striking me that I was shocked. Another man, broken with age, a long grey beard, challenged me as well. Because neither would engage in a meaningful exchange of words I turned to the father who had come around one of the campers to join the ‘not conversation’ and said they would be there until tomorrow.

Tomorrow has come and gone and they camp still there in the way, promising to vacate the roadway if I need to use it, but blocking it from all practical use.

The real threat they pose to me is, since they can see when I come and go, they and others have clear opportunity to come up to my camp and ransack it or sabotage pieces of essential equipment, loaned to me to help me survive year around here, or worse.

How to put an end to this?!

Remove them from the face of the earth? That method has been tried so often in history and the results are ugly and never successful, or if they appear to be successful the backlash is worse than than the problem one sought to solve.

Ignore them and let them block my roadway, and the roadway for others. Another family came in last night to a site along that lower, lakeside road … and busted up the awning on a tree. The road is not wide enough, the turns too tight, and the holes tip a camper into trees one is trying to avoid. Ignoring them campers blocking the roadway is a passable solution, and really the only option for now. The danger is that they will stay with whole summer, or that others will move in when they leave, and the block will continue, and the danger that comes with it.

Or I can reframe my mind about what constitutes a danger, and trust beyond reasonable trust, that though so many will know my comings and goings my camp will not be damaged (again, for the theft and sabotage has already happened more than a few times.)

Or I can work to build some trust with these fearful people, ameliorate their fear, and defuse their under-the-surface anger so that they are less unpredictable, and less likely to vent on me or my camp.

Which is the raw, unfaithful response?

Which is the immature faith response?

Which is the ‘refined gold’ response?

Which provides for ‘us’ and ‘them’ that which every soul yearns for: to be heard, to be treasured, to be encouraged, to be welcomed and accepted just as one is?

May God provide the ‘fire’ needed to refine our faith, so that in all we think, say, and do others will hear us rejoicing and calling on God’s name saying ‘The Lord is our God’, so that the Spirit may reveal with our praise, Jesus Christ’ glory and honour … and love for all people, those that threaten us and that part of us that lives in fear.

May God provide, through us, that every soul will b be heard, be treasured, be encouraged, be welcomed and accepted just as one is!

Father and Mother, What is Special About This …

Sunday, January 9, 2022

Only A Moose Makes Tracks

Across the -30⁰ and Colder Lake,

While We Remember What We Have Heard

Of God’s Word.

What is special, is that we remember how God ….

Isaiah 31:1

Alas for those who go down to Egypt for help and who rely on horses, who trust in chariots because they are many and in horsemen because they are very strong, but do not look to the Holy One of Israel or consult the Lord!

Hebrews 2:1

Therefore we must pay greater attention to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away from it.

Words of Grace For Today

Rest.

Today instead of looking to ‘Egypt of might and horses many and chariots strong’, not even when these things of might, many and strength in our lives are carried by so many and various ways of working, of securing money, favour, and power, of being our own people, today

yes

today

we rest.

We rest in the Promises of God,

The Gifts of God,

The Saints of God,

The Forgiveness of God,

The Grace of God,

The Generosity of God,

The Love of God,

The Faith given to us by God,

and

The hope, that

that all things will be well, all things will be well, all manner of things will be well,

because,

All manner of things are already, today, by God’s Word that Creates, Sustains, and Renews,

by God’s Will, all things are already today well, quite well,

quite well indeed.

Seeing With God’s Vision

Sunday, November 21, 2021

We may not see anything clearly

Doch

God Gives Us Vision to See

God’s Grace

For All

Proverbs 21:2

All deeds are right in the sight of the doer, but the Lord weighs the heart.

Romans 16:19

For while your obedience is known to all, so that I rejoice over you, I want you to be wise in what is good, and guileless in what is evil.

Words of Grace For Today

When we commit ourselves to an action, hopefully we know that it is a good and right thing to do. Sometimes we may be totally wrong, and our own blindness makes us think that we are right when we are actually fully wrong.

