Category: Lake

‘but’ and ‘Doch’

Saturday, September 4, 2021

We May Think We Have The Light of the World

Here on Our Beaches

But Not,

Doch!

God’s Light Still Shines

For Us All.

Exodus 1:17

But the midwives feared God; they did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but they let the boys live.

Acts 5:29

But Peter and the apostles answered, ‘We must obey God rather than any human authority.’

Words of Grace For Today

But …

For humans there is an obligation to obey as they are commanded by other humans.

When humans choose not to do so for good reasons the consequences are usually dire, whether it is the state funded police and courts (rightly or corruptly, as it is in all places through all of history, especially here in Alberta) or criminal violence or psychological attacks on one’s well-being. This is what forms the obligation. Do or die (or at least have a chunk of one’s life is taken away.)

God always commands other than corrupt police, courts, kings, and religious authorities. God’s commands do not carry an obligation to obey them like human commands. Contravening human commands results in consequences that rob one of physical life. Obeying human commands may provide a small reward, even if it appears huge it is still small, for humans have little to offer, even if it is large sums of money, power, or fame.

Contravening God’s commands results in the consequence of one’s own choosing, that is one separates oneself from God. This does not ‘rob’ one of physical life. Being separated from God is in itself the definition of having no life, not of any kind. Obeying God’s commands provides the greatest reward, even if it appears small it is still without limit, for one chooses to walk with God, which is itself definition of an abundant life.

When we choose to ignore human authorities in order to obey God, there is a small ‘but’ after the demands of human authority and before our actions that contravene human authority and fulfill God’s will for us and for all people.

When God intervenes in our lives, showing us how small the tempting rewards of corrupt human wealth, power, and fame are, our sinful actions are not followed by a simple little ‘but’. They are followed by a universe changing statement, one like the German ‘Doch’. Then follows a statement that re-orients us back to God’s will for us and all people.

Pharaoh ordered the baby be put to death but the midwives allowed the baby to live.

Pharaoh did not care what God willed, DOCH Moses would live, grow up in Pharaoh’s house, run for his life after killing an abusive overseer, and, after years in the wilderness regaining his understanding of God’s world and God’s will, he would return to lead the people to freedom from slavery, into the wilderness, where the people would learn, and fail to learn, to hear and follow God’s commands.

Likewise Peter and the disciples choose to obey God’s will and not human authorities. They would go on to form the beginnings of the Christian faith and spread it to churches around the Mediterranean, from where through the successive generations, others would carry the faith across the whole earth. We have thus received our faith because of Moses and Peter and many other people’s following God’s will when it contravened human authority.

If we so comfortably think that we can please human authority and follow God’s will, we are naively corrupted to ignore God’s will. We either do not know God’s will, or we refuse to see how corrupt human authority is in all places and all times, even now here in Alberta. In either case there are still many whose stories can only be told with a ‘but’. And always God’s story about us contains many many ‘Doch’, as God rescues us from our sins, over and over again.

We pray for just government, church leaders, a business leaders, and leaders in all aspects of life. Doch God calls us to pray that God’s will may be done, also in and among us, for human authority always corrupts itself, ignoring God’s will and leading people to try to live apart from God. Or worse, corrupt religious leaders lead many, many people to follow false godlets, even when the call their godlets by God’s own name.

So we ought to pray that God would bring yet again a ‘Doch’ into our life stories, guide us back to God’s will, and use us to bring God’s will (which is to love, forgive, and share life abundant with all) to all people … starting with ourselves and our own people.

No Worries, Just Wonders! … OR?

Friday, September 3, 2021

We can see both the darkness

and

the morning light.

…

Which do we consider first?

Psalm 33:5

He loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full of the steadfast love of the Lord.

Matthew 6:25

Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?

Words of Grace For Today

What is it to worry?

What would it be like to have no concern for drink, food, or clothing? Would we survive? … Well not in most of the world no we would not.

So is there something other than ‘worry’ for our drink, food and clothing, and having no concern for our drink, food, and clothing?

The question is not if there is something between these two extremes. The question is how do we consider our needs? Do we consider these first from our needs’ demands on our time and energy … or do we consider everything first from God’s great generosity with us, and God’s abiding presence in the world?

If we start every calculation from God’s grace and love for us, it makes no sense to be worried about our daily needs, for all that we need for life is already given to us. We only need to remember how filled the earth is with God’s steadfast love.

Then we can get on with life. The purpose of our lives is no longer trying to get for ourselves. Rather we have the greatest purpose in sharing all that we can, with everyone, especially those who do not have enough to provide for their and their family’s basic needs.

