Category: Weather

Save and Protect Us So That …

Thursday, February 3, 2022

God’s Glory is Not What We Expect

Or Usually Want.

It Costs Us

Everything.

1 Chronicles 16:35

Save us, O God of our salvation, and gather and rescue us from among the nations, that we may give thanks to your holy name, and glory in your praise.

John 17:11

And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.

Words of Grace For Today

We pray in many and various ways: God, come and save us and protect us. Give us a place in your glory so that we may, as a strong and feared people among the nations and among our enemies, sing your praises and give glory to your name.

The church has prayed this and sought this and achieved this in many and various ways. As a strong institution among it’s enemies, and among the nations, it has played the part of a element of life to be feared … by individuals who the church could ruin by exorcising them (making killing them legal!) or today simply by ostracizing them without due process (so that they are denounced by many based on false rumours and false charges, usually that the person is ‘mentally unstable.’ Sounds like what was done to the prophets of old!) … and by organizations and nations who the church has stripped of all power simply by denouncing them though today it takes a bit more than that so the denouncing is done by political leaders who serve the will of the church.

What we, as individuals and as a church, have failed to do is to remain humble, vulnerable, meek, servants of God, living out God’s unconditional love for all people, and loving all people with a sacrificial love that may cost us everything as it opens the possibility of life abundant to all people.

It is not surprising that the church has become less and less attractive to people struggling in a more and more secular world. That is: the church is less and less capable of engendering fear or deserving respect across huge swaths of society, and even faithful followers of Christ in ever greater numbers are disillusioned with the corruption and blatant hypocrisy of leaders and followers alike that is rampant inside the church.

In many and various efforts to regain it’s fast dwindling numbers the church has tried and still tries to reach the expressed needs of the people, serving as a secular social club (with no real Word of God permeating anything about the club) or serving up ‘fear of others’ as a basis for a made-up faith/religion or passing off a fervent self-serving piety as the basis of faith … all which garner great responses … sometimes.

Still the numbers of members and churches plummets as it has for decades.

So the books written and the ‘new’ ideas of how to make the church a success … at least number-wise.

All of it is empty of course, because it tries to gain God’s glory by plan and scheme and effort. There is no human effort that can gain God’s favour, or gifts, or blessings.

That’s God’s choice and doing.

We have so long ignored it that we simply do not understand: Our purpose is not to succeed, but to fail, and in failing God makes plain the Grace that sustains us and all the world.

Yet we pray, as a church and as individuals: God, save and protect us. Help us to be the greatest of your disciples so that we can sing your praise and give you the glory in all things. But what we mean is God save us and protect us from failure so that we can exercise our own power in this world over others, live comfortable lives, and plan for a good future (of power and influence) for our children and grandchildren and many generations to come.

What God answers is: No.

God is our salvation, but not so that we can ‘Lord it over others.’

God makes us one with the destitute, the starving, the outcasts, the ostracized, the imprisoned, the persecuted, and the failures of human history … so that we will finally better understand: it’s not at all about us and our successes or failures. It is all about sharing all that God has given us as free gifts.

So as the church declines into irrelevancy God’s Word lives as the most relevant word in a world inundated with words: God Loves us all unconditionally, and renews life for all people, and sends us (who hear the call and give thanks for the renewed life we have) to share God’s unconditional love and full life abundant with all people, especially the poor and our enemies.

Let the Humble Hear and Be Glad!

Wednesday, February 2, 2022

A Beautiful Morning!?

A Bleepping Cold Morning?!?

A Wonderful Day!

Another Gift From God!

Psalm 34:2

My soul makes its boast in the Lord; let the humble hear and be glad.

1 Thessalonians 5:16-18

Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.

Words of Grace For Today

We all seem to have something that we want to be proud of, that we want to be recognized and respected for. Some of us even have skills, accomplishments, and events in our pasts that we could be very proud of and that other people could recognize as good contributions to God’s good creation …

except.

Except our skills, accomplishments, and events in our pasts … in fact our everything about us … are gifts given to us by God.

Each day, even when the temperatures drop below -44⁰, we always have great cause to give God thanks, to rejoice in all that life is for us, and to pray …

to pray for what seems to be missing or lacking or challenging us beyond our imagination and our perceived abilities.

