The Lord is my rock, my fortress, and my deliverer.
John 16:33
I have said this to you, so that in me you may have peace. In the world you face persecution. But take courage; I have conquered the world!
Words of Grace For Today
To whom do we look for security, for deliverance, for help in our distress?
If you, the reader think that you will not be persecuted, then either you are one who has chosen to be one of the persecutors, or you are simply blind, deliriously blind, to the reality of what others are doing to you.
All of the rest of us surely know we are persecuted, for our days are made more and more difficult by what others do to us, trying to ‘step on us’ to get ahead.
Ahh, what all the world does to us! It is best not to recount all the evil done to us. It is simply too depressing, unless …
We need not let ourselves sink into this dark reality, as if we were all alone in our misery (along with all the other people oppressed and stomped on into misery). For we know The Lord is our rock, our fortress, and our deliverer.
Even more so, though the people in this world may persecute us endlessly, we know that Jesus has conquered the world. In Jesus we have peace, peace in the face of everything evil that each day and all sinful people would ‘throw’ at us.
So we take courage. Unfaltering courage for each day, based on God’s protection and Grace for us.
Thus our recounting all the evil we experience is only a small part of the complete story of how God gives us life each day. For we know The Lord is our rock, our fortress, and our deliverer.
This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.
Luke 19:5-6
When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, ‘Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today.’ So he hurried down and was happy to welcome him.
Words of Grace For Today
What do you see?
How do you see?
Can you see more if you look more closely?
Can you see better if you remember … well for instance if you remember how kind someone was to you when you most needed someone to see you and respond with kindness?
When I flew all those years as an oil pipeline patrol pilot, ‘100 mph 100 feet off the ground, bored spitless for hours always 30 seconds from death’ (as I used to say, though it was really 110 mph and often 50 feet or even 25 feet above the ground – so 5 seconds from death-, and sometimes between fields a relaxing 500 feet) we pilots knew that in an emergency landing on a busy road was a terrible option. Roads always presented a danger of an unseen power line crossing the road (and if you hit it that would ruin your day for the last time), of a big pothole (a nuisance to road vehicles, but a day-ender for the planes we flew), or a whole host of other ‘challenges’ (like bicyclists, pedestrians, wild animals or pets or livestock, or – the worst to imagine – children).
All that was scary enough so that when we did land on roads which was quite often, for bodily needs (we were in the air for 4 to 12 hours otherwise) we were very alert with wide vision before landing, and we chose remote roads, though that meant gravel and gravel can be slick as ice and snow can be in the winter.
Then when we made it safely down onto the road we knew that the greatest danger was still always immanent. You might think we could relax once the wheels were down and, better, stopped on the road, but NO! That’s when the danger was even higher yet … because if a moving vehicle encountered the plane moving on the road, or even parked on the road, the driver would not likely recognize what was in front of him or her.
When the brain receives information from any of the senses, eyes included, it takes shortcuts, built from experiences, so that it can process quickly how to respond. Seeing a plane on the road is not an experience that any driver is likely to have had even once, yet alone often enough for the brain to build a path for that information coming into the brain to result in a quick enough reaction. Worse, the brain will most likely choose one or more familiar pathways with the result that the driver will not get the impulse to react until more information pours into the brain to even more slowly dislodge the already processed results in the brain and force a new take on the data that is there.
Instead of a plane the driver bearing down on the plane may well ‘see’ a ghost, or a large animal, or a plane in the sky instead of on the road, or tractor or a car or truck, or shimmering reflections of clouds or … the sky is the limit of the possibilities. The brain simply ‘runs back to mama’ to make sense of the extra-ordinary data the eyes have sent it.
By the time the brain has run down a few memory lanes and then finally been jolted back to reprocess from scratch the information still pouring in from the eyes, so much time passes that it is unlikely that the driver will react quickly enough to avoid hitting the plane.
So the newspaper will report: “Safely landed plane smashed to bits by a pickup truck. Pilot dead in the pilot’s seat. Truck totalled when the propeller cuts into it and it’s occupants. Crash discovered hours later by farmer ….”
The planes we flew at 100×100 were marvels of technology, most of it more than 50 years old. The planes were sufficient for the job, but not at all built to hit things, or be hit by things. In that regard they were rather ‘fragile’, shall we say. Still the planes were quite wondrous for all the things we got them to do. There were no pilots among us that were not highly skilled, the top 1% of pilots … or you would get yourself killed in so many ways that did not involve vehicles hitting the plane!
