Even In Our Darkest Darkness God’s Light Guides Us, If We But Hear …
God Help Us Hear!
Jeremiah 31:10
Hear the word of the Lord, O nations, and declare it in the coastlands far away; say, ‘He who scattered Israel will gather him, and will keep him as a shepherd a flock.’
John 17:20-21
‘I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.
Words of Grace For Today
Humans always have a difficult time hearing God.
Maybe it is primarily because we want to hear something that God does not say.
Or
Because we do not want to hear what God does say.
Or
Because we are so afraid of what we do hear!
Or
Because we’ve let the Devil fill our ears with temptations and promises that actually suck the life right out of us!
God provides lots of guidance, even what we see as punishments (like being exiled from our home lands as Israel has been many times), in order to ‘get through’ our thick skins, stiff necks, and thicker heads what God intends for us, God’s unconditional love, forgiveness, and blessed renewed purposeful life.
God does not merely work to get us to see, hear and trust God. God works so that the whole world will know how God deals with us and all the people of God’s good creation.
God wants us to be as one, without division, without conflict between ourselves, blatant witnesses to God’s good and generous grace, which overcomes all challenges to a blessed life.
Living in community, trying to be guided by the Spirit, is no simple feat, and success is never achieved. It is at best approximated, striven for, and hoped for, as a guiding light in our darkness.
This darkness God works to get through to us, that God walks with us through all of life’s challenges, and that our conflict with one another does nothing for us, that our forgiveness of one another is the key to living well in this God’s good creation.
As we forgive, we stand like bright lights for the world to see: this is how God deals with us, so that likewise, we can deal with others.
When David’s time to die drew near, he charged his son Solomon, saying: ‘I am about to go the way of all the earth. Be strong, be courageous, and keep the charge of the Lord your God, walking in his ways and keeping his statutes, his commandments, his ordinances, and his testimonies, as it is written in the law of Moses, so that you may prosper in all that you do and wherever you turn.
John 20:21
Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’
Words of Grace For Today
The Easter story, like a song for our hearts, reminds us again and again how precious Jesus’ resurrection is for us. In our blow-out celebration ‘Whether we whisper it in prayer before the darkness, or dive in to grasp hold of it and pull it forth like saving a drowning man, we proclaim, Christ is risen!’[Jeffrey A. Merkel, in Homilies for the Christian People, pp. 454-55. reworked TL]
Christ is Risen!
It will be sung, shouted, and
…
hoped for by many, many people today.
It is not that we do not believe Christ is Risen.
We do believe.
We celebrate that Christ is Risen and all that means for us!
…
Yet
Like all seeing, hearing, thinking and loving people, we know
that the world is in such a mess, it is as if Jesus were still dead,
for so many people suffer needlessly, while others fight for supremacy over the mess we’ve made of this planet earth, making the mess even more dangerous for us all and more difficult to contain, and
…
the fighting always costs the poor the most.
There is a wise saying in Africa and Asia, When two elephants fight, it’s the grass that loses.
We are not to let any person be like grass, having the life trampled out of them while the elephants of this world duke it out, and duke it out for what?
Let it not be that people can quote Ghandi saying, “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”
Let it not be that, when asked what people around you think of Christianity, they can only say, ‘It would be great.’
It is one thing to proclaim with empty hearts that Christ is Risen. This has been common for centuries among so many people.
It is another thing to be, by Christ’ resurrection, the ones healed, freed, and sent to serve all people, and in that service make ‘Christ is Risen!’ a reality for more and more people.
We cannot do this on our own, but only as the Holy Spirit works in us.
Ghandi also said much that can to guide every human life and every Christian soul: A coward is incapable of exhibiting love; it is the prerogative of the brave. [Christ commands us to love God above all, our neighbour and ourselves, and our enemies. To be so bold requires that the Holy Spirit give us that courage!] An ounce of practice is worth a thousand words. The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others. Service which is rendered without joy helps neither the servant nor the served. The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is an attribute of the strong. [Only by The Holy Spirit can we be that strong.] Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes. [That is why forgiveness is how God begins with us, and how we begin with the all people.] In a gentle way, you can shake the world.
Today, like every day gifted to us on this good planet earth, let us be the hands and feet of Christ serving others, feeding the hungry, making homes for the refugees, giving voice to the outcasts. Let us be be the music of the soul that reaches those lost beyond hope. Let us be the spice that covers the stink of death and the devil’s evil deeds. Let us be those who live each day as if it were our last day to serve Christ, and let us learn to serve as if we would live forever, for, since Christ is Risen, we have died and will live forever.