Often we might pray the wonderful quote from Mother Teresa: I know God will not give me anything I can’t handle. I just wish that He didn’t trust me so much. … But

But it was never Mother Teresa who said it. It’s a false attribution. So

So are we going to pray it. Probably not.

God gives us the abilities to handle as much as we can, and the truth that all humble and honest people know is that life can quite often throw up in one’s path more for us to handle than be can deal with.

Exactly then we learn our limits and …

we learn that giving God thanks, rejoicing, and praying constantly ARE things we can always do.

Well, that rejoicing part maybe not, or at least not with any exuberance when we lose those we love or we lose more of life than we thought we ever could and still stay alive. There’s grief. It’s real. It excludes the ability to rejoice. Most grief has a half life, but it can just as easily rejuvenate itself into our lives with no warning. That’s grief.

Grief and all kinds of suffering keep us humble, and teach us to pray also in our most desperate times.

What humble people can do and do perhaps better than the proud, is listen … listen to God’s Word and promises, and trust them. As God frees us to hear we live renewed and we can be glad … no matter what life puts in our way forward in time.

Root … Taking Root

Tuesday, February 1, 2022

Taking the Route

to the Root

of Life

and

Putting Down Roots

(Even in Winter)

Brings Us to the Light of the World,

Christ.

2 Kings 19:30

The surviving remnant of the house of Judah shall again take root downwards, and bear fruit upwards.

Romans 11:16

If the part of the dough offered as first fruits is holy, then the whole batch is holy; and if the root is holy, then the branches also are holy.

Words of Grace For Today

Taking root.

That’s the event that connects us to whom God created us to be.

Taking root.

That’s the event that revives us, renews us.

Taking root.

That’s the event that requires forgiveness,

offered to those who would destroy us, and

accepted for all the sin that we ourselves have actually done.

Taking root.

That’s the event in which God shows us again that we are holy because we are connected to all that is holy in God’s good creation.

Taking root.

That’s the event that leads to us bearing fruit, good fruit.

Sliding Off Into the Devil’s Doo-doo.

Monday, January 31, 2022

On the Bright side:

There’s no grass to mow

mosquitoes to suffer

or wasps to interrupt one’s being outside.

No Matter the Season

The Devil’s always got enough doo-doo waiting.

Jeremiah 3:22

Return, O faithless children, I will heal your faithlessness. ‘Here we come to you; for you are the Lord our God.

1 Peter 2:25

For you were going astray like sheep, but now you have returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls.

Words of Grace For Today

The first kilometre out is a drive through the woods, which never gets plowed.

The tracks have, with the heavy snowfall onto which another foot is falling now, driven on many times over, have been packed down, while the snow across the rest of the trail remains relatively soft snow. Where the loose snow to be removed it would become obvious that the tracks are elevated above the rest of the trail … and when the temperatures rose to near and above freezing the tracks of hard packed snow turned to slippery snow or ice … and driving on the tracks became nearly impossible. The vehicle keeps slipping off into the foot to two feet deep snow that’s not been shovelled away, and beside the trail the snow has accumulated to 3 feet deep in places.

High on the tracks all is fine, but slipping down into the soft snow puts progress to a sudden halt.

Sheep go astray. Vehicles slide off the tracks. People slip on the Devil’s temptations into trouble, deep trouble, and life comes to a grinding halt … or not. Sometimes deep in the Devil’s temptations and trouble we keep living on blithely to the damage we do to ourselves and others around us, pleased as we are that even if we are caught in the Devil’s doo-doo, others are worse off than us (because we’ve put them there!)

God promises, I will heal your faithlessness.

God brings us back to the Good Shepherd and the guardian of our souls.

Thanks be to God.

Now what are we going to do with this renewed life? More wallowing in the Devil’s doo-doo, or work as the God-made saints God equips us to be?

It’s not easy doing God’s Will. It’s also not easy shovelling out a kilometre of tracks built up into hard packed snow ridges, crusty snow between and deep fluffy snow to each side. I trust that God will help immensely. It will take me about 2 months before I could possibly complete the task and by then God will have sent a bit of spring to melt away the snow … and the water will turn the tracks to mush. A whole other challenge made worse by the packed snow left on the trail.