What a life! A life of plenty!

With every opportunity to share everything with those most in need.

It does not get better.

…

So why do so many people think they have to take as much as they can get from others, just to meet their daily needs?!

Free?

Tuesday, August 31, 2021

Can We Choose

To Move to the Far Shores

And Posses the Land There?

Is it Fate, or God’s Will?

Or Greedy Human Ambition That Will Only Destroy Us?

Jeremiah 32:42

For thus says the Lord: Just as I have brought all this great disaster upon this people, so I will bring upon them all the good fortune that I now promise them.

1 John 3:2

Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.

Words of Grace For Today

Today we exercise our human capacities to accomplish work that we endeavour to complete. It is often work that puts us one step closer to a goal, towards a future that we see possible for ourselves or for other people. Some goals are little more than our survival, or others’ survival. Most often even those are some variation of survival plus a better life. It is honourable to wish others to have more than the bare minimum to survive, to enjoy life abundant as God promises us all people can have. It is honourable to strive to have life abundant ourselves, to have a measure of security against those things that endanger our survival. These are the blessings of God for us that we can give them to others.

We create real evil for ourselves and many other people when we try to create securities that protect us from what we cannot protect ourselves, for then there is no end to what we take out of life for ourselves, and we inevitably take it from others at others’ expense (sometimes even their lives) and we find ourselves incapable of giving to others that which we’ve taken from others. We hoard it for ourselves.

This is all about freewill. God gave humans freewill, and we certainly exercise it, both in the beauty of love for others and all of creation … BUT also in the ugly greed and avarice that robs others and all creation of life itself.

Jeremiah expresses an ancient view of freewill. We may think we have freewill, but God at least partially intervenes and brings woe as punishment for sin and blessings as reward for righteousness to God’s people.

The Vikings TV show portrays the exploits of Ragnar Lothbrok and his contemporaries (dramatized beyond what we know of that time from the available historical accounts.) The Norse gods and the Christian God play a large part in the lives of all the people, from the leaders driven to conquer and rule more territory, to the warrior and soldiers who fight for leaders, sometimes this one, other times that one, and the peasants and farmers who provide for their leaders generously and sometimes enough for their own families. The interplay provides one overriding truth (chosen by the writers and creators), which is that the gods and God are used to further the aspirations of the most ambitious, to ameliorate those who receive no advantage, and to explain everything as ‘the will of the gods’ or as it is ordained by God.

Fate. These statements undercut human freewill and responsibility.

The most ambitious and destructive individuals see all this and use this ‘religious’ excuse in every way possible to further their own ambitions … which inevitably costs many other people their lives! The freewill of these people is to use the mass acceptance of Fate as an explanation for the course of life to hide their own sins so freely done.

It is a horrible and accurate portrayal of what the human heart is capable of. Let no one today be so foolish to think this does not continue, and will continue as long as humans survive. So how are we to respond to the pervasive sin and evil wrought so freely by humans?

We cannot declare with any honesty that we are entirely free of such sin and evil. There is no one that qualifies for that purity, no one except Jesus, the Christ … who was God.

The Way of life that Jesus lead his followers to pursue, to endeavor to accomplish each day in their lives (and we in our lives) is to accept first one’s own sinfulness from which one cannot be free, to then trust God’s promise to love and forgive us even though we cannot deserve such love, to accept and trust that while we remain yet sinners God also makes us into saints who are capable of doing God’s work on earth. We remain able to choose to love God, all people, and all creation, even though we cannot help ourselves from choosing to turn from loving God, all people and all creation.

What this makes of our lives is not pre-determined by God. Our eternal end is offered to us by God, which is that we are God’s own children and God will bring us home, even as God will accompany us each day, each moment of our lives. As Christ is more and more revealed to us in our short lives and through all of history, so we will be more and more like him, for he has claimed us for God to be adopted as God’s own children.

What difference does this make for us and our endeavours each day?

We can trust that we can choose to bring life abundant to others with all God has provided us. This is the simple purpose of our lives. This is how our freewill can be directed by fearing and loving God above all else, loving all other people as (well as) ourselves, and even our enemies.

True Freedom

Monday, August 30, 2021

Everything

Even All We Think Is Hidden From the Light

Is Known by God

And Will Be Known By All!

Isaiah 29:15

Ha! You who hide a plan too deep for the Lord, whose deeds are in the dark, and who say, ‘Who sees us? Who knows us?’ You turn things upside down! Shall the potter be regarded as the clay?

Ephesians 5:13

Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness … Everything exposed by the light becomes visible

Words of Grace For Today

The evil that fills the world comes from the hearts of humans.

