Will it be well with you when he searches you out? Or can you deceive him, as one person deceives another?
2 Corinthians 13:5
Examine yourselves to see whether you are living in the faith. Test yourselves. Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless, indeed, you fail to pass the test!
Words of Grace For Today
An exam, sample exams, test scores, failing marks, proving oneself.
All of these come into play for human examinations.
God works differently.
First, there is actually a kind of failing, of standing against the work of the Holy Spirit so doggedly and determinedly and persistently and … or something else (we simply do not know what it is that we can do to fail.) Certainly we know we all fail to be good enough; we are saved only by the Grace of God, through faith, by the work of the Holy Spirit.
That’s exactly the breaking point of our trying to determine when we fail God’s Grace so completely that we are outside God’s abundant love. We humans cannot judge it.
All we know is that God’s Grace is for us and for all others, even the most wretched sinners … as we all were before Jesus saves us …
and
still are!
There are serious deceptions that humans carry out in daily life to get the better of others for themselves. None of these work on God.
God sees right through us to the core and all the way to the core and back. God knows everything about us.
If we were planning … no (it is not IF, it is since … so) Since we all plan to try to deceive God about ourselves this is definitely something to worry about, to be fearful of, and to become existentially anxious about.
The freedom we seek is to realize our attempts at deceiving God and how futile the are, and to once again throw ourselves into God’s mercy.
We can test ourselves. If we are so out of touch with our place with God it is a good place to start some finite self-awareness. The real test has already been played out on the cross, and with the resurrection we have all passed … on Jesus’ coat-tails.
When we realize how dependent our existence is on God’s Grace, then we more often, perhaps more quickly, give up on our efforts to deceive God … and other humans … about ourselves. We learn to point to God’s Grace, and offer it to others.
The greatest freedom is ours when we no longer need to depend on our own performances at all the tests life puts in front of us. We can boldly, courageously, faithfully, and lovingly trust that Jesus is with us each step of the way … and use all our energies and focus to work to give God glory in all we attempt, give God thanks in all we accomplish, and be even more grateful that we survive all the times our attempts fail.
Covid 19 is more than a test of our health. It is a test of our ability to work with and for other humans. We will fail. We will succeed, only as God gives us the abilities and we work diligently with them.
Covid 19 may be in many ways a test of our faith.
Consider that every day we face tests of our faith.
Consider there is much we each can do, even in these times.
Testing our faith does not produce a grade or pass/fail. It is not a measure of our pasts. It is a preparation for the future. It gives us a measure compared to the saints in light, which helps us answer the question, “Is there more we can do! If so, show us!”
Surely the Lord your God has blessed you in all your undertakings; he knows your going through this great wilderness.
1 Corinthians 4:2
Moreover, it is required of stewards that they should be found trustworthy.
Words of Grace For Today
God has blessed us greatly. This wilderness that we are all going through called Covid 19 pandemic affects us all differently, but we humans are ALL in this together, like it or not!
God is with us!
And
We are stewards of so much. Will we be found trustworthy as stewards who share what is given into our charge as our Creator intended we would?
Like at no other time, the whole world needs us to be faithful, active and proactive!
CBC news reported yesterday that lawsuits and hate speech abound in response to Covid 19.
Lawsuits are explained that we humans lash out at others to blame them when we are hurt, to make someone else accountable.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said the COVID-19 pandemic keeps unleashing “a tsunami of hate and xenophobia, scapegoating and scaremongering” …. [It] is fast becoming a human rights crisis.”
Who are the targets of the hate speech?
Jews, Muslims, migrants, refugees, older persons, journalists, whistleblowers, health professional, aid workers and human rights defenders!
Guterres called on political leaders to show solidarity with all people and on educational institutions to focus on “digital literacy” at a time when “extremists are seeking to prey on captive and potentially despairing audiences.” He called on the media, especially social media, to “remove racist, misogynist and other harmful content,” on civil society to strengthen outreach to vulnerable people and on religious figures to serve as “models of mutual respect.”
“And I ask everyone, everywhere, to stand up against hate, treat each other with dignity and take every opportunity to spread kindness,” Guterres said.
There is not one person in Canada who cannot do something each day to stand up against hate, treat each other with dignity and take every opportunity to spread kindness!
