He will not let your foot be moved; he who keeps you will not slumber.
1 Corinthians 1:4-8
I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that has been given you in Christ Jesus, for in every way you have been enriched in him, in speech and knowledge of every kind— just as the testimony of Christ has been strengthened among you— so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ. He will also strengthen you to the end, so that you may be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Words of Grace For Today
As the challenges of every day and of facing corrupt and even evil people continues without end, there is only one security available to any person. This security is that God walks with us, guides us (as much as we listen), and protects us. Before God we need not fear anything at all. Given that assurance is there anything we need fear?
No.
Yet, as the scheming is underway to blame us again for what we have nothing to do with as guilty people are let run free to commit crime after crime, one rightly fears both those who claim to be agents of justice, and those who openly declare with words and deeds that they have no concern for their crimes. For history has shown they run far from truth to find someone to blame, guilty or innocent.
In the end, the unjust and evil will answer to God’s justice. And we will live always walking with God at our sides, suffering with us, bringing hope into every situation. That security has no equal.
So we take this one day at a time, preparing for winter, justly hoping it will not be as hard as last year.
Thanks we give for all the gifts God gives us, as they provide us avenues to see God, right by us.
At that time I will search Jerusalem with lamps, and I will punish the people who rest complacently on their dregs, those who say in their hearts, ‘The Lord will not do good, nor will he do harm.’
Revelation 3:17-18
For you say, “I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing.” You do not realize that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. Therefore I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire so that you may be rich; and white robes to clothe you and to keep the shame of your nakedness from being seen; and salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see.
Words of Grace For Today
We are all wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked.
Okay, I’m often of a different assessment of my situation. It’s not often that good.
Except I do keep myself clothed, mostly appropriately; and I do wear glasses, terribly scratched as they are, so that I can see clearly enough to prepare for winter and keep producing photos that are sometimes even good; and occasionally I have two quarters to rub together and use to fill the water tank (so that’s $25 to drive there and back) and I have not yet run out of water though it’s been close a few times; and while people may pity me, though I think it’s not many, as most cheer my unjust suffering, and I try to make a blessed case of my circumstances; but I’m caught on the wretched part. Don’t know how to change that, since I’ve confessed since I was a young child that I am a wretched sinner, needing God’s forgiveness.
I would guess everyone can produce a similar short accounting of how they are or are not wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. All of our efforts to say we are not simply help prove how so we are, and blind to the fact.
All too many people through all time have lived neither fearing and loving God, not caring, assured in themselves that God ‘will not do good, nor harm.’
There are and always have been the saints, people faithful to God, if still wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked, we are also humble or so about it all, and we turn our eyes and hopes to God.
In return God promises to walk with us. That makes God quite familiar with our wretchedness, pitiable-ness, poor-ness, blindness, and nakedness. God knows what God is getting into long before we realize where we are at, where people have been for so long. Why did God create and why does God continue to create such a universe with such people in it?
He said, ‘Do not fear, greatly beloved, you are safe. Be strong and courageous!’ When he spoke to me, I was strengthened and said, ‘Let my lord speak, for you have strengthened me.’
John 16:20
Very truly, I tell you, you will weep and mourn, but the world will rejoice; you will have pain, but your pain will turn into joy.
Words of Grace For Today
Do not fear.
This is often written in scripture, but not so often spoken in everyday life. Perhaps that is because in our lives we rarely, against what threatens us, take our stance on God’s Word, instead relying on what we ourselves can do. And what we can do is often so little compared to what must be done to secure our futures, so little, that the only thing left to do is to fear what will come our way.
Lions, hungry lions, all within the confines of a closed in space … and us put into that space so that our captures, false witnesses, tormentors, and ‘unjust’ judges can morbidly delight in watching the ‘animals rip bloody flesh from our bodies’ until we succumb and die, fodder for hungry beasts. This may not happen very often, literally anyway, since there are few lions in these parts, though figuratively it is happening yet this day, and not just to me. So how will we prepare for the ‘lions’ of this time and place?