God created the universe. It is more wondrous than any airplane, or any of the marvellous things we did with them, no matter how wondrous the planes may be or the skills with which we flew them. God created all the wonders of the universe, including humans, most of whom are more skilled and wondrous than God’s other creatures.
The question is: how come we humans keep trying to ‘land on busy roadways’ with our lives in this wondrous universe?
The question is: how come we humans keep missing out on seeing ‘the airplanes on the road’, i.e. the wonders of God’s creation before us?
It takes training for the brain to process what the eyes actually see. One has to practice ‘seeing Jesus’ each day. God’s gift to us all is that there are so many opportunities to practice (like pilot training, really) seeing Jesus, when our lives are not on the line. When we practice, then when the real emergencies of life come at us, we will still be able to ‘see the airplane on the road’ for what it is, and we will be able to respond as God designed us to respond. We will be able to ‘fly’. We will be able to respond with Grace.
When we do that then we easily say with the Psalmist: This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.
When we’ve gone down roads so often, roads where we destroy and destory other people to make our way taking their lives for our own gain (driving ‘fortified Hummers’ to take on even ‘moose in our way’ without damage to ourselves), like Zacchaeus the tax collector had, we pray and beg that we will ‘see Jesus’ and know what we are looking at soon enough to ‘climb a tree for a better view’.
What we can count on is that Jesus will always respond to us with grace, and say to us: hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today.
For then we can surely say: This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.
Let me hear of your steadfast love in the morning, for in you I put my trust. Teach me the way I should go, for to you I lift up my soul.
1 Timothy 6:6-7
Of course, there is great gain in godliness combined with contentment; for we brought nothing into the world, so that we can take nothing out of it.
Words of Grace For Today
While many strive to gain comforts, privileges, and securities (of many kinds, all futile), we seek the only gain that is sure: that God provides us love and faith (by Grace, ie as free gifts) and contentment in our lives, for while we come into life with nothing and we can take nothing with us, we do leave behind our own story.
What will that story be?
Will others gain faith from our stories? Or will they only learn to chase after what cannot offer them life?
It is not insignificant what story others have from us (as opposed to the stories that are untrue that many tell about us – those untrue stories work against the liars who create them and tell and retell them). It is not insignificant what story others have from us because each day, we humans are privileged to be able to ‘reframe’ our new day with how we think about life past, present and future.
That is: we are not written in stone from one day to the next. Some take this as opportunity to lie about their past and to scheme to ‘improve’ their future with more lies. Oh, what a waste that brings misery and despair to so many people, those liars and so many impacted by their lies.
God provides this opportunity to us each day (actually every minute), so that we can repent, that is so that we can turn our lives around, reframe them according to God’s Grace, Love and Hope for us (demonstrated in Jesus’ story), and proceed to be more of who God created us to be!
So we pray with the Psalmist: Let me hear of your steadfast love in the morning, for in you I put my trust. Teach me the way I should go, for to you I lift up my soul.
It is not that we have never heard of God’s steadfast love, or that we do not know God’s way for us, or that our lives are in ruin and need to be rescued from the hand of the Devil, the Great Deceiver (though too often that is the case). It is simply that since we get to reframe our lives, we also must reframe our lives. If we do not turn to God to receive the Word that will reframe our lives according to God’s steadfast love for us, the Devil will certainly provide all sorts of words, lies always, that will draw us in, slowly turn us away from God, and consume us, until we are nothing like the creatures of steadfast love that God created us to be.
So what do we want to be today?
What word will reframe your day, this morning?
May God save us from the Deceiver’s tempting words that suck us in to the downward spiral away from life itself.
May God provide wondrous words to communicate God’s steadfast love, grace, and hope for us.
In a Word, we pray (it is not too much to ask, and it is everything so we beg):
Then my enemies will retreat on the day when I call. This I know, that God is for me.
Matthew 5:4
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
Words of Grace For Today
There is no shortage of destruction by evil working through people, directed against other people, seeking to destroy and destory others in order to work some supposed ‘advantage’ in their lives, their ‘world’.
The question is who do we, the ones pursued to be destroyed and destoried, who do we choose to be?
The lies told about us do not determine who we are, even if they can determine a whole lot of shtako that we will experience like jail, being shunned, outcast, left to die, and actively killed … all in an effort to take the truth of who we are and what our lives have been and destroy our stories of truth.