I’m not one to give orders, but here is the one that counts the most:
Get to it!
Every morning remind ourselves, this is what the world needs most. God has given us abundantly, now use everything we are and have to end hate, treat everyone with dignity, and spread kindness.
no matter the challenges or frustrations of this day
Psalms 119:77
Let your mercy come to me, that I may live; for your law is my delight.
Mark 1:30-31
Now Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they told him about her at once. He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them.
Words of Grace For Today
Since forever people have called upon God, and with various degrees of real expectation on a scale from demanded to hoped that God would respond and save them.
On the demand end of that scale of calling upon God for deliverance, the Psalm seems to reflect the old and very common perversion of faith that says: because I have done X then God must do Y for me.
It is about trying to control the uncontrollable things about life. It is trying to raise oneself above the reality of life to become a little godlet: ‘Look at me! I am so X, that I can control what happens to me, to you, in the universe, … why I even can control what God does!’
The hubris of it is astounding, or it would be, if it were not so common … to every human to some degree. After all life is cruel, short and brutish, right?
As Jesus does for Simon’s mother-in-law, why would we not want Jesus to be with us today, walking in to our elders’ sick rooms, struck with Covid 19 as they are, needing ventilators to stay alive and dialysis to cleanse the poisons from their blood?
It’s a bit harder to make this plea for Jesus’ healing with a sense of being able to demand intervention to save a life.
How are we to call upon God?
First off, if we are going to error about communication, then the best one to do this to is God. Save great exercise of kindness and politeness for those we live with and among. The people in our lives need our kindness and politeness. God, on the other hand, already knows we can be less than kind, faithful, loving, and even decent. God is not hurt by our stupidity, if we really come pleading (or angrily demanding) to God.
The gracious reality of God is that God chooses to listen to us, no matter what. God responds, most often with a chuckle and a quiet, ‘no way!’ Or too often with a tear dropping steadily in pain as God dismays at our behaviour so lacking in gratitude as we mostly are, as God must simply say, ‘No, that’s not how life works. You are free. Freedom means suffering is part of life. I am here, suffering with you. Do not let your hearts be troubled.’
Grace abounds also, and sometimes God’s answer is YES! and our request for life, health, and faith are fulfilled. Likely God had it in the works already. Or someone stepped up to make things change, or life just developed that way anyway. Those times of desperate need answered with a YES are more common than we seem to remember.
So we pray today again: God save us! Save us from ourselves, from each other, from the works of the Devil in us all. Save us from destruction, pain, illness, and death. Save others. Do this because you, God, choose. Do this because it will give witness that you watch over your people. Do this for whatever reason, but please do this for us, today; if that is not too much to ask.
Few if any of us can pray, save us from this Covid 19 pandemic; because almost all of us have already suffered some loss because of it. We can pray, loudly, clearly and hopefully,
God deliver us, that we may live to give you the glory!
Today …
Today we can start giving God the glory: be thankful for everything we have.
Share with those who desperately need what we take for granted.
Laugh heartily at the good things, the humorous things that surround us each day.
Smile gently at those you meet; we are almost all struggling in some way, more so these days.
Catching Rays
Look up to see the Light
Life is colourful, and most coloured by our attitude. Life is beautiful.
You are a God ready to forgive, gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and you did not forsake them.
2 Timothy 2:13
If we are faithless, God remains faithful – for God cannot deny Godself.
Words of Grace For Today
God is often seen (as God is reflected often in Scripture) as a wrathful, judging, and destroying God … God who we need fear, obey, and worship.
Amidst this rough view of God, a reflection of our image of ourselves on to God, these words of God’s character repeat often in scripture:
God is ready to forgive, gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
These words are taken up into our liturgy. We repeat them Sunday after Sunday (perhaps not every Sunday if our congregation uses many of the liturgies available to keep our hearts and minds freshly engaged by the Word, also the Word in liturgies.) That is one of the benefits of liturgies moulded for centuries on scripture, repeated and repeated and repeated … the words are so familiar that we know them as our Good Shepherd’s voice for us!
This promise of God is … amazing!
It is filled with that amazing grace that saves wretches like us!