God knows.

God knows if we are doing something right or something very wrong.

When we do something that we know is terribly wrong and we do it anyway, then … well … then we serve the devil in all the devil’s horrendous and terrible ways.

Since we so often think that our terrible actions are as great as anything, we can hardly decide how to proceed in our lives doing only God’s will. In fact we never know how to evaluate what we plan to do, whether it is good or bad.

We can only confess our sins every day as a start, and then trust that God will both forgive us, and renew life in us so that we can answer God’s call, to be God’s grace in every day for everyone we meet.

We can pray that we will be wise, knowing how to be bearers of joy for ourselves and for other people, filled with gratitude for all that God provides for us, for all that is good that God brings out of us each day.

Dream, Dream Away

Saturday, November 13, 2021

Dream, Dream

While the Northern Lights Dance

in the Darkness.

God’s Promise for Our Future

Is So Much Greater a Dance

Spectacular!

Isaiah 45:15

Truly, you are a God who hides himself, O God of Israel, the Saviour.

Ephesians 3:20-21

Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, for ever and ever. Amen.

Words of Grace For Today

Be careful what you pray for, and what you wish for;

God has ways of accomplishing more than we can imagine

and calling us to lives that we never imagined possible

working with, for, or because of people we never thought God would make us suffer.

People are full of shtako.

People are full of blessings.

Which will you be today?

Which do you wish or pray for today?

Remember God may fill your wish and a prayer with something more challenging than you can imagine possible!

So are we to simply stop wishing, praying, dreaming, and hoping!?!

Not really, eh!

Just get ready for the ride: living as God’s saints, deliverers and agents of Grace is the wildest ride possible!

Hang on tight to the only thing that is actually secure enough to stand the stresses coming our way: God’s promises, grace, and love.

‘Caught’ch’ya dreaming!’

Obedience to Earn Healing? Doch!

Saturday, October 30, 2021

As Winter Cold Approaches

We Trust God’s Promises

To Heal Us Graciously

And Give Us New Life

With Christ’ Marvellous Touch

Exodus 15:26

He said, ‘If you will listen carefully to the voice of the Lord your God, and do what is right in his sight, and give heed to his commandments and keep all his statutes, I will not bring upon you any of the diseases that I brought upon the Egyptians; for I am the Lord who heals you.’

Luke 4:40

As the sun was setting, all those who had any who were sick with various kinds of diseases brought them to him; and he laid his hands on each of them and cured them.

Words of Grace For Today

If we are obedient to God, then God will not strike us with diseases, but will heal us. So reads the text from Exodus.

Any and all came with those who were sick with various diseases, and Jesus laid hands on them and cured them. So reads the Gospel from Luke.

God’s promises are always given as a statement of God’s stance towards humans, both righteous and waywardly sinful and evil humans. Jesus’ story is God’s communication to us of God’s stance towards us, which is in a word Grace. That is God saves us from our sin while we are yet sinful, not because or in response to what we have done right, but rather as a response to what we have done that is sinful! God not only saves us from our sins, but God cures us of our every illness, renews life in us, and then sends us back out into the world, that wretched place of evil and sin and corruption and greed and lies and destruction …. God sends us back out into the world, that wonderful place of God’s good creation, of beauty, Grace, love and hope. God sends us out to be, in the midst of all that evil, the one’s who embody God’s Grace, beauty, love, and hope for all people.

So why the conditional given in Exodus and so many other places in the Bible, both Old and New Testaments? Simply because Grace is such a difficult reality for arrogant humans to swallow that we turn it around, pervert it, into to something we can earn. That is the story we are accustom to living with and it is comfortable even in the extreme as we recognize that it is the ultimate illness and disease by which we will die, by which we are dying, by which we have died and yet still walk as shells of humans on earth.