There is no other way to prepare than to trust God’s Word: we will weep and mourn as the world around us rejoices, but our pains will turn to joy in God’s own good time. Trusting these words we are no longer captives to fear, but freed to live.
And to live by such powers that no ‘lions’ can devour us or make our blood flow.
And to live well!
This day we trust in God’s Word alone, and celebrate all of God’s wonders done for us, here in this time and place, and across all time and places that ever were or will be. Makes for a full day of celebration, as each day is.
But take care and watch yourselves closely, so as neither to forget the things that your eyes have seen nor to let them slip from your mind all the days of your life; make them known to your children and your children’s children ….
Revelation 3:3
Remember then what you received and heard; obey it, and repent. If you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come to you.
Words of Grace For Today
There are many things to remember. The longer one lives the more things there are to remember. Even when one is born there is a vast expanse of things to remember, wider, deeper, longer, farther than the universe …
and most of it will not be remembered.
What will be remembered will either of itself be impregnated in one’s mind, burned like a cattle brand, scars too deep to be other than seen for the rest of one’s life because the event was so intense it can be no other.
Or
What is remembered will be chosen and then recited day after day, week after week, and with the repetition deeply ingrained in one’s mind of today as if the yesterday recited happened just a moment ago.
Survival has programmed us to receive as ‘brands’ those negative events of our days, so that we can avoid them in the future and avoid such events or at least deal with them with less risk to ourselves. The positive events slip away more easily. Unless they are so much more intense than negative events or we choose to replay them (recite them), positive events pass like the light of day slipping away as the dark of night takes over.
There are many things out of our ancestors’ past, which we would do well to remember and use as the framework and colour scheme for our lives. We do well to remember the dangers survived, the manner in which dangers are averted or dealt with. The many things we do to survive, like growing and storing food, like building shelters to provide protection from the extremes of climate and predators, like making clothing adequate to guard against the cold, the heat, the bugs, the wet, and the burning sunlight. How many of us remember how to do these things for ourselves in this day when we buy everything already made for us, from shelter, to clothing, to food and drink?
There are many more things, much more important for life, that we can easily forget. These are the things that God has done for our ancestors (and for us before we were born), which in remembering them help us live lives worthy of all that God gives us. Our ancestors remembered God delivering them from slavery in Egypt bringing them across the Red Sea into the Wilderness, providing water and food for their survival there, and then bringing them into the Promised Land across the Jordan River. Our ancestors remembered Jesus’ birth, his ministry of healing and teaching, his undeserved torturous death on a cross, his burial, his rising from the dead to live again, his ascending to heaven, and his promises to be with us always (as the Holy Spirit is) and to return again at the end of time.
In the lives of those who lived when we have lived, our grandparents, parents, siblings and others of our faith communities, and even in our own lives, there are also so many wondrous works of God, and we do well to clearly notice them.
Our responses to such events (from the distant past up to our own yesterdays) are simple: to tell the stories of God’s wondrous works among our ancestors, to confess our sins, to repent of our sins, and to obey Jesus’ command to love the Lord our God with all our hearts, minds, and strength; to love our neighbours as ourselves (even our enemies).
When we begin and end each day with these memories recited and replayed in our minds, then our days begin and end with thanks. We can better live our lives filled with gratitude, fearing and loving God with honour in all we do … except when we don’t, and then we know to ask for forgiveness, instead of ignoring or denying that we have sinned.
Remembering God’s wondrous works gives us life like no other. It gives us life as God intended us to live it. We approach each day, with it’s challenges, successes, and disappointing failures, with a peace and joy that helps us see most clearly how our ancestors dealt with these and how God calls us to live through them to the next moment, ready always to serve others in need, as our Master bends to serve us, even when we are still slaves to sin.
Remembering, reciting and replaying God’s wonders makes for a life lived well. And that no one can steal from us.
As the Sun Does Each Night, and Sometimes the Moon
1 Kings 8:56
Blessed be the Lord, who has given rest to his people Israel according to all that he promised; not one word has failed of all his good promise, which he spoke through his servant Moses.