The lies told about us never become the truth. It does not matter how many lies are piled together. It does not matter how often or for how long those lies are repeated or by whom they are repeated. It does not matter how many police create more lies about us. It does not matter how many lawyers and prosecutors create more lies about us. It certainly does not matter how many courts repeat all those lies and how many more lies the courts create on their own about us. None of the lies ever become the truth, not ever. Their lies do not determine who we are, no matter how hard they try to make it so. Their lies reveal so much of who the liars are. Their lies belie them as agents of evil in our midst, agents who undermine everything good about civilization. They cause chaos to flow permeating everywhere in society. In that chaos they try to establish a new ‘truth’, a ‘truth’ that they can control, or at least benefit from. They may seem to benefit from it, but the chaos corrodes civil society leaving it vulnerable to barbarism, and that barbarism knows no favourites: it consumes everyone in its path, from within and with external destructive forces. The lies are in fact the tip of barbarism eating away at everyone, the liars first, the people they lie about, and all sorts of those caught in the wake of the lies.
Truth is truth forever.
So who do we, the victims of these lies, want to be?
The victims are so many: from our local towns and cities, to the outcasts in our country, to the indigenous and Metis most would rather not remember, to those similarly lied about in every country, to those left to die of preventable illnesses, to those killed by unjust military assaults – like in the Ukraine, though that is only one of many unjust military actions now across the globe – to those murdered in cold blood each day.
Who do we want to be?
We can be victims. That’s easy. That’s obvious. That’s hard to not be. But can we be someone else rather than victims?
Lots of tales from history recount how people have ‘pulled themselves by their bootstraps’ and overcome the assault on their lives and on their stories. Those stories are unbelievable; there are no ‘bootstraps’ by which to pull oneself up out of such attacks, not that will work for other people.
The only sure survival is to surrender, not to one’s enemies, but to God’s Will. Even then not all of us will survive in this life, though some have survived, like Jeremiah (until he did not), Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, St. Paul (until he did not), Martin Luther, Nelson Mandela, Malala Yousafzai, Sarah Collins Rudolph, Freddie Knoller, Toby Biber, Premsyl Dobias, Maria Ossowski, Albin (Alex) Ossowski, Daniel Falkner, Magdalena Kusserow Reuter, and the list could go on.
More than those who survive are those who are jailed and killed or just killed. That list seems not to find an end. Remember Martin Luther King Jr., Dietrich Bonhöffer, Socrates, Jesus, Stephan, Bishop Juan Gerardi, and Archbishop Oscar Romero?
Who do we want to be? Who do we want to be like?
The question is pertinent every day, but more pertinent is how God answers: what does God want from us? Are we the people God created us to be?
How can we be as God created us to be, after some one agent of evil or so many agents of evil (who appear to be ordinary people at first) have sought (and still are seeking) to kill us?
We surrender to God’s Will, and pray we will say truthfully to God:
Und reichst du uns den schweren Kelch, den bittern des Leids, gefüllt bis an den höchsten Rand, so nehmen wir ihn dankbar ohne Zittern aus deiner guten und geliebten Hand.
(And may you offer the heavy bitter cup of grief, filled to the very rim We´ll take it thankfully without trembling from your good and beloved hand.)
For we know that those who mourn will be comforted, even our loved ones. We trust fully that God is with us and our enemies can do no other than retreat when facing God. They will be undone as God puts the truth before them, and before all people. The truth will be known.
So come what may we can thankfully and without trembling face each new day.
It’s Not the Light at the End of the Tunnel (a train coming at us!)
It’s a Full Moon Setting at Dawn.
Jonah 2:7
As my life was ebbing away, I remembered the Lord; and my prayer came to you, into your holy temple.
2 Timothy 2:19
But God’s firm foundation stands, bearing this inscription: ‘The Lord knows those who are his’, and, ‘Let everyone who calls on the name of the Lord turn away from wickedness.’
Words of Grace For Today
Of course, it is a common story: A person has had no place for God in their life …
until …
until everything goes wrong …
health-wise …
and …
death comes knocking.
Suddenly everything is about ‘God’ …
And ‘God blessing and saving the person who has ignored God lifelong!’
…
The old thought always comes back: the way one lives lifelong has to mean something in the end, right. So there really is not last minute salvation. There really is no last hour baptism to guarantee one’s salvation. We are judged by God by our full record!