It’s not easy doing what is right, but it is still right to do it. So off I go with a shovel as often and as long as my body will allow.

What are you going to do today with the life God renewed in you?

I will heal ….

Sunday, January 30, 2022

It is Enough

To Be Loved

By Jesus

And Know It As Sure As the Setting of the Sun.

Hosea 14:4

I will heal their disloyalty; I will love them freely, for my anger has turned from them.

Mark 8:36

For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?

Words of Grace For Today

Jesus Loves You!

Jesus heals our disloyalty, loves us freely, and …

While we work to make our ways forward in life, to make a little (or a lot of) profit for ourselves, Jesus makes sure that we do not forfeit our lives.

So

there is more to it than it seems:

Jesus loves you!

And there is nothing more important in life than to be assured that Jesus loves us.

God’s Temple

Saturday, January 29, 2022

As Wonders Abound,

None Are More Wondrous

Than the Holy Temple,

The Holy Vessels

God Made Us To Be.

Ezekiel 37:23

They shall never again defile themselves with their idols and their detestable things, or with any of their transgressions. I will save them from all the apostasies into which they have fallen, and will cleanse them. Then they shall be my people, and I will be their God.

1 Corinthians 3:16

Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?

Words of Grace For Today

There are innumerable examples of how we have perverted life into something that is a zero-sum game, and we’ve taken it for all we can, mostly from others, as if that were our right. Some have perverted the image they have of themselves into an image of a godlet, and excluded God from their lives (as if that were possible anyway.) Others have turned themselves to pursue [fill in any thing, or pleasure, or position, or wealth, or … ] as if attaining enough of it would fill their lives, and all sorts of perverse things happen to them and the people around them because of their pursuits.

God simply created us with freewill, and we make a mess of it, a terrible mess of it, we certainly do, we do.

God does not leave us there, in the damnable places and conditions we create for ourselves. God comes, as demonstrated in Jesus’ story, to cleanse us, and to restore us as God’s people … so that we once again can be people who fear and love God above all else. We see again that God is with us always, that God has poured God’s Spirit into us, made us vessels that hold the holy of holies, so that we can be and do God’s generous, unconditional, love and grace for all people.

You, and I, and each person, are/am/is a holy temple; and our treatment of ourselves and of others as holy is properly warranted.

God don’t make no junk.

God just makes all things blessed, and us, God made holy.

Get used to it.

Be it, with gratitude.

Lost?

Friday, January 28, 2022

Caught In The Weeds Of Life

By What Do We Orient Ourselves?

Psalm 62:6

He alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress; I shall not be shaken.

Matthew 11:15

Let anyone with ears listen!

Words of Grace For Today

There are many things that we count on to keep ourselves oriented in life as we progress through each day, day after day. We might be tempted to compare our journey each day to a hiker on a trail to a mountain top where the view extends in all directions over the ice covered peaks of a magnificent mountain range. One goal, one path, and we trod on, climb on, take breaks to drink and to eat maybe even to sleep a night or two … always onward to that one goal and that one glorious view. That hiker orients their progress on a map, by GPS or compass, by landmarks, by the moss on the tree trunks, and then above the treeline by the sun or by the moon and the stars. Maybe a better comparison, we might think, would be to an adventurer on a trek to the north pole across the deteriorating ice, looking for so many work-arounds and water crossings, not being able to rely on a compass (and not having GPS to make that a non-issue).

Life is so much more complicated than a single path towards a single destination and a glorious view, so the comparison doesn’t help much to consider how we orient ourselves amidst each day’s challenges, complications, set backs, victories and rewards, and … and all the distractions or … or are the distractions not all distractions? Are not some of them the real gist of life?

How do we orient ourselves? By some distant goal or achievement? By some earned fame or landmark of wealth or accumulation of power? By some undocumentable attitude? By the love we receive from family, from children and grandchildren?

God created us for this journey, though it certainly is not on one path, not even one path for each of us 7 some billion on earth today. It certainly is not towards one goal either.

Describing life in it’s full colour, assailed by challenges and enemies, the Psalmist knows well the pains, sufferings, triumphs, losses, rewards, and joys of life … and with the imagery of being under attack assures us that God alone is our rock and our salvation, our fortress; We shall not be shaken.