As the heart chooses to turn from God, so the heart thinks it can hide such a choice from God, which multiples the sins and the evil that is wrought.

Always, sinful humans think they can hide from God, even though God has made them. They can hide nothing from God. No one can.

The light of Christ will shine always into every dark corner that we think we can hide in.

God sees everything that is us, that is a part of our lives: everything we think, everything we say and write, and everything we do.

This is the promise that undoes all evil and sets us free, for God knows us completely, good and evil that we are. Yet God loves us, all of us, and rescues us from sin, forgives us, and renews life in us.

God Calls, Come Home!

Saturday, August 28, 2021

Come Home

Live in Christ’s Light

In the Truth

Ezekiel 11:19

I will give them one heart, and put a new spirit within them; I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh.

Acts 2:39

For the promise is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to Godself.

Words of Grace For Today

God calls home, home to life as God created us to live it.

Home to live with lively hearts of flesh, and renewed spirits.

Home to leave behind our hearts that have grown hard as stone with the travails of life and the evil that has bombarded us, and the evil with which we have bombarded others.

God calls us home to live with new spirits and hearts that are shared among us all. Hearts the love one another because God first loves us, though we certainly do not deserve God’s love at all, not at all.

There is no greater promise than that God will renew our spirits and give us new hearts, for our spirits and our hearts are what we have to share with each other, with the strangers, and even with our enemies. In our hearts and in our spirits God’s image is made known to us and to others, as God created us, in God’s own image, thus able to choose to love and live and give without end generously to others so that they may live.

Come home, this morning, this day, this evening, this night.

Receive the gifts that God promises

and

live.

Shepherd Guide Us

Thursday, August 26, 2021

God’s Great and Mighty Deeds

Are Reflected in the Wonders

of All Creation,

Even in Our Enemies!

Psalm 28:9

O save your people, and bless your heritage; be their shepherd, and carry them for ever.

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

When one thinks of all the times and all the things that have been done by people claiming to be God’s own people, a royal priesthood, and a chosen race, one’s stomach must turn dark with boiling acid. How such promise and blessing has been perverted to evil to serve the Devil’s purposes, against God’s will, and to great detriment of the perpetrators and the victims.

What are we chosen, as God’s own people, solely so that we can give witness to God’s power in weakness, God’s power of love demonstrated to us again and again by saving us by grace, though we never deserve anything from God.

There are many mighty acts of God that we are called to tell in our stories, the stories we tell ourselves, the stories that we write and speak to others, and the stories we create with our lives.

What we have demonstrated through history and in each of our lives, is that without God’s grace, without surrendering in humility (at the horror of the sin we can commit) to our need for God to save us again and again each day, without Grace giving us breath … without God’s help each moment we are capable of the most evil and depraved things done to others, even to those we profess to love, and even to ourselves.

So we pray:

O save your people, and bless your heritage; be their shepherd, and carry them for ever.

Having acknowledged who we are, sinners all … having turned to God yet again to rescue us and carry us … having recognized God’s great and mighty acts for our ancestors and for us in our own lifetimes … we celebrate God’s promises for us, God’s claim on us as God’s own people, that God has chosen us to be examples of what goodness can be accomplished when God redeems God’s people.

We sing and we dance in celebration with all people, even our enemies; for if God can save us, certainly God will do what is necessary to save them (starting with us seeing clearly if they are even our enemies at all, and if they so remain, then celebrating that God still gives them time for the amendment of life.)

Such a celebration! A feast in paradise already today!

Each Day

Tuesday, August 24, 2021

As Darkness Fades at Each Sunrise

So God’s Blessings

Rescue Us Over and Over Each Day.

Daniel 7:14

To him was given dominion and glory and kingship, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that shall not pass away, and his kingship is one that shall never be destroyed.

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

Daniel’s vision sees God having given dominion to one human-like being, and destroying the greatest beast.

This vision is part of the book, set in the 6th century BCE, written in and about the oppression of the Jews in the 2nd century BCE. Just as God delivered Israel in the time of David, so God will deliver the people then … and now.

After Christ, the one like a human being is understood to be Jesus, for God gave him all power, as indeed Jesus is God, the Son of God, a person of the Trinity, one-Godhead, three persons.

For the people reading Daniel when it was written, the hope created in them was that the evil oppression of their time would come to an end with the rise of a ruler like David, who would throw off their oppressive foreign rulers and assert independence.