It is also the religious story, so commonly used in so many traditions, by the ‘priests’ or those who pretend to lead others, in order to control their followers. It is exactly the means the Devil uses to corrupt and pervert us and live all around us.

Jesus comes to heal us and to live a story we can understand … so we can understand and trust (amidst all the sick evil around and in us) that:

Grace still abounds, as does beauty, love, and hope.

Thankfully these abound for all the children who have grown up by those so perverted they cannot see Grace at all, yet alone beauty, love or hope.

Thanks be to God.

Oppressed, Afflicted, Abused … and Silent!

Sunday, October 17, 2021

The Beautiful Light of Christ,

Will Reveal the Truth and the Lies

About Every Moment of Our Lives,

this we trust, so we live free!

Isaiah 53:7

He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.

1 Peter 2:23

When he was abused, he did not return abuse; when he suffered, he did not threaten; but he entrusted himself to the one who judges justly.

Words of Grace For Today

The urge for all humans is to respond to attacks with attacks of ones own, but with a greater intensity.

This leads to wars on a personal scale in marriages, among family and friends, within communities, countries and between countries. It leads us into the worst that humans can bring to bear on one another, so horrible much of it is unspeakable.

What am I to do about the RCMP Jones who fabricated evidence and coordinated others to bring false reports, who did this just because she could, even though I was innocent and bewildered at why or how anyone would do such a thing?

What am I to do about my ex who created so many lies about our life together that life became unbearable, and no matter what I tried or sacrificed or gave her she only created more worse lies about me and our life together, and then created more and more lies for the courts, lies that I could not even imagine where they came from? Or the children who came to court to lie as well, trying to get me falsely convicted? Or the prosecutors who gleefully took the cases, presented the lies to teh courts and created more and more lies on their own for the courts to hear? Or the lawyers who were supposed to be my lawyers or work to inform me of the court processes, and simply did none of that, instead tried to make my testimony totally useless in court?

What am I to do with the judges themselves, who received these lies eagerly, and made ruling after ruling to enable a false conviction, and when all the evidence was in they still had to lie about the evidence in order to falsely convict me, and especially those who did it so cruelly, naming my kindness as something that had created fear, as if my kindness could at all create fear!? Or the judges who removed sections of testimony and then played games and made up more lies to ensure I spent $1ks with no hope of hearing the audio of the section that was removed from the transcripts?! And on and on go the inexplicably dishonest and cruel things that people with authority did in order to convict me and send me to jail for crimes that I did not commit, which left the children suffering cruel borderline personality disordered ‘parenting’!

What am I to do with the pastor, bishop, doctors, office managers, church council people, community leaders and many others who joined in the creating of lies about me, so that I am cut off from my church, cannot receive medical care even as my health requires more and more medical intervention, am not safe in the community as on many occasions people put my life at risk, some violently, some with reckless breaching of Health Orders, and some with threats to my person, well being, and survival?

My list is not complete even at that, and there is more and more that time reveals to me that I did not know of, and so much more that I will never know about, yet billions of people today and through history have stories that are so much worse!

What are we to do with such terrible evil directed at us, often (as is my case) with no rationale reason that it the evil be directed at us?! There is plenty of random, senseless destruction of life, but this is focused and directed evil against us, though there is no reason for us being chosen, except some insane perversion of reality. What are we, the victims of this destruction and evil to do? What are the rest of you people, who are not the victims of such senseless, useless, and avoidable evil, supposed to do?

What are we to do when it is impossible to judge 100% correctly who is doing what to bring about such atrocities against innocent people?

Jesus says forgive as we are forgiven. This brings us freedom from being victims to being blessed by God!

What if the sins are not even acknowledged by more than a handful of people, and otherwise the evil is continued by the same people, choosing new victims as the violence and destruction mounts and becomes systemic?

I have forgiven those who suffer mental illness, my ex, and the children effected by her.