That’s right, isn’t it? It has to be! Otherwise why did I try so hard to do the right things all my life, giving up all the opportunities that would have benefited me greatly though they would have compromised my soul!?
Ah, were it so simple, so that we could judge who is God’s and who is not God’s; who has been good enough, and who has not been good enough.
Or rather, thank God it is not so simple, so that humans can actually judge each other … because, well, humans have a really bad track record of getting everything wrong and really messing things up, royally!
What we can trust fully is that God knows! God knows who are God’s and who are not.
By Grace God gives those who are not, another breath, and another, and another ad nauseam, all so that they have another and another, and another ad nauseam opportunity to repent and convert, and to learn what we who are God’s have learned and relearn again and again, namely that
We are saved only by God’s Grace (God’s choice) through faith (given to us as a free gift, though we do not deserve it at all.)
So we go into each new day, boldly going where all humans have gone before, into the fray of returning lies with truth, hate with love, despair with hope … as God makes us able.
Why, O Lord, do you stand far off? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?
Mark 4:38
But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, ‘Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?’
Words of Grace For Today
I flew out in the fall to a remote fire tower to make a pastoral visit to the crew there. There was no way to announce my visit. I just took off, navigated by dead reckoning, and landed at the small grass clearing that served as a air strip. I’d circled over the tower and taken in the paths through the bush that wound the kilometre or so between it and the air strip. Airplane secured, I set off and …
hours later I was deep in the bush with no way of finding the tower in time to spend even a minute with the crew and still find my way back to the air strip before dark, and before dark I needed, most desperately needed to be in the air. There was no way a take off in the dark in an unknown airstrip was something I was even considering as doable. And anything not doable was certainly not ‘well, let’s see if it’s possible!’ So I oriented myself by the sun low in the sky back towards the plane.
As I came to a junction of paths in the bush, both directions on the new path hidden from view until I stepped into the junction, I got the scare of my life, or one of many.
There, not more than six feet to my right (the direction I needed to turn) was a calf and her mama, a cow moose. The calf was half size and still looked down at me. I froze. Moose have a pea size brain, and they survive only because they are bigger, tougher, and faster than most any predator.
Encounters with humans are so dangerous because, being so … well stupid … they are totally unpredictable and usually they charge, especially when their young are threatened! The results are usually -10 for the human and no effect on the moose.
Where was God!? How could this be happening to me? Why was this happening?
Always the photographer I reached for my camera hung on my shoulder, slapping my backpack with every step until I froze in my tracks. Why not document this so that if I did not make it someone would know how I came to my demise (or at least the last few seconds?) If I’d had a rifle, that would have been a smarter option, but useless as well, given the moose’s speed.
Before my hand was on the camera, mama and calf were well on their way across my path and down the to the left.
I breathed, settling the adrenaline rush to tolerable, and marched on. By the time I reached the plane all that adrenaline was gone. The take off was in the shadows, the sun just below the horizon, and my way home full of wonder.
God sometimes does save us from our own stupidity, from terrible circumstances, and from sure death. Other times we join the Psalmist’ and the disciples’ desperate plea: God where are you!? Do you not care what happens to us?!?
…
Only with time, and sometimes not even then, do we gain the insight to see and know … and trust that God walks with us, and suffers with us everything we suffer, and provides life abundant in every hour with every breath we breathe on this gift of creation God has brought us to live in.
So we pray, with full trust (or maybe barely any trust) that God hears us, for ourselves and for all other people faced with disaster, illness, and death this day, this week, this year: God be not stern with us, but gently save us and help us live each minute you gift us.
As the Sun Sets Spreading Colours Across the Sky and Land
How Much More Will God Gift To Our Enemies?
How Much To Us?
Deuteronomy 8:2
Remember the long way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, in order to humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commandments.
Matthew 11:29
Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.
Words of Grace For Today
To experience that time when we find rest for our souls … rest for our souls, what a promise,
and a blessing so familiar
and so impossible to achieve for ourselves.
Time.
Time is precious.
Ich wunsche dir Zeit … (I wish you the time …)
and God provides us the time …
All kinds of time.
Time in the wilderness, so that God can humble us,
time filled with wonder, so that we can know God’s presence,
time filled with love, so that we fulfill God’s purpose for us.
So much of our time we walk with a different yoke taking our efforts and making something other than God’s will to be.