In a gentle way, Christ shakes the world through us, a little shake at a time towards the Kingdom of God.
In our dark we sing with the Psalmist, Psalm 80:19
Restore us, O Lord God of hosts; let your face shine, that we may be saved.
To be able to bear the darkest we remember what is to come, 2 Timothy 1:9b-10
This grace was given to us in Christ Jesus before the ages began, but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Saviour Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.
Words of Grace For Today
Today we sombrely remember the darkest day of all time: Jesus is dead, wrapped in strips of cloth, entombed in a cavern, the entrance sealed by a huge stone.
God has sacrificed everything, the only Son, who is God also and human. God and human in Jesus have died. We can say without hyperbole or irreverence that for these three days, Saturday along with the Friday before and the Sunday following, God is dead.
It is not so now.
We remember that it once was.
We remember the great cost God pays to
show us God’s love,
show us God’s forgiveness,
show us God’s Way,
and to
guide us all our days.
Jesus bending on his knees in front of each disciple to wash their feet like a house servant
shows us God’s Way of power in weakness,
and God’s love unending for us.
But God’s own death!
By this God shows us
that forgiveness
is God’s way to healing, freedom, hope, and renewed life.
We know what is to come, but for now, this is more than we can comprehend, so we wait
Is This the Path, The Life, That Christ Calls Us To?
Where from Comes Our Strength to Carry on
Into the Wilderness?
Only from God Who Walks with Us!
Isaiah 45:23-24
By myself I have sworn, from my mouth has gone forth in righteousness a word that shall not return: ‘To me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear.’ Only in the Lord, it shall be said of me, are righteousness and strength; all who were incensed against him shall come to him and be ashamed.
John 6:51
I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live for ever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.’
Words of Grace For Today
Yesterday the snow started in SE Saskatchewan, cm and cm fell. Then the wind up to 90km/hour blew it around like a chauffeur on meth.
The CBC article was well organized. A truck headed east to Brandon stopped to wait out the storm. Not his life, not his cargo is worth the risk of piling it up in the ditch or worse into other vehicles.
A young couple from Brandon travelled to a concert in Regina and they are on their way back, interviewed at the same spot the trucker has parked his rig, along with a collection of 18-wheelers. Who goes to a concert now in Covid times when all the restrictions are lifted leaving everyone so vulnerably exposed!?! A photo from the RCMP shows the visibility, which is forecast to get worse out of SE Saskatchewan into Manitoba. The road disappears into the white of snow and cloud ahead at 100 feet at most. The young couple says they are going to keep heading east until they come across a barrier across the road, or they simply cannot go further.
RCMP photo near Estevan SK
They are hell bent on getting back home.
What a contrast to the trucker who wisely sits out the danger of killing himself or others.
The arrogant leader portrayed in Isaiah at least knows where from his righteousness and strength come from: it comes from the Lord. I suppose that kind of arrogance could see him head out into a blizzard, ‘knowing’ that God calls him to travel!
But not likely.
For no matter how haughty we humans become, and even foolish, for those who recognize that their only righteousness and strength is not their own but that given as a gift to them by God, do not test fate for little to no reason. Risks are taken only to do God’s work.
So we know, that our lives are not anything, in fact we would not still be breathing, except that God has fed us the bread of life, Christ’ body. In him there is no darkness at all, the night and the day are all alike. In him we do not succumb to the fear of life, the fear of having to make our own way, the fear that we must achieve in order to have value. We know that our value is given in Christ’ body, and no one can take it from us. We are free and forever righteous and full of strength!
Therefore we follow Christ’ example: ministering to the poor, the marginalized, those whose voices have been taken from them. We bring God’s promise of life abundant, in sacrifice, giving life to others.
Come what may, blizzard or heat wave, floods or drought, war or barbarians ruining peace, we know that we live to Christ. We will die to Christ. And then we will live again with Christ.
So now we trust that God walks with us, and rests with us, as we stop to wait out the blizzards of life.
Go out from Babylon, flee from Chaldea, declare this with a shout of joy, proclaim it, send it forth to the end of the earth; say, ‘The Lord has redeemed his servant Jacob!’
Colossians 1:13
He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son.
Words of Grace For Today
Usually the cry to ‘get out!’ is made in order to move people away from danger. Isaiah provides it to the people in exile in order to move the people toward their homeland, again. This is the cry that is part of the beginning of the return of Israel. It is still going on today, not just with people returning to Israel, but people left homeless for all sorts of reasons and even more during the Covid pandemic.