I cannot forgive the others, especially those with authority and position, who are responsible to ensure this kind of injustice does not happen. I also cannot respond with increased vengeance or violence and destruction. I will not allow myself to become like them.

I have bound their sins, and made it known so that they have opportunity to amend their lives, and God can celebrate a victory first that their destructive evil is acknowledged and stopped, and God can celebrate a second victory, that they have received freedom from the Great Deceiver’s grip and begun to life a life of service to Jesus the Christ.

Binding sins is not to be judge over others. Binding sins is not to condemn others. Binding sins leaves the judging and the punishments or mercies to be in God’s hands. It makes known what has been done, even when it cannot always be known completely who has contributed knowingly or unwittingly participated.

Binding sins does bring the victim freedom from being a victim, and allows one to stand blessed each day.

The Suffering Servant of Isaiah, and Jesus (reported also in 1 Peter), do not even respond with a declaration of the evil done and the binding of sins. They suffer in silence the violence done to them. This may seem to some to be the better response. I cannot agree. One needs identify evil and hope that the perpetrators will amend their lives, or at least, as a ‘civilized’ society we will collectively recognize the evils done against so many innocent people.

One cannot live well and seek revenge, though.

Lies are lies forever, always without end.

Truth is truth, always and forever.

God’s Grace gives us boldness to be those who forgive and who bind sins. Without it we would be left breathless. With it we are given breath each day by the Holy Spirit.

Thanks be to God!

Comfort, Comfort

Wednesday, September 22, 2021

Looking

To

Each

New Day

Isaiah 40:1

Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God.

Luke 9:11

When the crowds found out [that, taking his disciples with him, Jesus had withdrawn privately to a city called Bethsaida], they followed him; and he welcomed them, and spoke to them about the kingdom of God, and healed those who needed to be cured.

Words of Grace For Today

There is no shortage of people today who suffer unimaginable pain, hunger, thirst, and torture. Many of the suffer so at the hands of other people.

It has been so through all time.

Many people today suffer diseases, Covid -19 only one of the many that are deadly in horrible ways. Many suffer for lack of care or recklessness of other people. Many in Alberta’s health care sector, overrun and pushed to and over the brink as they are by Covid cases, refer to the fourth wave (the worst of all of them) as the Kenney-wave, since he recklessly pushed his ‘Open for Summer’ program through, which fuelled the fourth wave to be so huge and destructive, and deadly.

Is has been so through all time.

The greatest suffering by far is not measured by physical ailments or torture. The greatest suffering is what we humans experience in our souls, or spirits, or hearts and minds.

In the midst of all kinds of suffering, God is still present providing comfort, healing, and hope.

God’s unconditional love in action provides the most essential element of life for us: hope.

Hope that our yesterdays will be blessed.

Hope that today will be blessed.

Hope that our tomorrows will be blessed.

Hope that tomorrow will be at least in some small way better than the horrific illnesses, injustice, abuse that is today’s offerings for us.

Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God, and [Jesus] heals those who need to be cured.

Singing and Dancing

Thursday, August 19, 2021

Every Step In Life

Leads Us to Sing and Dance

For God Is With Us

Always.

1 Chronicles 13:8

David and all Israel were dancing before God with all their might, with song and lyres and harps and tambourines and cymbals and trumpets.

Philippians 4:4-5

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near.

Words of Grace For Today

When one surveys through memory how God has exercised great grace and steadfast love for our ancestors and for us in this time and place, there is only one response that we can engage in:

We sing and dance before God with all our might.

And we work each day to let our gentleness be the mode of our lives, gentleness that is born of enduring great suffering, and still receiving great grace and deliverance by God’s hand, for God is always near.

So we sing with all our hearts, minds, and strength, singing the old, old story of Jesus and his love.

This is the dance that celebrates everything that is good in creation: God’s grace and love for us all. There is nothing better possible than this in all our lives.

Perishing and Surviving (for real!)

