Category: Fog

Von guten Mächten wunderbar geborgen

Sheltered Wonderfully by God’s Loving Powers

Monday, February 7, 2022

In Every Darkness

Surrounded silently by faithful powers of goodness

Psalm 91:4

He will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness is a shield and buckler.

Philippians 4:7

May the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Words of Grace For Today

There are days when one must wonder about the dark present God has brought one to, and what the future may hold. Many people have such days. Many more people have had such days.

Then one is reminded of words by a man imprisoned and likely soon to be killed (as he was in fact, to our great loss), words that friends shared so many years ago in East Germany, words that carry God’s blessings and hope into every dark corner (under his wings you will find refuge):

Von guten Mächten treu und still umgeben,
behütet und getröstet wunderbar,
so will ich diese Tage mit euch leben
und mit euch gehen in ein neues Jahr.

(Surrounded silently by faithful loving powers
protected and comforted wonderfully
thus I would live these days with you all
and go with you into a new year.)

[Kehrvers:]

Von guten Mächten wunderbar geborgen,
erwarten wir getrost, was kommen mag.
Gott ist bei uns am Abend und am Morgen
und ganz gewiß an jedem neuen Tag.

 (Sheltered wonderfully by God’s loving powers
We are looking forward confidently to what may come
God is with us in the evening and in the morning
and surely on every new day.)

Noch will das alte unsre Herzen quälen,
noch drückt uns böser Tage schwere Last.
Ach Herr, gib unsern aufgeschreckten Seelen
das Heil, für das du uns geschaffen hast.

(Still the past would torment our hearts
Still the heavy load of evil days weighs on us.
Oh Lord, for our angst-struck souls
prepare the health for which you have made us.)

[Kehrvers]

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 if you offer the heavy cup, the bitterness
of grief, filled to the very rim,
we´ll take it thankfully without trembling
from your good and beloved hand.)

[Kehrvers]

Doch willst du uns noch einmal Freude schenken
an dieser Welt und ihrer Sonne Glanz,
dann wolln wir des Vergangenen gedenken,
und dann gehört dir unser Leben ganz.

(But if you choose to give us your joy once more
for this world and the splendour of its sun
then we will choose to remember all this past
and that our whole lives belong to you.)

[Kehrvers]

Laß warm und hell die Kerzen heute flammen,
die du in unsre Dunkelheit gebracht,
führ, wenn es sein kann, wieder uns zusammen.
Wir wissen es, dein Licht scheint in der Nacht.

(Let the candles that you brought into our darkness
burn warm and bright today.
If possible bring us back together again.
We know this, your light shines in the night.)

[Kehrvers]

Wenn sich die Stille nun tief um uns breitet,
so laß uns hören jenen vollen Klang
der Welt, die unsichtbar sich um uns weitet,
all deiner Kinder hohen Lobgesang.

(As the silence now spreads thick around us
let us hear those full sounds of the world
which permeate invisibly all around us,
all your children raising hymns of praise.)

[Kehrvers]

These were, of course, Dietrich Bonhöffer’s words, and now they are one of God’s many gifts for us … to share.

May the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

…

The music for the beloved hymn was written by Siegfried Fietz. He sings the first few verse here.

The translation started with that at https://lyricstranslate.com but I worked further on it.

Promises, Happiness and Things Hoped For

Saturday, February 5, 2022

God Does Not Promise

A Smooth, Paved Path

On Our Journey.

Only that God Walks with Us.

Psalm 33:12

Happy is the nation whose God is the Lord, the people whom he has chosen as his heritage.

Galatians 4:6-7

Because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’ So you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through God.

Words of Grace For Today

Promises.

Promises provide for a future.

Promises from God provide for a blessed future … and happiness.

God chooses us and we become children, heirs of a kingdom like no other. We are chosen, made holy and sent out into the world with the inheritance that all envy and few would if they understood it fully.

The inheritance we receive is to be servants. To serve God. To serve God’s creation and all of God’s creatures, all people.

