As they go through the valley of Baca they make it a place of springs; the early rain also covers it with pools.
1 Corinthians 16:13
Keep alert, stand firm in your faith, be courageous, be strong.
Words of Grace For Today
There are many journeys, or sub-journeys of life, that we embark on or simply end up on rather unplanned.
I’m not sure if any humans just walking through a valley can make that a place of springs! That would be to reach deep in the ground, make pathways for the water through the ground, and direct the water to follow those pathways to the surface where springs would appear.
That’s right up there with terra-forming barren worlds so that they can support human life.
We need water, that is for sure. A valley filled with springs would provide good, naturally filtered water (unless the ground has been fracked, in which case no ground water is safe: even if one day it tests good, the next it may be poisonous.)
This day is another sub-journey, yesterday’s is past, tomorrow’s is yet to come. Today is now. Whether we think or hope to direct our journey is moot. We cannot and do not; at best we fool ourselves.
The guide for this day’s journey, as for every other day’s journey, is to stay alert, to stand firm in our faith, to be courageous, and to be strong, strong with the power of Jesus’ self-sacrificial, unconditional love.
As we face each day, strong in our faith and inspired to love unconditionally, then we will see the Light of Christ in each person’s face whom we encounter; we will see the wonder and beauty of God’s creation in all that surrounds us; we will feast on the nourishing presence of Christ and share that feast with all other people.
Fools say in their hearts, ‘There is no God.’ They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds; they say there is no one who does good.
1 John 5:20
We know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding so that we may know him who is true; and we are in him who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life.
Words of Grace For Today
Fools have long since pretended to be wise saying that God does not exist, and that, in their corruption and abominations that no one does any good.
Fools we are, all of us, though we are fools by a different measure. Those are the true fools who measure us as fools because of our faith in Christ, and our unlimited capacity to suffer and still trust God and rejoice with God among us, in us, God suffering with us. We are gladly, according to the ‘norm’ of perverse thinkers and doers, to be called fools for Christ.
In Christ we have come to know that there is truth that God gifts us with the ability to recognize, discern and separate out from what people call ‘your truth’, relative truth, or situational truth. This truth enables us to clearly discern lies told by true fools.
This truth enables us to clearly know Christ Jesus, and the promises God makes to be with us always, now on earth and into all eternity.
Truth is as valuable as love, and it is so readily corrupted by those who are corrupted themselves, in an effort to hide their corruption. Doch, God is not fooled. God demonstrates truth and true love in the life, ministry, healing, suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Truth is so powerful as love is so powerful, that they give us life, even when our enemies would leave us to die.
Fools think that they can live as if God does not exist.
Fools for Christ know we live only because God exists, and chooses to love us unconditionally.
And that’s the truth that brings life as a free gift to all.
May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience, while joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light.
Words of Grace For Today
Valentine’s Day.
The day we celebrate love,
Sharing special times with our beloved.
…
And praying for those who use love as a cover for greed, avarice, and predatorily making their way through life, no matter the cost to others.
Love.
Love is a tremendous things.
Love is a terribly powerful thing that can defeat death and grief and hopelessness or
Love is a terribly powerful thing that abused can defeat life itself and all that is good in it.
The thing to note is that though a person who used love as a weapon against others certainly destroys many, many other lives, but first … first that person destroys their own life and everything that makes life worthwhile, which leaves them swinging at whatever they can hit to try to establish that they exist at all … which destroys even more of life in and around them.
Love, though embraced with awe and gentleness gives life to oneself and one’s beloved and so to all who witness this love, not least of all to the children who absorb into their lives that love is possible and life is good, and gratitude rather than greed is the key to life’s success and indeed to it is the key to life itself.
The Light of Christ Shows Us What Is in the Curves.
Psalm 71:8
My mouth is filled with your praise, and with your glory all day long.
Matthew 12:34
You brood of vipers! How can you speak good things, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.
Words of Grace For Today
What fills our hearts erupts inevitably from our mouths.
I know, the stomach empties its contents normally down the digestive track, but in rebellion it disgorges its contents up and out the mouth.
But when it comes to words, weeeell, our words inevitably (even for practised liars) reflect what is in our hearts, whether our hearts are consumed by greed, self-interests, destruction of others, and all sorts of evil OR our hearts bask regularly in God’s Word and as blessed saints become the embodiment of God’s Grace, unconditional love, and promises for all people.
Our words say it all. They speak less what we try to accomplish, and more what slavery we have bartered ourselves into with the Devil, or freedom we are gifted by God.
So we pray, Lord save us from the Devil and all the Devil’s wiles. Help us so that we can honestly and with gratitude say: My mouth is filled with your praise, and with your glory all day long.
For then, all will be well, all will be well, all manner of things will be well … and indeed all manner of things is already well, with us and with God’s creation.
He will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the warhorse from Jerusalem; and the battle-bow shall be cut off, and he shall command peace to the nations; his dominion shall be from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth.
Philippians 2:9-10
Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth.