We all need forgiveness, from God and countless other people. We need God to be gracious and merciful to us, to be slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
As God is to us, God creates us, Jesus calls us, and the Holy Spirit equips and inspires us to be to all other people:
forgiving,
gracious and merciful,
slow to anger,
and abounding in steadfast love!
Even when we no longer have even a tiny trace of faith or hope or love or mercy or grace or forgiveness in us, (due to whatever Evil or stress, even Covid 19 and it’s side effects on us all) God is still faithful.
God is still faithful!
God remains always faithful to even the most terrible wretches, like us.
And be reflected by all water and life in Creation
Isaiah 42:16
I will turn the darkness before them into light, the rough places into level ground.
Luke 1:78-79
By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.
Words of Grace For Today
Darkness. Total, deep, profound darkness of the soul. No light at the end of the tunnel.
When we find ourselves there, to put it into cosmic terms, in a black hole that pulls everything around it into nothingness …
When we find ourselves there it seems that everything is lost, not only things that build a sense of continuity and security (like jobs, homes, family, church, and even the tool that enables one to create – a camera, a pencil, a computer, a canvas), not just life and all good life at that for us and for creation, but meaning, history, presence and future ….
When time and hope are lost into the void and emptiness that is left to us, then only memory of, or re-spoken promises made in the past, or that little light at the end of the vortex can save us from going totally bonkers.
Covid 19’s threat (the lock-down, our isolations, our ‘staying the blazes home’, our financial concerns, the risk to our and our loved ones’ health and lives), for most of us does not approach the vortex of a black hole where no light exists. For some of us it does.
Whether its a total black out, or a brown out, or we have already gone a bit bonkers so that it all looks like dark colours everywhere …
However this affects us,
We yearn for Light, if yearning is still possible.
God promises to turn darkness into light, rough places into level ground. The dawn from on high breaks in on us in darkness, in the shadow of death, and guides us in the way of peace.
That’s the promise that we can remember … if we can remember.
That’s the promise that we can re-speak for others … when they cannot remember, we can, and we can still speak.
That’s the promise that we need to re-speak, to proclaim with all the vivid colours of the rainbow splashing about …
because even if we do not notice them, there is someone onto whom those colours (carrying Light) will splash.
And they will be saved from the vortex of absolute darkness, by our generous, reckless, prodigal re-speaking a promise that created, redeemed, and guides this whole universe of creation to be able to seek peace.
Peace is not something we attain and hold on to.
Peace is a manner of being in this universe, when participated in brings us to reflect God’s intent for us, but which is lost as quickly as a candle is snuffed out by even a gentle breeze.
Peace be with you, also this day, whatever this day is for you.
Splash and be splashed by the Light and Colours of the rainbow, God’s rainbow of promise, faith, hope, love, grace, and life – abundant life.
God guides us to both, as gift and blessing unearned.
2 Samuel 2:26
Then Abner called to Joab, ‘Is the sword to keep devouring for ever? Do you not know that the end will be bitter? How long will it be before you order your people to turn from the pursuit of their kinsmen?’
1 Corinthians 7:15
But if the unbelieving partner separates, let it be so; in such a case the brother or sister is not bound. It is to peace that God has called you.
Words of Grace For Today
God calls us to peace.
Peace between nations, between people, between spouses, and peace within ourselves.
Peace is much more than the absence of conflict.
Given merely the absence of conflict we humans always find our way into open conflict quite easily. It is because everyone is wrong about something, and they still think they are right. [Except of course me. I’m always right. Right?]
Girard provides that it is more complex than that, involving mimetic desires that lead to competition, which is ‘resolved’ through scapegoating. We compete with each other for what we see as limited resources/things. Aware we cannot afford open conflict with our closest friends we project our conflict on to some innocent, vulnerable bystander. Seeing that innocent as the source of our problem we destroy that person. Our urge to compete and destroy is ‘satisfied’, the thing we competed for becomes insignificant, and we are able to return to a ‘peaceful’ co-existence.
Except for the innocent person we’ve gaslit, attacked, destroyed and most often exiled or killed.
And except that, since we are not entirely oblivious to reality, we know we are now guilty of ruining an innocent person, of not working out our conflict with each other, and the root cause of that conflict is not addressed. It just goes underground in both of us, in our relationship, only to re-emerge at a later date. Then it will be an even less comprehensible conflict, which we will ‘resolve’ by destroying yet another innocent bystander.