Hebrews 4:9
So then, a sabbath rest still remains for the people of God.
Words of Grace For Today
Rest.
One is at rest when one is not in motion.
Rest.
When one eats leftovers, one has rests.
And the cook did not have to cook to produce the food. Well maybe not, some cooks cook leftovers and call it rests.
Rest.
Rest is when one does not work to eat, survive, produce, profit, or gain in some way. One is a body at rest, without motion. Though for some people rest can also include some activities that are not part of their daily grind to ensure they can eat, survive, produce, profit, or gain in some way. A hike in the woods, if they still exist, i.e. not burned to the ground or brown with decay from drought and pestilence.
Rest.
When one’s soul is normally so worked up by the demands of one’s daily grind, a rest is needed to remind one that one is supposed to have a soul, a spirit, a life beyond the physical existence … and it should be a good life, though there are no guarantees.
Rest.
Rest is what those caught in battle wish for and rarely can afford.
Rest is what the burned out worker needs and even when motion stops cannot achieve.
Rest is God’s gift, a seventh day, a regular time to rest and to remember life is good.
Rest.
Today it’s time to take a bit of a rest, for as one gets older one’s body will not stay in motion all day without hurting and pinching and swelling and aching, so one’s body demands a rest. It’s good for the spirit, too.
Rest.
Today begins the Sabbath.
Today rest.
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The Rest.
Rest.
Rest is what’s left over when one does division, for example 12÷10 gives us 1 remainder 2. The two is what is left over. It’s the rest. While fractions can be important, and likewise results on the right side of the decimal point, a remainder, or what’s left, is sometimes more informative and exact. Take 4÷3 which produces 1.33333 to infinity or 5÷3 which produces 1.66666 to infinity. Where as 1 plus the rest, which is 1 or 2, is simple and to the point. Sometimes, as we live in God’s good creation, simple is the most accurate, the most honest, and the most truthful.
God keeps God’s promise that we shall have rest. God promises this each week. God promises this at the end of life. And that rest is not a number that can be reduced to a fraction or to a decimal at all, not at all.
Rest.
Rest is what a healthy body will have one way or another after a good day’s work. And even bodies that are ill will take rest sooner or later. We call it sleep and it is the best healthy maintainer we can avail ourselves of. With enough sleep, which varies from body to body (usually somewhere between 7 and 9 hours, though I seem to have known many people who actually needed only 5 or 6. There are many more who thought they needed much less than 7, and then they ‘paid the piper’, so to speak, with a heart attack or other grand illness or massive organ and body failure.)
Let us rest then, this night at least 7 hours, if God will grant it. And if not let us inquire of the information out there what we may be doing to interfere with our bodies getting what they need. Perhaps one needs to get out first thing in the morning into daylight for at least 15 minutes, or one needs to regularize one’s waking hour, eating hours, and sleeping hours to set one’ circadian rhythm, or give up on the stimulants like caffeine, tobacco, and drugs as well as the ‘downers’ like alcohol, pills, and trying to live with borderline personality disordered persons.
I’ve met more than my share of people who lived on meth for days, weeks, and months at different times in their lives. They cheated their body of the ‘need’ to sleep, staying awake and more than fully energized for days and weeks on end. Since meth hyped their bodies out of it’s normal ability to provide for itself, it literally ate at everything it could, starting with bones and teeth, in order to keep itself going through the abuse it was suffering. The meth-heads all had dentures, frail bones, and looked 30 to 50 years older than their years on earth would indicate, but all of them were knocking on death’s door rather emphatically. The rest for them was a measure of what was left, was their any ‘rest’ to their bodies and their lives.
Rest.
What do the rest of us have to do, to experience, to enjoy, to suffer, to endure, before God provides us rest from the wickedness of the ‘crazies’? We get to …
We get to rest.
We get to deal with the remainder of our days, the rest of them with gratitude and humility.