Today for many would be the cry “Flee the tent gatherings, the river valley tent cities, the shelters, the wilderness camps, the friends couches, the families basements, the temporary housing places, the foreign cities, and from the refugee escaping lines and the refugee camps! Go out from these places, and come home!”
Home!
That conjures up so many memories, and imaginations for those who’ve never had their own homeland or even a home to call their own. Home is … where family is, where one’s heart is, where one’s heritage is, where one’s culture is, where one’s language is spoken and listened to and understood. Home is where one can love others and be loved by others, safely, without risking one’s reputation and life. Home is where God calls us to be … sometimes that is not a home at all, but a time and place where we can provide for others, a place where we can give our everything to secure health, well-being, and joy for others.
Home!
Come home!
Please, come home!
There is no end to the power of darkness that drives so many of us out of our homes, separating us from our loved ones, our children, spouses, parents, and our being. Of course some homes are not safe at all, filled with that darkness itself, of abuse, lies, false blaming, and treachery. God calls us from those ‘homes’ as well back to, or forward to what we may have never known: a place where we are safe from violence and abuse and belittling and isolation from the rest of our family and friends. It’s not just men that do this to women, its also a lot of women doing it to a lot of men. Abuse by whomever always ends in the death of the abused at the hands (directly or indirectly) of the abuser. So God calls us out of these places of destruction of life, to places where our value is known and named regularly, where our contributions are received with gratitude, where our weaknesses are compensated for, where our faults are forgiven. Home is where we grow, together we grow, and we grow together, through the challenges of life.
There is no end to how the powers of darkness consume us and leave us ragged, spent, depleted and at most half alive. So God calls us and rescues us from the power of darkness and transfers us into the kingdom of his beloved Son.
There we live saved by Grace, and filled with gratitude, equipped and empowered to provide safety, value, and love to those with us, those outside our home, and even our enemies (who are so hungry for love and know not how to find it or live it for others.)
From God to all those in all the corners of the earth: Come Home.
Be strong, and let your heart take courage, all you who wait for the Lord.
Romans 5:1-2
Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God.
Words of Grace For Today
Waiting in hope, taking courage, having received grace … What is this all about?
Paul N. Hanson provided this snippet as an illustration:
Skip-Bo is a simple game for all ages. A bit simplified: cards are drawn, and unloaded to the discard piles matching a top card by number or colour. Special cards in the deck spice up the play: “Draw 4,” “Skip the next player,” “Trade hands” with another player. You win by emptying your hand. We four parents and four kids sat to play. Then the burdens grew too great for my youngest and his little eyes poured out tears. His small hands could not hold all the cards he was stuck with. The other dad, holding only two cards, drew the “Trade hands” card. He announced he would swap his two cards for my boy’s twenty. Imagine my son’s reaction!
What a sweet exchange! Christ emptied Himself, took our burdens, even our deaths, and gave us renewed life. Christ sets us free! (Luther Seminary God Pause – reworked by TL)
Now that we are free we have lots to be thankful for. We no longer hold the losing hand, so great a hand it is that we cannot even bear to shoulder the burden and make our way through the day. We no longer have to unload some of our guilt and debts on to others.
Jesus takes our burdens from us, not just once, and thereafter we’d better get it together to avoid another losing hand! No! In fact, no matter how hard we try, give anyone of us a little time and we accumulate another burden of shtako so heavy that our lives just stink like hades. Jesus comes and walks with us, and continually offers to swap loads with us, freeing us so that we can offer God’s unending blessings of forgiveness and renewed life to everyone we encounter.
What a sweet exchange! Over and Over and Over again.
We boast, not in how little our burden now is, nor in the loads we’ve been relieved of, but in the Grace of God that is expressed in Jesus continually swapping burdens with us!
I will wait for the Lord, who is hiding his face from the house of Jacob, and I will hope in him.
Titus 2:13-14
… while we wait for the blessed hope and the manifestation of the glory of our great God and Saviour, Jesus Christ. He it is who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify for himself a people of his own who are zealous for good deeds.
Words of Grace For Today
Enlyn Ott, Executive Director of Healthy Congregations, wrote early on in the Covid Pandemic (16 April 2020) in her invitation to her then upcoming workshop:
Constant change, new models and numbers are a way of life for us now. Regular patterns are upended. Relationships need to be maintained in new ways. Technology is used in places that never considered it a possibility before, raising issues of inadequacy as well as a sense of accomplishment. Death and illness are only a breath away.