Peace must be diligently sought anew each hour of each day, or it is lost. And it is lost long before anyone notices any conflict arising.
Peace is lost when we no longer see the souls of other people, for whom Jesus died, as the most important part of our own lives, when we no longer give everything we are to provide care for those in our daily lives, or when we no longer work to meet the needs and satisfy the yearnings of those with whom our lives are intertwined.
Peace is a marvellous way of being. It is fragile and can disappear in an instant with a [wrong] word or deed. It is threatened most by an errant thought.
God gives us peace. We can treasure it, with our hearts, minds, and strength.
sacrificing ourselves that others may live abundantly.
Psalms 51:13
Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will return to you.
Colossians 1:3.13
In our prayers for you we always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ … He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son
Words of Grace For Today
Rescued from the darkness
It was cold and dark. Dangerously dark, though not even winter cold, yet. Spending the night in the woods miles from anywhere was not the plan.
It was just a hike on a trail being developed, this portion already well planned, if not clearly marked. We arrived climbing up the side of the huge rock to our right, on to the second level of that rock as it overlooked a small lake below. The trail seemed to peter out across the gentle downward slope of the rock face toward the lake and further to the right around that side of the lake.
But then there was just a sheer drop of a few metres into the lake, or the effectively solid wall of trees to the right barring any progress on that side of the lake. There were no signs of a trail around the left side of the lake either and other large rocks jutted out over the lake around that side.
The danger from the dark was not that it was pitch black. It was already dusk and we had miles to go. I was experienced outdoors, but the three with me were not and two were young children. Dark, the real dark that was coming, meant stumbling lost all night, or bedding down in the wet and cold. It had just started to rain as I searched for the trail forward from that rock we ended up on.
Finally I came up with a plan. I’d walk back two miles to where the trail took a turn and was well marked. With flashlight in hand I would retrace our steps.
Huffing, tired, and being spit on from above, cold, I trudged back step by step through the miles, and then returned. Nothing. The obvious trail had no other possible turns as it joined a creek that ran into the lake we had stopped at. As the hard face of that huge rock came up to shoulder height I saw to the left the creek water through the underbrush. It was maybe, yes, it was sort of a path, and then there on the tree on the left side of the trail was a trail-marker arrow. A turn back to the left and quickly down, with a quick switchback to the right and one arrived at a bridge of two logs over the creek.
I lifted my feet as my spirits were lifted. We were not lost. I found the others on the rock overlooking the lake, huddled together for warmth under a rain poncho to keep themselves dry.
We worked our way, sometimes with flashlights down over the creek and up high on the huge rocks along the lake and back down near the wet outflow on the far side of that lake, and onward over roots, and around huge 5 foot diameter trees, through the rain forest, back to the vehicle we’d parked near northwest edge of the small town we called home.
A hot shower, prayers of thanks.
We were rescued, once again, from the darkness by the Grace of God.
It is as easy to lose ourselves in the forest of challenges presented to us, now also because of Covid 19. It is easy to miss an obvious turn because we’ve lost ourselves in the darkness of despair or exhaustion or laziness or disorientation.
Always, God sends us others, or sometimes a clear plan, to help us find our way forward, so that we are there for others as well tomorrow.
Looking at things from God’s perspective always does
net us truth.
Numbers 11:23
The Lord said to Moses, ‘Is the Lord’s power limited? Now you shall see whether my word will come true for you or not.’
Matthew 6:28-29.31
And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying, “What will we eat?” or “What will we drink?” or “What will we wear?”
Words of Grace For Today
Part of the human condition, built in for survival, is that we can worry, or anticipate with concern, dangers that we may face. And we can do this in such an engaging way that we do something about the danger.
In the summer, there is little pressing reason to make warm clothes. When the bitter winds blow the light blizzardy snow over the thick lake ice set by weeks of -35⁰ and colder temperatures, then the need for warm clothes is clear!
Worry, or being able to anticipate with fully engaging concern, helps us get on with the hard work in the warm weather of making warm clothes for our family for the winter. And for those who cannot make clothes for themselves.
Jump ahead a few eons, and we just need to have a job that pays well enough so that we can go to the store where warm clothes are offered for sale, because someone else has made them, someone else transported them, and someone else has put them in the store for sale.