No great glory in that. It is ascending to … well ascending to the lowest among the lowest on earth.

That is the heritage that the children of God inherit.

Welcome to the children of God, promised great blessings, and sent out to share the Good News that transforms lives and all creation … but

it does not give us power, wealth, renown, comfort, security, or … well almost anything else that we humans would list as what we desire to have in life … except we are guaranteed God’s unconditional love and the huge challenge of sharing it with everyone, even those who least deserve it (especially them.)

Promises.

Promises provide for a future.

Promises from God provide for a blessed future … and happiness.

What more can we hope for?

Elders, Honour, and Love

Friday, February 4, 2022

It’s a Shovel

and a Shadow

on Snow.

The Truth is There’s Lots of Hard Work

That Must Be Done.

Leviticus 19:32

You shall rise before the aged, and defer to the old; and you shall fear your God: I am the Lord.

Romans 12:10

Love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honour.

Words of Grace For Today

The other day on CBC radio I heard a voice describing how the Indigenous People have elders. I’ve known some of this for decades (a nice refresher – I’ve bracketed those particulars that may not have been provided by the voice on the radio) and some was new. [No one can themselves work to become or claim to be an elder. There is no age requirement, only that it takes decades to become wise. Time does not guarantee wisdom, though. There are many foolish old people. It is a recognition given by the community, one person at a time, until it is consented by most that this or that person is an elder.] An Elder does not hold all the wisdom that there is. Each elder is respected and sought out for the kind of wisdom that that elder is recognized for. One may be a spiritual elder, another a story-teller elder, another a healer elder, and so it is for each gift for which an elder is recognized and sought for guidance by others.

The old admonition to ‘defer to the old’ found in various ways in the Bible is not always wise advice to follow in all situations. As above, some old people are still very unwise and some outright foolish. The same goes for respecting one’s parents. Most deserve better than they get from their children. It’s a matter of children rebelling in order to find their own voice and way in life. Some children would be far better off if they had learned some respect for their parents and elders, and learned how to exercise that even while they found their own path in life. Outright disrespect which seems to expand with each generation and becomes so obvious in classrooms, where students do things to teachers that were unheard of just 10 years earlier! On the other hand, some parents, parents that neglect their children, abusive parents, parents that have sex with their teenage children, parents that would as easily kill their own children if they do not do everything to ‘make their parent proud’ … simple said these parents should not be left to be parents … and yet the communities, churches, and courts continue to do exactly that, evil and corrupt as they themselves are.

As in all things in life there are no simple equations or admonitions to provide to anyone about how they should live, from whom they should respect and take guidance, or where their loyalties should lie.

Paul, as many others before and since, provides the guide that applies ALWAYS and in ALL WAYS: we should love and honour each other, all of us loving and honouring all others.

Sometimes love and honour means telling the hard truths even when people do not want to hear them, especially when people do not want to hear the hard truths.

To lie in order to avoid a hard truth is not to honour or respect the listener, nor the abusive person spoken about. To lie in order to destroy someone who tells the hard truths is to dishonour everyone, starting with oneself, continuing on to the person lied about and the [abusive, mentally ill, corrupt, or addicted] person about whom hard truths have been told, to all those involved (for lies seem to spread like wildfire as if we humans lust for rumours about others’ sins), and most of all to the children who hear and live with the rumours, who know they are false and learn they cannot speak the truth for fear of reprisal. Yes, with these wide-spread, destructive lies we teach our children to accept lies as the normal manner of life, especially if one wants to ‘get ahead’, which starts out more basically: if they do not want to suffer at the abusive hands of their parents and/or others.

The story Jesus came to live, preach, die and be resurrected in order to give us is a simple and full story: God loves us all unconditionally and gives us renewed (forgiven and equipped) lives so that we can exercise that same unconditional love for all other people.

So we love and honour each other … starting with the truth, even the hard truths we would rather not face or speak out about.

Love and Honour, even our elders, and even the foolish people, no matter their age, and even those that are corrupt, evil and abusive.

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.