Even when Colossians was written this imagery is used to convey the promise provided in baptism, that we are made children of God: we are rescued from the power of darkness and transferred into the kingdom of Jesus. This provides solid hope, that all is accomplished, though I wonder what the people thought as they were hunted down, persecuted, and killed by the oppressive Jewish and Roman rulers.

Can we say the transfer is complete, finalized? I think that any honest person would have to admit that even baptized Christians continue to do evil things, think evil things, say evil things serving the power of darkness, or in Daniel’s imagery, the great evil beast. Is all hope lost?

For those who believe that once they are baptized, freed from bondage to evil, and sanctified as Jesus’ followers … for those who believe it is once done and complete and that then they are not still in bondage to sin at all and never sin … for those who believe that they do not ever again serve the powers of darkness at all … well for these people the realization that they do still sin, and constantly, this realization must undo their baptisms completely, as their house of cards crumbles into a dust heap of cheap, self-made faith. For this reason so many bury their heads in the sand about their own sin, or blame others for their sins. But nothing any human can do will erase their sins.

Those, including us, who believe that we are adopted, yet remain free to choose to love God … and to choose to not love God and all of God’s creation … those who embrace Luther’s statement of faith that we are God-made saints and yet simultaneously sinners … those who accept in humility that only by Grace are we saved, and we must be saved again and again … those who know that as much as we need air to breathe we need Grace to live each moment … these people do not lose hope. Indeed we rejoice knowing that in our weaknesses and sins though Evil seems to win the day, God always wins over Evil and our weaknesses and sins are God’s clear demonstration of God’s power of love, exercised by Grace alone, not by merit.

We hope in what God can do and does do and has done for us. We do not rely on our own abilities. Our hope is sure. We live blessed by God each day.

We rejoice in all that God brings from us, the Grace that we are able to exercise on God’s behalf for other people. We remain every day grateful for God’s mercy and love. Our hope is sure, for we live blessed each day by God, no matter what our enemies try to do to us, no matter what evil or disaster or illness befalls us. We live each day blessed by God.

Listen Up!

Saturday, August 21, 2021

Sometimes

We Need to Stand Up Above the Fray

And Be

God’s Listening Ears

and

Loving Hearts

For Others

Isaiah 65:24

Before they call I will answer, while they are yet speaking I will hear.

Romans 5:8

God proves God’s love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.

Words of Grace For Today

It’s real simple:

we don’t deserve God’s love,

God loves us again and again anyway.

We don’t deserve God’s forgiveness,

God forgives us again and again anyway.

We don’t deserve God’s blessings,

God blesses us with renewed life again and again anyway.

Peter and Michelle had a son, Lloyd, who as he grew into his teens went from a kind and gentle soul to an aggressive, vengeful and hurtful angry whirlwind of trouble. More than once the police brought Lloyd home and released him into his parents care.

After a year of that, the police came one morning when Lloyd had not come home for a few days. Not coming home for days on end had become more and more the routine rather than the exception. The police informed Peter and Michelle (on a first name basis by now with the police) that Lloyd had been arrested and charged with murdering an elderly woman. It appeared, the police said, that a group of teens had attacked her going into her home, roughed her up, tied her up, robbed her, gained entrance to her home, looted the place, and then were about to beat her more when a neighbour interrupted them with a lantern and a large stick. Lloyd was in the hospital still unconscious from a blow to the head from that stick.

Peter and Michelle headed out to the hospital in their horse drawn wagon, found Lloyd, and sat by his side. Taking turns returning home for food and to clean up, they spent the next four days holding vigil by Lloyd’s hospital bed.

When Lloyd finally started to come to Peter was about to relieve Michelle for the ‘graveyard’ shift. Lloyd took a good hour to figure out where he was. Peter and Michelle repeated for him over and over again, that it did not matter what he’d done, they had always loved him and they always would no matter what.

The next day Peter and Michelle returned to the hospital to find the police interviewing Lloyd, who had very little to say. When they left Peter and Michelle sat with Lloyd, assured him that no matter what they loved him and always would.

That night when they came to share supper with Lloyd, a neighbour, Mr. Platt, and Lloyd’s girlfriend, Ginny, were with Lloyd talking. When Peter and Michelle arrived they shared the details of Lloyd being knocked unconscious.

Ginny started out and Mr. Platt jumped in with some details only he knew. Lloyd had been walking home with Ginny, after a two day trip over the mountains to see her grandmother. Since she was Ginny’s only living relative they asked her for her blessing for the two to get married. On their walk they came upon Mrs. Swenson, tied to a tree. Michelle ran for help and Peter stayed to untie Mrs. Swenson. The neighbour, Mr. Platt, alerted by Michelle, told her to stay with his wife and kids. He went out to find Lloyd bent over Mrs. Swenson and without delay disabled him to ‘free’ Mrs. Swenson from her attacker. Mr. Platt then chased the remaining teens but did not catch any of them.