I have decided to take a line from Winston Churchill for my workshop at the upcoming Navigating the Rapids conference. It is entitled “For Such a Time as This.” What time is this? And what kind of time is it calling us to?
Isaiah begins, I will wait …
Titus continues a previous thought with while we wait …
This ongoing, perhaps never quite ending, Covid Pandemic, among so many other things has taught us again that we wait. We must wait. We must wait for the day when we can rush out with no thought of protecting ourselves and others. While we wait for ‘normal’ to return, we need to protect ourselves and other by physically maintaining distance, by wearing the best masks we can get, by improving ventilation and avoiding areas with poor ventilation, by constantly washing and sanitizing our hands, and ‘staying the blazes home!’ when we do not need to go out.
What is this ‘normal’ that we wait for?
Is it worth the wait!?
There is no advantage to anyone by disregarding reality, denying reality, and pretending that Covid is not here and here with a vengeance, and coming yet again with new and more contagious and deadly variants. The real problem we all have is that while we wait we have to know what we are waiting for! Otherwise we can go mad, and like so many, head out without waiting, without caution, without protection for ourselves and others … and with our denial of it’s reality we make the reality of the pandemic last and last and last … and kill and maim more and more people.
On this Psalm – Passion Sunday we remember Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem so celebrated by people, by people fervent with hope, but hoping for a saviour that was and is never to come, a political, a military, a worldly saviour to lead us into our own cruel and evil ways of living off the backs of others, instead of continuing as it is now when others live off our backs, while 2% of the 7 billion on earth live off the backs of the 70% who have next to nothing, and off the backs of the other 25% who believe they have lots, but have so little. The other 3% are God’s saints. Maybe the percentage is larger. One cannot know.
This Sunday we remember how Jesus rode into Jerusalem, and we remember what followed.
Confrontation
Celebration
Betrayal
False Charges
False Conviction
Capital Torture the Sentence
Cruel Taunting
Death
What kind of a saviour suffers these things, and willingly?
The Saviour of the world
Our Saviour
Our Saviour who redeems us from all iniquity and purifies for himself a people of his own.
The ‘normal’ we wait for is certainly not the return of what was ‘normal’ prior to the Covid pandemic and all it’s changes to our lives.
What we wait for is life,
blessed life, as one of Christ’s own, redeemed and purified, still sinners and always saints.
Constant change …. What time is this? And what kind of time is it calling us to?
This is, as always, God’s time, God’s blessed time for us. Our blessed time in God’s time, in God’s blessed creation.
This time, like all time for all generations, calls us to return to Christ, to confess the reality of our lives, the inevitable brokenness of our lives, and to give thanks for the blessings that flow over us so abundantly, waiting
waiting for us to share them with all other peoples.
Taken on June 19, 2021, for The New York Times, Amber Bracken’s photo titled Kamloops Residential School was named World Press Photo of the Year on Thursday[7 April 2022]. (Amber Bracken for The New York Times/World Press Photo via AP, via CBC)
Psalm 97:1
The Lord is king! Let the earth rejoice; let the many coastlands be glad!
Romans 14:17
For the kingdom of God is not food and drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.
Words of Grace For Today
If we live now in God’s Kingdom, not for food and drink, but for righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, then how can we think that God’s Kingdom is here already – or ever -, when such things happen as genocide through the kidnapping, jailing in ‘enlightened schools’, and indoctrination or death of young indigenous children, and the so many other blatant injustices that are perpetrated by our leaders, our own police, our own courts, and of course everywhere else in the world as well??!
On that hillside near Kamloops, the evening specular light of the sunset and the rainbow set in the sky speaks more loudly than we can think possible. Therein we see a clue.
While the dark past is marked having been discovered and uncovered and declared and denounced loudly around the world, God provides the specular light of beautiful life, the rainbow of hope, and the talent of photographer A. Braken at the right time to capture all in one photo the horror of the past and the goodness of the present and the hope for our future.
We would like to see perfect beauty all around: NO MORE destruction of other humans, no more war, no more violence, no more lies and deceit and destorying of people. Yet God provides us freewill. From that always flows the possibilities that we humans seem incapable of passing up, the possibility to try to get ahead at other people’s expense, death, and extinction.
Thank God for specular light.
Thank God for rainbows.
Thank God for photographers of great dedication and talent, and so many others, who remind us of the goodness of life and of the hope for our future in the face of …
… well, in the face evil,
especially evil in us, which we see most clearly as reflections in others’ evil deeds.