Patient, kind, and loving still, always Jesus calls us to take his yoke of being God’s unconditional love for others, for this is Jesus, gentle and humble of heart, guiding us to live
exactly as God created us to live,
with time,
all kinds of time,
time to remember,
time to celebrate,
and time to hope for those who are beyond hope.
From Siegfried Feitz aus dem Stephansdom in Wien
Ich wünsche dir Zeit
Elli Michler
Ich wünsche dir nicht alle möglichen Gaben. Ich wünsche dir nur, was die meisten nicht haben: Ich wünsche dir Zeit, dich zu freun und zu lachen, und wenn du sie nützt, kannst du etwas draus machen.
Ich wünsche dir Zeit für dein Tun und dein Denken, nicht nur für dich selbst, sondern auch zum Verschenken. Ich wünsche dir Zeit – nicht zum Hasten und Rennen, sondern die Zeit zum Zufriedenseinkönnen.
Ich wünsche dir Zeit – nicht nur so zum Vertreiben. Ich wünsche, sie möge dir übrig bleiben als Zeit für das Staunen und Zeit für Vertraun, anstatt nach der Zeit auf der Uhr nur zu schaun.
Ich wünsche dir Zeit, nach den Sternen zu greifen, und Zeit, um zu wachsen, das heißt, um zu reifen. Ich wünsche dir Zeit, neu zu hoffen, zu lieben. Es hat keinen Sinn, diese Zeit zu verschieben.
Ich wünsche dir Zeit, zu dir selber zu finden, jeden Tag, jede Stunde als Glück zu empfinden. Ich wünsche dir Zeit, auch um Schuld zu vergeben. Ich wünsche dir: Zeit zu haben zum Leben!
I don’t wish you all kinds of gifts. I only wish you what most don’t have: I wish you time to be happy and to laugh, and if you use it, you can make something of it.
I wish you time for your actions and your thoughts, not only for yourself, but also as a gift. I wish you time – not to rush and run, but the time to be content.
I wish you time – not just to drive away. I wish it may be left to you as a time for wonder and a time for trust, instead of just checking the time on the clock.
I wish you time to reach for the stars and time to grow, that is, to mature. I wish you time to hope again, to love. There is no point in delaying this time.
I wish you time to find yourself feel every day, every hour as happiness. I wish you time to forgive guilt. I wish you: to have time to live!
And you, my son Solomon, know the God of your father, and serve him with single mind and willing heart; for the Lord searches every mind, and understands every plan and thought. If you seek him, he will be found by you; but if you forsake him, he will abandon you for ever.
Hebrews 3:20-21
Now may the God of peace, who brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, make you complete in everything good so that you may do his will, working among us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory for ever and ever. Amen.
Words of Grace For Today
How do you tell the successor to the kingdom on earth that he has nothing at all to do with whether or not God blesses him and the kingdom?
How do you tell your successor that when you yourself are famous for taking charge and making the kingdom great?!?
How do you tell your successor to the kingdom you have built that he must surrender his will to God’s will, and trust that God will guide him, even in ways that he may not understand or willingly follow, especially when you are infamous for taking your own will into your own hands in order to build this kingdom that your son will inherit from you?
How can you tell your son to submit to God’s will when you are about to instruct your son to build God a temple, which, in the middle of your eager plans to start construction of a magnificent temple, God has told you that God does not need or want any kind of temple?
(David is and remains blessed by God, not because David earns it, but because God so chooses.)
David, faced with these challenges, does not instruct Solomon to submit to God’s will. Instead David reverts to a simple and common perversion of God’s will for us humans: If Solomon does right, then God will bless him. If Solomon does not do right then God will forsake him forever. Solomon must then find and follow God.
But that is not possible because God’s Kingdom does not work this way, though there are plenty of humans to tell you it does, and plenty of humans live that way on earth their entire lives.
God’s Kingdom rather begins with love, ends with love, and everything inbetween is God graciously forgiving, renewing and equipping us to be God’s loving grace for all other people. We earn nothing. We keep nothing. We give God everything. And we live lives abundant … in God’s Kingdom.
This is Jesus’ story for us: God comes and gives everything to save us, forgive us, renew life in us, and send us out into the world to follow Jesus’ example: surrendering everything we are and have so that God can work through us to bless other people.
And that is to live a blessed life, as one of the God-made saints.