Now our worry or anticipatory concern drives us to have a job that pays enough so that we can afford warm clothes. Note that our ‘worry’ drive becomes more and more disconnected from our real needs as we face real dangers in the cold winters.
So why does Jesus teach that we should not worry. God clothes the birds of the air and flowers in the field with great beauty. God will also clothe us. Will God? Can we just quit our jobs and go to the store and get the clothes we need for the winter come October? Simply put no.
God provides. God provides everything we need. God provides the drive to be concerned before a danger presents itself. God also provides enough rational capabilities for us to sort out how our drives are disconnected from our real needs and real dangers.
But we are lazy. Part of the human condition so that we do not waste limited energy on useless activities. Thinking clearly is hard work. We like to not think about what is going to happen and just let our God given ‘instinctual’ drives run us. We like to give in to the easy temptations the Devil offers, and instead of using our instinctual drives according to some clearly thought out value system, an ethic, we just let it all happen to us and we take no responsibility. Meanwhile the Devil builds up a perverted rationalization in our minds as to how and why we do what we do. Easy sins are easy to rationalize.
And all hell breaks loose in our lives, because the disconnect between our drive, the dangers we face, and the anticipatory concern to address the dangers are so distantly disconnected that our ‘worry’ now drives us to do all sorts of foolish things, things that rob us and others of life.
We develop, instead of utilitarian answers to our needs for life, an adornment on top of our needs that encroaches on the utilitarian value of the things that meet our needs … and it spirals out of control until, instead of utilitarian things, we acquire pure aesthetics that do not meet our need at all. Our real needs are not met. Our ‘worry’ spirals up, we acquire more things that also do not meet the real needs we have. More and more until we cannot even see the real needs as they are covered by ‘fictionalized needs’ that must be met.
We worry ourselves sick about ‘meeting’ these ‘needs’.
These are the worries that Jesus advises we leave behind, and trust that God will clothe us, as God does the birds of the air and the flowers of the field.
God will clothe us by reconnecting our real anticipatory concerns, and drive thereof, to meet our real needs.
Throw into that mix, since we’ve escaped into aesthetics instead of utilitarian things, that we actually do need to create, enjoy, and admire beauty, both naturally occurring and human created. The first reflects God’s Spirit showing itself for us to marvel at. The later reflects the human spirit, given to us by God, that can overcome otherwise insurmountable dangers and challenges.
Simply put, art and beauty (not necessarily the same, but they can overlap) direct our minds and spirits to connect with people out of the past. Connected to the past we can see the present more clearly, more profoundly. And then we are equipped to ‘see’ the future as it is. It is in God’s hands. We can approach each day with hope.
God’s work will come about. We need not worry, saying, “What will we eat?” or “What will we drink?” or “What will we wear?” Instead we can lighten our minds to see the real challenges and expend our energies to meet them. Sometimes that will mean working hard to provide food, drink, or clothing.
Always that will mean giving God thanks for all that is possible each day.
The worry that Jesus directs us away from is the destructive, downward-spiralling negative thought patterns aimed at things we really can do nothing about, or things around which we’d be better off if we actually did what we can to mitigate the challenges ahead.
Regardless, God will do as God promises. We are God’s, God is with us.
Covid 19: there are many things we can do. Hand washing and physical distancing and Staying the Blazes home and thinking clearly how we acquire things, or touch things that could have the virus on them, and self-isolating and quarantining if we show even small symptoms … these are only some of the basic and smart things we can do to mitigate the risk to ourselves and everyone around us. We can also help others do these things. Sometimes we need to figure out how to inspire others to do these things.
Then our lives are all about caring for ourselves and others, physically (to social distance ourselves from the fridge, but climb those stairs 10 to 100 times a day), spiritually (setting a specific time to read, pray, and sing each day), and mentally (get a few old fashion games going – even if that is like chess over the phone, or four-way board game, all by telephone – it goes slow, but then we’ve got time, right! OK, parents with children maybe not a second, but get the children playing with friends over the phone. Let them be creative, constructive, and helpful to others.)
And get on the phone: make a call list of people who could use a good word, and call them once a week or so. Model it for children. Do it for your elders. Take care of the vulnerable.
We can STOP worrying, by getting on with what we actually can do.