Thursday, August 12, 2021

We can arm ourselves

as much as we wish.

Only God’s Blessings

Can Save Us From the Real Enemy.

Psalm 9:3

My enemies turned back, they stumbled and perished before you.

Ephesians 1:3

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.

Words of Grace For Today

There are wonderful words to be able to speak about the challenges of life and the enemies that would do us in, such as:

My enemies turned back, they stumbled and perished before you.

Or even less concrete, though much more valuable:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.

We need more than enemies that stumble and perish, we need more than the physical results of force that cost our enemies their lives. We need … well we need God on our side, or rather we need some hope that we can be seen by God to be on God’s size. Well, more than seen … we need to know that God has us on God’s side.

What we know, in our honest moments, is that there is no way on this blessed earth that we even know how to be on God’s side all the time, or even sometimes for more than a moment or two, if that.

So how can we even hope that God will ensure we are on God’s side?

We have only God’s word, God’s promises, and Jesus’ story, which is as much as we will get, and

more than we need.

God walks with us. We are not doing what God wants us to do all the time. God ensures we do God’s will as much as God can guide us to do so, sometimes in spite of us or what seems to be by accident by us. God certainly does get wondrous works out of us saints.

The greatest work begins as we confess and give God thanks that Jesus has brought God’s grace to bear on us. This great work is oft repeated, as many times as we stray from God’s will for us, which is so many times we cannot count them even those in one of our days. This work is completed when we show God’s grace to others so that they may know God as the One who walks with them, graciously bringing them to abundant life.

When we do that we know once again without a doubt that God

has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places,

and God has blessed us in Christ with every creaturely blessing in the concrete earthly places that God gives us to walk in and through for our days in God’s blessed creation.

The world is after all God’s and God blesses us to live in it, to life abundantly in it, as God’s Grace-made saints.

Why Lord, Why?!!

Wednesday, July 14, 2021

Lord, Why When the Light is Right in Front of Us

Do We Still Seek the Darkness?

Isaiah 61:1

The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners.

Galatians 5:1

For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.

Words of Grace For Today

God, why …?

God why is it so hot!

Sweat pours down my back and arms and all over dripping all my work in stinky wet.

My jeans stick to my legs as I try to move. My shirt tugs back at all my efforts to move. It’s hard to get anything done, and when I do I feel like someone has wrung me out like a sopping wet towel and left me still soaking and stinking.

Ok, God, I can get used to the heat, it’s not easy but I’m adapting to it, but

God why are there so many miserable mosquitoes ready to bite me at all hours and at dawn and dusk they swarm so thick it’s hard not to inhale more than a few just walking a few feet from the door. When they bite it hurts, and then goes away, just to come back with a terrible itch that simply will not go away and will not be ignored! What’s that about anyway. If I try to ignore them and merely wash the itch away with ammonia in the glass cleaner, that sort of works until I get itchy all over inside my eyes, my nose, my throat and my ears and I start to have a severe allergic reaction that starts to take my breath away. Really, does it have to be so bad all summer long!? I have to wear long jeans and long sleeves, thick socks and a hat with flaps down my neck and over my ears soaked in DEET to keep them away. Then every night I have to wash all that DEET exposure away before I sleep which takes water which is expensive to haul here to have to wash with. Fortunately I have friends who have loaned me the things needed to shower each night and haul water often enough from town that I can shower on the hot days before sleeping.

So God I guess I can get used to the mosquitoes, but God, I mean really: does there have to be so many black gnats that dive bomb into my face, my eyes and ears and take little chunks away as prizes for their kamikaze efforts, which because they are so many they usually survive better than I. I end up breathing them into my lungs at least once a day. I have to constantly wave my hand in front of my face to keep them away, which sort of works and they only seem to be out in certain places while I am mowing grass. So it’s not all the time, thankfully.

So God I guess I have figured out how to survive even the kamikaze gnats.