Words of Grace For Today
The chariot and the warhorse and the battle bow are all instruments of war.
These God cuts off. They will no longer continue.
Along with them one could also list fighter jets, drones, nuclear bombs and bombs of all kinds, RPGs, explosives of all kinds, missiles of all kinds, artillery and tanks, machine guns and rifles and hand guns of all kinds, and knives used as weapons … and ammunitions of all kinds and the list goes on seemingly without end.
The meaning is much broader: all instruments of getting the best of others, or using others as means to get ahead, all need to defend oneself against attack … all kinds of aggression and competition and zero-sum-game-winning … and the list goes on and on and on without end …. Doch God will bring it all to an end.
The model of life as God created us to live it is given to us in Jesus’ story: one serves others, teaching, inspiring, self-sacrificing, serving, healing, and equipping … all with unconditional love.
This is what peace is created out of … and even when the world around us roils in aggression, violence, and warring, even with the noise loud in our ears, we are able to live at peace, in peace, and with our gracious and grateful attitude towards all we create peace for those who wish to embrace it with us.
God provides this to us in God’s Kingdom. God’s rule extends from before all time to after all time, from the reaches beyond the universe in all directions and encompasses all that can be in our hearts and minds.
So we pray, Come Lord Jesus, Give us your peace. Shine your light in our days and through our nights so that we do not descend into the violence that the world so easily embraces. Help us, we pray, to acknowledge the gifts we have receive from you far out shine anything we might try to achieve ourselves or for ourselves in this world. In our days, which appear to be short, brutal, and of our own making, help us to rely solely on you as the Giver of Life.
Listen to me, you who know righteousness, you people who have my teaching in your hearts; do not fear the reproach of others, and do not be dismayed when they revile you.
1 Timothy 6:12
Fight the good fight of the faith; take hold of the eternal life, to which you were called and for which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.
Words of Grace For Today
To fight.
To fight usually involves things like fists, rifles, drones and bombs.
Or at least it usually involves scheming, manoeuvring, ruining the other, driving them out of here into exile, leaving them homeless and landless, or setting them up to die an early death.
To fight.
To fight the good fight of the faith to which we are called …
well that is an entirely different kind of fight.
It is a battle again evil.
It is a battle against evil first of all in ourselves, and then in those around us.
It is a battle that we can barely begin to fight … unless ….
Unless God brings us to be holy…
holy saints,
holy saints equipped to bring Grace to bear on condemnation, bold forgiveness to douse reproach and destorying, kindness to undo all violence, and truth to outshine all deceits.
This is the battle of the universe, of which God created us, for which God created us, not that we might die in the battle or bear the burden of the war, doch …
doch (rather) that we might be vessels carrying hearts transformed to know God’s presence with us, God’s righteousness permeating us, no matter what may come.
Shine, Jesus Shine.
Otherwise it is so dark in here!
Shine, with all the candle power the universe has ever known,
Shine in this darkness, and transform those who would destory and destroy us.
Shine, Jesus, Shine!
Sing, Children of God, Sing!
Let there be Light, and let there be jubilation, in every corner of creation, in every darkness of evil, and in every heart.
Therefore he shall give them up until the time when she who is in labour has brought forth; then the rest of his kindred shall return to the people of Israel.
Matthew 9:36
When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.
Words of Grace For Today
The great masses of humanity have always lived subjected to those with power and the ability to lord it over them. There’s never been a shortage of those lining up to take on the place of power and privilege and comfort … and lording it over others to have all that.
Jesus, God’s story of God’s amazing unconditional love for all people -especially the poor and the outcasts – sees the crowds gathered to hear the Good News that he preaches, the healing that he administers and he knows their plight.
God has walked with God’s people in poverty and oppression and persecution and exile without homes. God knows everything. God knows the plight of the great majority of humans who have ever lived. God knows the corruption of those who lord it over them. God has, seemingly, abandoned God’s people at many and various times to the clutches of those oppressing, persecuting, and driving masses into poverty. God has always walked, into those times of apparent abandonment, with God’s people. And God has walked God’s people out of those times as well.
God sends the Law, the Prophets, and the Good Shepherd to guide the people out of those times that are like hell. Today God continues to send God-made saints to walk with people in all circumstances, to help them reconnect with the promises of God and to live (even in poverty and oppression and persecution and exile without homes) abundantly. So it is when we live aware that God walks with us.
There is nothing in life that is more blessed, more secure, and more rich than God’s presence and God’s promises that we, too, shall once again walk among God’s people, no longer shunned and falsely accused, but exonerated and honoured.
And those who lord it over others, driving them to poverty, into oppression, into persecution and out into exile homeless … those who lord it over others and live in comfort will face God’s judgment. Whether they too will receive God’s Grace is not for us to say. It is God’s will, which will be done. For now the ‘lords’ breathe only as a gift from God, giving them time for the amendment of life.
For the rest of us, God has compassion and demonstrates it day after day, in the simplest and most profound ways.
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.
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.
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.