No need to find God! God is right there with you! No need to earn God’s Grace, it’s long ago been enacted for you, for each day and each moment of your life.
In those days Hezekiah became sick and was at the point of death. The prophet Isaiah son of Amoz came to him, and said to him, ‘Thus says the Lord: Set your house in order, for you shall die; you shall not recover.’ Then Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the Lord. …
Before Isaiah had gone out of the middle court, the word of the Lord came to him: Turn back, and say to Hezekiah prince of my people, “Thus says the Lord, the God of your ancestor David: ‘I have heard your prayer, I have seen your tears; indeed, I will heal you; on the third day you shall go up to the house of the Lord. I will add fifteen years to your life. I will deliver you and this city out of the hand of the king of Assyria; I will defend this city for my own sake and for my servant David’s sake.’” Then Isaiah said, ‘Bring a lump of figs. Let them take it and apply it to the boil, so that he may recover.’
Matthew 7:7
Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.
Words of Grace For Today
Hezekiah received 15 years added to his life, deliverance from Assyria and … Then when the Babylonians arrived he showed off all his treasure, which Isaiah predicted rightly the Babylonians would return and take back to Babylon with them, and Hezekiah is pleased for there will be peace and security during his lifetime.
Like many people, politicians in office most tragically, Hezekiah’s concern is not for the long-term well being for all the people. Instead those in power sell out the future for short-term peace and security while they are yet in office, while they are yet alive. All that sacrified for their present power, comforts, and questionable security.
It is very doubtful that many Ukrainians would agree that God is honouring Jesus’ promise: Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.
What are we to make of this?
The passage from Matthew is not preceeded by some context that makes is more believable, such as if we ask for what is God’s will for us. In fact the passage continues and makes it even more unbelievable for those in desperate straights, fearing for their country, their cities, their friends, their families:
For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for bread, will give a stone? Or if the child asks for a fish, will give a snake? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him!
There are many attempts to explain Evil’s destruction, especially to such great swaths of humans so undeserving of the what they face; and to explain how a loving, caring, attentive, protecting God can allow such things to happen. None of them will ever suffice for those facing their own death or the death of loved ones, and the death of their reasonably peaceful way of life.
The only one that I have for my own situation (my enemies seek my death trying to achieve it within the ‘legal’ framework possible in this country) is that God suffers with us, even dies again and again with us. First though God created humans in order that we would love one another, God and all creation. In order that we are capable of loving, God gives us all the prerequisites, including freewill, that is the choice to love or not to love. After all, love that is not freely chosen is not love. Love is the free choice to give the best of life to another.
So we humans have freewill and can choose to love, or not to love. And as we so often choose not to love, those choices are evil in themselves and lead to even greater and greater evils, which always lead to the destruction and death of other people, creation, and our foolish attempts to deny and put God to death, once and for all.
Bleak.
Until we remember Jesus’ story: God always brings life out of death. God always responds to evil with Grace, Love, and Forgiveness … which offers people renewed life, and freedom from their past choices to not love, freedom from the evil that ensnares their hearts, minds and strengths. God always responds to our bleak present with a future of hope, peace, security, and joy fearing, loving, and serving God, and God alone.
We do receive all that we ask for. Most of the time on the other side of death, as God brings us to new life after death, life in the city of God where we all freely choose all the time to love.
Ask and we will receive … according to God’s timeline.
For you shall go out in joy, and be led back in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall burst into song, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.
John 10:3
The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.
Words of Grace For Today
When we give up trying to come in first in the ‘game’ of life, and we allow God to come in first, then we find life is full of celebrations, little ones each day as God wins (bringing grace to bear on our lives) and big celebrations less often as God wins again (bringing grace to bear on our enemies’ lives).
Whether we live or whether we die is not so important. What is important is how we live and who we follow.
When Jesus calls, we like even stupid sheep, know how to follow Jesus’ voice, for Jesus calls us by name and leads us out …
out into a world that cannot accept Jesus’ way, God’s forgiveness (for that requires admitting one needs forgiveness!), and the wonderful life we have as the Spirit guides us each year, day and moment, to be less for ourselves and more for God.
We do not celebrate alone, for the saints in light who have gone before us, are over joyed at our following their footsteps as they followed Christ. Even the hills and mountains, the clouds and the birds, the fish and the whales, the planets and stars, sing and rejoice with us, for we are a small part of the universe,