We get to hear and trust God’s promise that we will rest.
We get to take one day at a time, one night at a time, and one opportunity at a time to pray to God in thanks, and to work for God to bring life abundant to more and more people. The rest ….
Well, like Paul Harvey said too many times, ‘the rest of the story’ is what God promises all of creation: rest and life abundant.
If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast.
Matthew 28:19-20
Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And
Remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.
Words of Grace For Today
Some mornings the joy of life permeates everything (despite all the possibilities of so much shtako colouring the view)!
Everything is wonderful today. The monster has eaten it’s fill of dry wood and produces in return warm dry heat to dry out the wet towels and clothes that need drying every day. Outside the rain falls on and off heavy, pounding the air clear, washing the camp clean. The rain is cool. The air is fresh, refreshing coming in the windows, countering the intense heat available from the monster (the wood stove that eats so much wood in the cold winter weeks). I pull two spoons full from a newly opened can of coffee and the aroma fills the small living space. The water boils briskly on the monster so I need not spend propane for that this morning, a savings when every savings is life. Great creamy Silk half-n-half with coffee coffee in the mug warms my hands, minimizing the arthritic pains, and soothing my throat all the way down! Creamy tart berries wait on my cereal where every spoonful is both smooth and crunchy, sweat-creamy and biting with Vitamin C in the black berries.
It’s a new month. The start of the second half the year, so it’s a new log file, crisp and clean. The calendar pages get turned up and held with tape for the small calendar, and up and over the board for the large calendar.
Since it’s not cold outside freezing the living daylights out of everything, I need no monster heat to survive. It’s like grits, ‘its extra, only 25 cents.’ And that (the gathering of an armful of small wood sticks) I can afford today. Maybe not in four months, but today I’ll burn this resource, upon which my life depends in the winter.
The heavy rain lets up, the sun shines in the windows, the birds start to sing and the stupid squirrels (and 2-legged animals) are silent so far this day. All seems just right.
I’ll take it. It’s rare.
Today, a holiday weekend, I’ll take a break from ‘going to the nations, baptizing them, and teaching them to obey.’ Or maybe I’ll be able to, we will see what this day brings.
These are small celebrations of life, enjoyed fully, before it is taken, shaken, and made nearly impossible by my ex’s lies (added to by so many, even the judges) in court. (What illness, evil, and cruelty bring people to lie so profusely and then defend the lies as if they had become truth? Some say it is the necessity of relieving conflict by scapegoating innocent people. Some say it is as good as it gets. Some say the lies do become truth. Most people bury their heads in the sand, unwilling to realize that this kind of lying in court is what brings violence to the doors of governments and courts and individuals. When you live by the lie, unfortunately you will die by the lie as well. If you are to uphold justice and you dispense injustice based on lies, allowing that barbarism to play a part in so many people’s lives – those that benefit and those destroyed by your lies – really a barbarism in themselves – then it should be no surprise that those who are violent will rise up and cut out of society those liars and injustice-dispensers. Once barbarism is in play, it will dominate, as easily and surely as Omicron.)
But let’s set that aside for a few more days, and not let the evil of it ruin these days. It will have it’s deadly effect soon enough.
Now and always, I rest in the peace of knowing that Jesus is with me always, to the end of the age
This morning I’ll take the wings of the morning and sing with the Psalmist:
If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast.
I’m not sure the purpose in all that cow crap and straw piled in the barnyard was,
But now it makes for fast-growing tall weeds
that take a lot energy to mow down.
Psalm 104:1-2
Bless the Lord, O my soul.
O Lord my God, you are very great.
You are clothed with honour and majesty, wrapped in light as with a garment.
You stretch out the heavens like a tent, you set the beams of your chambers on the waters, you make the clouds your chariot, you ride on the wings of the wind, you make the winds your messengers, fire and flame your ministers.
1 Peter 2:9
You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light.
Words of Grace For Today
What is it for?
The grass gets long, so that I can mow it?
The bugs are ferocious, so I can wear a head net to protect myself?