Today, why not: let us work diligently and intensely to live righteousness and peace and joy
remembering always that such living is only possible in the Holy Spirit.
David said to Nathan, ‘I have sinned against the Lord.’
Nathan said to David, ‘Now the Lord has put away your sin; you shall not die.’
Colossians 2:13
When you were dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive together with him, when he forgave us all our trespasses.
Words of Grace For Today
Going out of bounds.
Growing up in Tanzania before the land was so densely populated so that our backyard went on for miles and miles of bush once we crossed the dry creek bed (which flowed strong and dangerously in the wet season) and on two different farms in ‘northern’ Minnesota both of which were surrounded by open land for miles, and in the Twin Cities where our back yard bordered on an old farm yard surrounded by acres and acres of undeveloped land which continued across the road into a huge impenetrable swamp, when we played we had free reign for miles. In each place there were boundaries as to how far we would venture, sometimes how far we were allowed to venture, sometimes how far we had agreed with each other to venture when we played. There had to be boundaries so that the games we played would work.
We did venture outside the boundaries, of course. We were after all children.
We did venture outside the invisible boundaries, like the time my older brothers killed a bird, started a fire, roasted it, and we each had a small bite. So exciting, in part because killing was ‘out of bounds’, starting a fire was ‘out of bounds’, and eating a wild bird was ‘out of bounds’. Thinking about it today the fire was reasonably dangerous, but eating a wild bird was ridiculously dangerous. Today, with all the ‘new’ diseases around it would be even more so.
Then there was the time that I just absently minded, not yet 5 years old, ventured beyond where my three older brothers were playing in that dry creek bed behind our house in Kiomboi. I was making what-I-cannot-remember in the sand and gravel. Darkness approached. My brothers probably yelled for me to come with them. They took off for the safety of the house. I continued to play, unawares of what was falling fast all around me. It was a short hike back home. Twilight lasted a mere 24 minutes at best. Once it was into dusk …
At night in the dark, as we were tucked into bed, each in our own bed, four beds, four older boys, in one large room with windows on one long side and one shorter side of the oblong room, the shrill piercing vicious cries and growls, the gaping mouths filled with big teeth, the yellow eyes and long noses of the hyenas more than often enough would jar us back awake and keep us awake for hours. Not that the hyenas wasted that much time at the windows, but our hearts would make up all sorts of terrible scenarios of them breaking in through the glass and/or the screens if the windows were open to cool the room for the ‘quiet’ of the night.
There I was, out of bounds playing in the sand and gravel of the creek bed, darkness falling fast as I was unawares. And then it fell. I jumped up in terror-alarm, and sped as fast as my panic fuelled short legs would carry me along the path between the bushes. The growls began behind me, the shrill cries pierced my little mind and my legs just would not pump any faster.
When I reached the closest door, the door to the kitchen, I grabbed it with what strength I had and …
…
Susanne, our house helper, pulled me in, closed the door behind me, and soothed my fears, before she stepped out the door for her walk home.
I was safe, and that welcome from Susanne told my little heart and mind that, though I had strayed outside the boundaries of safety, I was welcomed home, even if that welcome cost her her own safety as she made the trek to her own home of safety somewhere out there past the dark boundaries for us little boys, though well within her boundaries.
David steps many times outside the boundaries God has set for the ruler-warrior of the Israelite nation from its infancy to its heyday. The time he must pay with his life is when he has not only taken Bathsheba for his own, but he has ensured that her husband, his good general on the battlefield, will not return. David arranges for ‘friendly fire’ to kill Uriah, so that he can keep her, and cover up that she is pregnant with his child.
Nathan steps up to give David a lesson, a lesson that proud, powerful David needs, in order that David can confess once again how far out of bounds David has ventured, this time worse than many other times. The punishment must be David’s own life in exchange for Uriah’s.
Like Susanne at the kitchen door, once David has confessed his terrible sin, Nathan pronounces God’s forgiveness and welcoming of David, back ‘into bounds’, back into the safety of living in God’s house, in God’s creation, within God’s boundaries, boundaries that keep us safe from ourselves and from the evil ‘hyenas’ out there ready to tear us apart without hesitation.
So it is as always that God’s unconditional and steadfast love restores us to life. We can trust that even when we stray ‘out of bounds’, as we confess God promises us that we shall not die. Indeed God makes us alive together with Christ, forgiving us all our trespasses.
Stay safe today, and always. Know that even when we stray, God welcomes us home to safety with open arms, and the honest love of friends like Nathan, and soothing comfort of people like Suzanne.