It wasn’t long before the police came, listen to the whole account by Mr. Platt, Ginny, and Lloyd, and the promised Lloyd all the charges against him would be dropped.

A month later at Ginny and Lloyd’s wedding, Peter and Michelle and Ginny’s grandmother welcomed the same police they had come to know so well, and Mr. Platt and his family, along with many of their neighbours. Together they all celebrated the goodness of God’s grace that brought Ginny into Lloyd’s life, and the night that Mr. Platt ‘knocked’ some sense into Lloyd. It’d been a year since Lloyd had been in trouble, though his outings with Ginny did make it seem to everyone that he was still rebelling and heading down a dark road, so Mr. Platt’s knocking really had not changed anything, except made it known to all what Lloyd had been up to. The following summer Grant was born to Ginny and Lloyd, and the whole neighbourhood celebrated again. They knew it took a whole community to raise healthy children, and they’d done their part with Lloyd, and they would again with Grant, all his siblings to come and all the other children raised in that community.

Sometimes we need good friends to be the ones who demonstrate that God listens to us even before we pray, that God saves us even as we are still wretched sinners. Sometimes we need to be the ones who do the demonstrating of God’s Grace for others.

By Strength in Battle or by Grace

Friday, August 20, 2021

Our Ways

Always Lands Us in the Darkness of the Wilderness.

Even there Christ’s Light Shines

Beckoning Us to Follow

Christ’s Way As

Saints

2 Chronicles 25:8

Rather, go by yourself and act; be strong in battle, or God will fling you down before the enemy; for God has power to help or to overthrow.’

Romans 8:34

Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us.

Words of Grace For Today

The way of humans:

Strive, train and become strong to fight, kill one’s enemies and competitors so that all will fear you, get other people to do your will so that you prosper and can enjoy the good things of life and so that your future is secure, trusting that God will reward you for your strength, power, and goodness.

The way of gods since the beginning of time, including those of our ancestors:

(See above for the way of humans.)

The Way of Jesus Christ:

God gives up everything, sacrifices God’s self, and in apparently being defeated by God’s enemies of evil and by death itself God triumphs by coming back to life. The story of Jesus instructs us, that it is not our power that wins anything worth winning. The story of Jesus demonstrates that God wins no matter what, that we need not become strong to fight, kill one’s enemies and competitors so that all will fear you, get other people to do your will so that you prosper and can enjoy the good things of life and so that your future is secure!

Indeed, God uses human weakness and sin, even evil and death itself, to demonstrate that God pours out grace upon all humans, regardless of their goodness; that is God offers forgiveness and renewed life to all people of all time, without respect to any merit. God gives this forgiveness and renewed life without cost or price or as a reward for anything we are or anything we can do. We cannot earn God’s forgiveness and renewed life; we can only humbly accept it … or arrogantly reject it.

There is no battle that we need to train for or enter into or enemies that we need to kill. God simply transforms us wretched sinners into God-made saints (even as we simultaneously remain sinners all our lives) so that we can be the vessels, the conduits, the agents on earth who bring God’s love and grace, forgiveness and renewed life, and fulfilled promises and hope to all people.

There is no battle that we need to train for or anything else that is our human way of ‘getting ahead’ in life, because with Christ as our protector and interceding for us so that God is always for us, we need not strive to make our own ways in life. Our way is Christ’s way, the way of the saints.

There is no glory in this way of life for us, but there is the fullness and abundance of life that cannot be enjoyed in any other way.

God help us if … no, to put it correctly: God help us when we try to find our own ways through life.

Singing and Dancing

Thursday, August 19, 2021

Every Step In Life

Leads Us to Sing and Dance

For God Is With Us

Always.

1 Chronicles 13:8

David and all Israel were dancing before God with all their might, with song and lyres and harps and tambourines and cymbals and trumpets.

Philippians 4:4-5

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near.

Words of Grace For Today

When one surveys through memory how God has exercised great grace and steadfast love for our ancestors and for us in this time and place, there is only one response that we can engage in:

We sing and dance before God with all our might.

And we work each day to let our gentleness be the mode of our lives, gentleness that is born of enduring great suffering, and still receiving great grace and deliverance by God’s hand, for God is always near.

So we sing with all our hearts, minds, and strength, singing the old, old story of Jesus and his love.

This is the dance that celebrates everything that is good in creation: God’s grace and love for us all. There is nothing better possible than this in all our lives.