The wind blows, to knock down weak-rooted trees to provide material to build a shelter?
The trees fall too far away to haul in by hand, so the straps hold them behind the truck in low 4×4 pulling them in?
The sun shines brightly and hot in the window so the shade is drawn to keep it cool in here and I do not see intruders invading the yard to steal firewood?
The medicine that I need to live without pain and eventually cancer is not covered by Seniors Blue Cross, and even though the medicine I need has been approved twice before and fully covered by Alberta Income Support, this time requires yet another doctor’s letter costing up to $150 (when that’s all I have for groceries and gas each month). There is no possible purpose this has happened. It’s wasting my life, my limited finances, my time and a lot of government time and money to go through this approval now for the third time and worse to not approve the medicine, making an appeal necessary and emergency funding requests in the interim … unless of course I want to risk developing throat cancer and living in great pain in the meanwhile and risking that my back and other muscles will spasm with the least provocation, disabling me wherever I happen to be, including out in the freezing temperatures of winter emptying the ashes from the stove (as it did last time, and I barely made it back to the shelter where it was warm) or out in the bugs that would eat me alive slowly until I wasn’t any more.
The courts and the witnesses, including RCMP, lie, so that … opps, that one is hard to come up with a purpose for … maybe so that we eagerly await God’s judgment?
All these things have some truth in them.
The one truth that is not lost by human deceit and greed is that God is clothed with honour and majesty, wrapped in light as with a garment. God stretches out the heavens like a tent, God sets the beams of your chambers on the waters, God rides the clouds as chariot, God flies on the wings of the wind, God makes the winds God’s messengers, fire and flame God’s ministers.
So what are we humans purposed for?
God makes us a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that we may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called us out of darkness into his marvellous light.
Not bad of a bunch of rag-tag sinners.
Of course only sinners can proclaim the mighty acts of God, because the greatest, mightiest, and most wondrous act of God is …
when God forgives us miserable sinners our sins. Actually we are really good sinners, which makes us miserable people.
We are forgiven, not to save our sorry little butts, but rather so that the world has something to see: God saving the worst, the least deserving, the most hardhearted, stiff-necked people the earth has to offer.
We may wish God chose us because of our great personalities and wondrous things we do, but that just ain’t so.
God’s people have a history, a real ugly history. Only God’s intervention makes it somewhat tolerable to start to tell or hear.
God’s miracle of saving such people as us, makes our stories (God’s story) the greatest story every told or heard.
What part are you playing in that story today, before God saves our sorry little butts, or after?
By your strength you established the mountains; you are girded with might.
John 14:14
If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.
Words of Grace For Today
Consider God.
Not just a heavy weight champion for millennia and eons, God is the winner in all contests of strength, power, might, abilities, and smarts … oh, and wisdom.
The mountains and the oceans have always attracted humans to them, to be astounded by them, inspired by them, to be dwarfed by them, to be renewed by them … and to be made afraid by them.
God spoke a word, and the mountains and the oceans … and for that matter all matter and the universe itself, were created.
No contest, God is greater.
At least we are able to gawk and shudder at the immensity of God’s works.
Then we try to do marvellous things, building towers to the skies, flying through those skies, building cities that cover miles and miles of land, sending fragile ships across the oceans and into space, and writing and speaking words as if ours could possibly create a universe.
Our words alone can inspire and save lives, redirect civilization, capture memories to be marvelled at and used as guides by future generations (if they’d only read and understand!), and our buildings and cities are amazing, and our ability to travel around the globe in air, on sea, and in space are all astounding accomplishments
and they barely compare to what God does.
Forget about creation for a this moment,
but consider what God does with our sinful, burdened hearts, when God forgives, redeems, renews us, and sends us back into life to be God’s instruments of grace for other people.
That is more awesomely amazing than all God’s word of creating the universe.
And it cost God Jesus’ life. Not cheap.
Jesus promises then that if we ask for something in his name he will do it!
Carte Blanche, with just one proviso: that it be God’s will.