The paths we take this day will be like many before, and perhaps like none we’ve seen. We can hope for a summit with a view to life all around us, but we are as likely going to be caught in the Devil’s deceptive net that shows us the world, and yet shows us nothing of reality at all, not at all.

God’s Word is spoken, sent out, brings unconditional love, renewed life, and a mission to be and share God’s Word, Grace, Love, and Hope with all people. We were all made with ears that can hear God’s Word. As we journey onward on our mission, Let anyone with ears listen! For in the Word of God we have all the orientation to the goodness and purpose of life that is possible.

Conditional or Unconditional Love?

Thursday, January 27, 2022

A Short Section of the Shovelled Portions

After the Daylight is Spent

as Well as My Capacity,

Energy, and

Back

are

Done.

Psalm 103:17-18

But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him, and his righteousness to children’s children, to those who keep his covenant and remember to do his commandments.

Hebrews 13:8

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and for ever.

Words of Grace For Today

The drive in here, into the meadow in the woods by the lake, from the gravel road that is maintained by the MD is nearly a kilometre long.

Most years the snow and rain make it challenging though not impossible to make the trek when needed to get supplies, food, and water.

Today that seems to have changed and to find out whether that has changed is to risk getting stuck in hard, cold, soft and freezing and hard frozen ice and snow smothered with rain over the last few hours.

Whether I can make transit that fist kilometre or not is entirely up to what I do in preparation. It is at least a two week task to try to shovel the worst parts free and clear down to the hard packed snow-ice that has developed over the last months from November on. There is no need to wish I had shovelled it regularly as the snows fell. First I had lots of other work to do to survive the winter so far, with it’s plentiful snow and it’s deep hard cold for days below -35⁰ and weeks below -25⁰. Second, the task of shovelling that kilometre once would take about a week of constant work, pushing my old body to it’s limits each day. By then the next snow would have fallen and I’d have had to start all over again … meaning I would have been shovelling snow constantly for months now and doing little else … when there is lots that has to be done to survive without a home in the woods next to a lake, even if that is all a huge blessing from God. So no regrets that I drove that kilometre as I could, dragged two logs behind to bounce a bit of the snow to the side and pack the remaining in a hardened roadway that I could drive over.

With the warming to above zero and the accompanying thaw, with the rain that has drenched the snow and with the freeze coming again that will turn it all into slippery ice, that kilometre will not be ‘miraculously’ ‘fahrbar’ (drive-able). The drive-ability of that kilometre depends now almost entirely on how much I shovel, where I shovel, how far down I shovel and if I survive (no heart attack or stroke or back spasms laying me flat in the snow for days while I freeze to death, or any other of a host of ways that shovelling could put me down.)

That’s a reality that is conditional, conditional on what I do.

God’s grace, forgiveness, claim on us, and mission that we are sent back into the world to work at is not conditional at all. God’s blessings and favour are not conditional on anything we do. That God blesses us and favours us is entirely unconditional! It depends only on God’s steadfast, never changing, never failing love and grace.

We humans do not like to be so dependent on any one or thing other than ourselves. So we, along with great words of God’s grace and steadfast love, have repeatedly perverted God’s promises into being conditional on our responses to God’s grace and steadfast love. Thus Psalm that teaches (wrongly) that God’s blessings and favour for us and our children and their children and all people is conditional on us keeping his covenant and remembering to do his commandments.

That condition sets us up to strive to be and do what we cannot be or do: perfect. And it gives control of our lives over to others who interpret our being and doing as sufficiently good enough or not.

God’s grace and steadfast love are not conditional.

God sends us out to be and do that same unconditional grace and love for all people.

Are we up to the mission? It does take every bit of life we have in us, and often more.

Wednesday, January 26, 2022

Fully Deployed Before Launch

The James Webb Space Telescope

https://scitechdaily.com/images/James-Webb-Space-Telescope-Primary-Mirror-Fully-Deployed-1536×1233.jpg

Psalm 90:16

Let your work be manifest to your servants, and your glorious power to their children.

John 1:14

And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.