But God why are there so many wasps, not just ready to bite me when I try to work on the tarps that shelter me from the cold in winter. They did sting me, hard sending shock waves through my body and brain freezing out all other thoughts or impulses except to run. Not just once, but twice, and they hurt unbearably for hours, then itched and ached for days. The memory returned fresh each time I stepped outside and the sound of a wasp buzz reached my ears. I live in fear everyday of being smashed into panic again. I cannot have that. I cannot work. I have to huddle in fear inside.

That just cannot be. So I’ve made a suit to protect me from head to toe, even a piece of screen left over from repairs to guard my face, all duct taped together with no gaps at all. I’ve read on the internet that dish soap will suffocate wasps. I cannot find any prepared wasp control/killer spray, so I’ve filled a spray bottle with a water soap mix and I’ve destroyed the nest on the tarps, and three in the woods so close they wasps swarm around the camper each day.

So God I guess I’ve figured out how to deal with the fear created by being stung by wasps, and in the fall they will all dies off. Next spring I know what to do to keep them from creating nest here again. It’s simple if I am ready.

But God I really don’t know what to do with the people that gaslight me, that scapegoat me, that bear false witness against me, and the judges that lie about the evidence before them in order to convict me and deny me true justice. How can a society survive such barbarism anyway. It’s like the truth does not count for anything and whatever someone makes up for the courts and whatever the courts want to make up for themselves will be taken in the worse possible way for me, and I’ll pay and pay and pay until I have nothing left and still I’ll be driven into debt, further and further and further, and made to give up even the most common decent truths about myself. I have had to celebrate the Eucharist each day to remember that you too were betrayed and scapegoated and convicted and … well you were crucified. I have not been killed. I have found your blessings in each day in the most profound and simple things, like having enough to eat, and a good cup of coffee with fresh milk in it in the morning, and having medications I need, and having reason and opportunity to work hard to survive, and write and dream and use photography to speak about the wonders of your creation.

So God, I guess I have gotten used to evil all around in the most trusted, honoured places in society in this adopted country of mine. I have to remember how much you forgive me, so that I can remember that you may forgive these people as well, though now I cannot say their sins are forgiven, for they have not admitted they did and still do this same thing to others, and it is horrendous for the children. So I have bound their sins so that they might fear that they will answer to you, though with you I hope for a double victory, now that they provide justice based on truth, and that they join your people in celebrating all your gifts, encouraging others to do the same.

But Lord, it’s so hot, there’s so many mosquitoes and gnats and wasps and so many enemies of goodness, kindness, truth, and love. How can I deal with all of them all the time.

So I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep

and if I die before I wake, least I won’t wonder how much is still at stake

for the dance of life is more than a dance, gracefully, graciously partaken in.

It is also a feast and celebration with you, God, with all your people, in thanks for all you’ve suffered to do good things for us all.

So I guess I can wait for the cold, when the sweat will not run freely, the mosquitoes will be done for another year, the gnats will disappear and I can breathe easy, and the evil people are kept at bay by the cold and snow.

But God why does it have to be so cold and stormy, and why does there have to be so much snow.

I mean I like to have my peace and be able to ski ….

So Lord I pray, give me your peace, in the sleep of the righteous and pure, graciously so made a saint of your light by your own choice and by grace through faith alone.

Another simple normal summer day.

When does autumn start to arrive?

But Lord, why do the bears start to come around in the fall …..?

Lord, whatever it is that holds me captive, free me. Whatever it is that blinds me, give me sight. Whatever it is that robs me of joy while serving you and sharing the good news of your Grace with others, take this from me so that

because you give me life

I can be one of the saints who bring good news to the oppressed, who bind up the broken-hearted, who proclaim liberty to the captives and release to the prisoners.

Help me live in the freedom you have so preciously bought for me; help me not return to the slavery that I know so well and feels so comfortable … until it binds me so close to evil that life starts to shrivel right out of me leaving me alone with my fears.