Ask this day, of the Creator and Redeemer and Inspirer, all that you need and want, and trust that God will do what God wills for you, and for us all.
Then it’s time to set about the day’s tasks, of life and of love and of being God’s blessing to others. It’s not nearly as awesome as God creating with a word, but it’ll have to do as today’s ‘blow my mind away’ thought to bring us alert through the 24 hours God gifts us, again!
For the Lord is righteous; he loves righteous deeds; the upright shall behold his face.
Ephesians 4:23-24
For surely you have heard about him and were taught in him, as truth is in Jesus. You were taught to put away your former way of life, your old self, corrupt and deluded by its lusts, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to clothe yourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
Words of Grace For Today
Ah Ephesians, Ephesians. So like so much truncated and 1/4 turn twisted faith. Jesus shows us we cannot save ourselves. The twist is simple: after Jesus saves us, then we are able to save ourselves.
Ha!
The world and people in it would have to be of an entirely different creator for that to be possible.
Yes, the Holy Spirit gives us the courage to recognize that we should, and by God’s grace sometimes do,
put away our former way of life, you old self, corrupt and deluded by its lusts, and to be renewed in the spirit of our minds, and to clothe ourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
This is a marvellous miracle for us when God accomplishes this in us, and in those around us, or anyone on this planet … and then we go off the rails, back to our old ways
like Ephesians, thinking we can save ourselves, and not being able to at all, but making up story after story as if we can, have and will …
which is the devil’s fertile ground for all the destruction that follows in such self-delusions.
So we beg: God save us again,
and again,
and again,
and again without end,
so that we might reflect the power of your grace for us, so that others may know your grace for them.
Oh, God, give us a bit of righteousness, today, if you could. We certainly do need it. We all need it.
Sing to the Lord a new song, his praise from the end of the earth! Let the sea roar and all that fills it, the coastlands and their inhabitants.
Colossians 1:21-23
And you who were once estranged and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his fleshly body through death, so as to present you holy and blameless and irreproachable before him— provided that you continue securely established and steadfast in the faith, without shifting from the hope promised by the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven. I, Paul, became a servant of this gospel.
Words of Grace For Today
Colossians puts it right: God reconciles us to Godself, we who were once estranged and hostile in mind [and often physically against God’s people.]
Then the writer goes off the ‘Jesus rails’! The writer makes our being reconciled conditional on our continued life of faith, without shifting from the hope proclaimed to all creatures. No, no way. If our salvation (our being reconciled to God) is conditional on how we continue, then we are all hopelessly toasted! None of us can do our way forward on our own continually doing the right things as God would have us. We always remain sinners, very good sinners, too.
We are saved by grace alone!
Paul became a servant of the gospel of Jesus, as many of us even today.
Because God reconciles us, therefore we can sing a new song to God, each day.
CBC Ideas presents 29 April Part 1, and 4 May Part 2[yet to be broadcast at this writing – available only for about a month], Myth of Normal reclaiming Autism, ADHD, Bipolar Disorder, Schizophrenia, and Dyslexia as evolutionary advantages, exactly those that have helped humans flourish! “Neurodiversity” as the gifts that helped and help us adapt to rapid changes.
The restless gene, the nomadic gene, helps us regulate dopamine, reward and pleasure; those with less sensitivity to dopamine, the neurodiverse, need more endless and exciting stimuli to feel good, rewarded. Today it’s thought to be the source of ADHD.
The big bang of the human mind is recognized as that moment when persons started to have an inner voice, thought of self and reflection of one in the world around; and then human thought flourishes and develops.
So these are God’s gifts to us all, Autism, ADHD, Bipolar Disorder, Schizophrenia, and Dyslexia: “Neurodiversity” of all kinds.
Without them we humans many not have survived at all, and with them we homo-sapiens flourished through the last 50,000 years.
We can all sing new songs. That’s quite easy, and doable, given God’s blessings.
Even us neurodiverse can sing a new song to God, in fact we are the ones who create those new songs!