Words of Grace For Today

There are life altering moments for us humans. If we are blessed they will be moments that givec us life, instead of rob life from us. Astronauts, and even space tourists, say that being in space and seeing back to earth and out into the deep of space changes everything about how they see life on earth, how they see everything.

The James Webb Space Telescope is in orbit, looking further than any other telescope has been able to. And ‘further’ means it sees back in time. That is, the light that it can see has travelled light years upon light years before arriving at the telescope. That same light could come to us if we sat in space orbit with the new telescope, though we are unable to see that minuscule particle-waves of light among the brighter and closer sources of light. We can see light from galaxies about a million years back in time with our bare eyes. The Hubble telescope can see 10-15 billion light years back in time, which is back to what we believe is the beginning of light, the beginning of the universe, the big bang. The Webb Telescope is designed to be more flexible than the Hubble, and is designed to see the first million or so light years starting with the big bang. In the beginning ….

We may need telescopes to see ‘far out there’. We need no instruments to see the work, power, life, glory, grace and truth of the creator of the universe. For that we need faith, and that is always a gift, only a gift, from God.

Once we see God’s work, power, life, glory, grace and truth, life for us is never the same. That is the most fundamental, profound life-altering experience there is. We usually allow the poignancy of that experience to fade and meld into the myriad of experiences, though that altering element never quite goes away. It’s like a mark on our skin that changes and morphs over time, but never goes away. The liver spot on my wrist below my thumb appeared as a tiny, barely perceptible dot in my 20’s, grew to be more obvious in my 40’s and by my 50’s had grown to more than a half inch across. It keeps growing. Faith, the gift of faith, grows on us in quite a similar manner, unless we take rash measures to cut it out, like a surgeon’s knife excising a malignant mole.

It would not be the first effort, were we to try and build a faith-generating ‘telescope’, so that we could see back into the beginning of time to see God create this whole thing we call the universe. Humans have tried to ‘create’ or control faith since the beginning of our time. It’s always a futile effort, destroying more of life than it gives to anyone.

So we today we continue to pray: Let your work be manifest to your servants, and your glorious power to their children.

And we remember that Word that created the universe became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.

For this we give God thanks, unending thanks.

Correction or God’s Wrath!

Tuesday, January 25, 2022

When We Skew Our Perspective On God’s Creation,

Taking Correction is Welcomed

even if it chaffs.

…

God’s Wrath

though

takes all perspective and vision and life

away from us

in all time.

Jeremiah 10:24

Correct me, O Lord, but in just measure; not in your anger, or you will bring me to nothing.

1 Thessalonians 5:9

For God has destined us not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Words of Grace For Today

There are many people, on earth, and who have lived on earth (and there will be plenty more in times to come), who know that they need no correction from God or anyone else for that matter. They are wrong, but there is little to be done for them. They sit in positions of power, like judges and bishops, archbishops can cardinals, who are pretty hard, if not impossible, to provide any correction to. They get away with bullying, abuses beyond imagination, and making light dark, sweet bitter, and life death. They have no fear … of anyone, especially not God.

There are many people, on earth, and who have lived on earth (and there will be plenty more in times to come), who know that they need every correction available from God or anyone else for that matter. They live humble lives, fearing and loving God, and loving other people, praying that God will have saved them (like that pastor about to retire who expressed his greatest concern to his colleagues over a game of cards and scotch – I was so young and did not understand then – ) ‘from having hurt anyone!’

God’s wrath directed at any part of creation, at any person or any people rips that part of creation with unimaginable agony out of creation. God’s wrath completely unmakes it/them, uncreates it/them, separates it/them from every having existed.

We pray we will never know God’s wrath!

God’s wrath is perhaps well directed towards those who will take no correction.

God promises are that God has destined us not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.

In this promise we live, in fear of God, overwhelmed with love for God and all God’s creation and all God’s people.

It’s a good life, though we know we always need correction, and pray that God’s correction will come in ways that will not destroy us, for we breathe, and work, and pray, and struggle, and love, and hope … as God-made saints and simultaneously as sinner still.

And we pray each day that we will, above all, not hurt anyone, and, knowing that we have and cannot help but still hurt others, we pray for forgiveness each morning, noon and night.