I keep the Lord always before me; because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.
Luke 9:62
Jesus said to him, ‘No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.’
Words of Grace For Today
What roadblocks and earth-movers does the Devil and all his wiles, deceptions, and destruction threaten us with today?
Shall we be moved to join these forces pushing us and so many people up against the rock hard wall?
We pray to the Lord, as promised, may the Holy Spirit guides us, waling right beside us, left beside us, behind us, in front of us, under us and over us. Keep us surrounded so the earth-movers and rock hard places the Devil creates will not be able to distract us from the harvest work Jesus has sent us on all these years. Do not let the Devil’s power, which can eliminate planets and stars in a moment, detract from the greatest power of the Universe that guides us each moment, the power of self-sacrificial love graciously shared with all people.
Help us, to leave behind us the ground that we have gone over and prepared for the seed of God’s Kingdom. It is your soil, your harvest, and yours to bless or not as you choose, God.
Guide us, looking forward to the reward that is ours already and yet not yet.
Save us from drunken, stupid gatherings where not only is God denied but the reality of the Devil is ignored, as if Covid 19 does not kill people, innocent people of all ages, in all places.
Singing together we face the injustices of the people who serve the Devil, even as they pretend to call on Jesus’ name:
Set us free from this evil tyranny, set us free today. But your will be done Lord. All that we are and have is from you. We are your servants, from you we have our very breath.
Let no evil person, nor a devilish virus, take that from us!
There is no photo of justice observed and righteousness done at all times.
It cannot exist, except by GRACE
Psalm 106:3
Happy are those who observe justice, who do righteousness at all times.
1 John 2:17
The world and its desire are passing away, but those who do the will of God live for ever.
Words of Grace For Today
The way the world teaches it’s children to live is not to observe justice and do righteousness – just do not get caught.
The desires that fuel that kind of thinking are endless, in number and because of our inability to satisfy them. Our living experience of them is that they continue, as sure as the rock under our feet as we stand on a high crested mountain west of Edmonton.
Yet from God’s perspective that rocky mountain is a fleeting feature of earth, along with us living on it, and the entire planet as it spins around the star we call our sun will soon pass into oblivion.
The question for us all is how do we live in this fleeting moment, that lasts generation upon generation for us.
Observing Justice and doing righteousness at all times.
First that is impossible, a dream for some, and for all of us mostly wishful thinking.
We are saved by Grace alone. None of us are able to do other than sin, and we wretched sinners can only hope that Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection will save us, for there is no other hope for us.
So as long as we live, if we can always observe justice and do righteousness at all times, then we will be happy.
Since we cannot do that, is it true that we will never be happy?
I’d hope not, but …
… now is the moment when one needs to have prayed and trusted God, and paid a little attention in Confirmation Class.
We can be happy, because even though we cannot observe justice nor be righteous all the time, Jesus steps in for us, sets his record in place of our own.
Not on our own, but transformed by the Grace of God into saints, we can be happy, not just merely happy, but the happiest that we can ever be.
Able to observe justice and do righteousness always, only because Jesus steps in for us, the guarantee that we will be counted to have done exactly that cannot be more sure.
Happy hardly begins to describe how grateful we can be, relieved that we need not count on our own abilities, and exhilarated that life for us is wonderfully blessed by God.
Happy are we who have God doing justice, and observing righteousness, for us, for our record.
No matter our sins, as we trust God, we can join the many people who for so long have learned even amidst great grief to Sing Hallelujah Anyhow.
For as the earth brings forth its shoots, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations.
James 3:18
A harvest of righteousness is sown in peace for those who make peace.
Words of Grace For Today
Dandelions spring up everywhere, showing their pretty yellow faces. Their beauty is often appreciated by children who pick them as bouquets for their mothers or fathers. Their potential is realized by those who dare make wine of them.
Otherwise they are a foreign species with not enough natural deterrents, so that they overwhelm any piece of ground they grow in and they become an infestation that is difficult to remove without actions approaching ‘scorched earth’ results.
There is enough evil evident in the police. The real root is in the courts, which allow the tactics of the police to go unchecked. It is a pervasive hatred, a racism, a bigotry, a bias that can exist only as it is supported by the courts. The courts uphold this attitude in the practice of law and prosecution, which upholds this attitude in the police from top to bottom: it is an attitude of zero-sum thinking. If we are not holding the hoards in check they will take everything we have from us. It is the wealthy protecting themselves and the courts protecting the wealthy.
Against this powerful and destructive evil, God brings us, like dandelions, those that bear righteousness into this world where righteousness is so foreign an idea (except to be beaten down) yet alone a thing to comprehend, realize or nurture.
In the grass of God’s good creation, the dandelions of righteousness are not an invasive species out of their natural ecosystem.
God’s righteousness is the proper species of every part of creation, which always behaves in those areas where evil has flourished, as an invader, a conqueror, a re-claimer of life back to it’s creator.
We pray, may we choose today, no matter the challenges, risk or sure loss to ourselves, that we would be the agents, supporters, and advocates of God’s righteousness.
Covid 19 is real, really deadly to some, pervasively spread before the carrier is symptomatic; but Covid 19 is only a small attention-getter and warning, compared to God’s Word of righteousness that awaits us all. Be safe. Act wisely. Protect others,
from Covid 19 which can kill or maim the body, but even more so from the Evil that kills the soul, the light, the awareness of God’s Good Creation all around us, and therewith our hope of responding well to God’s awesome Grace.
He sends out his command to the earth; his word runs swiftly.
2 Timothy 2:8-9
Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, a descendant of David—that is my gospel, for which I suffer hardship, even to the point of being chained like a criminal. But the word of God is not chained.
Words of Grace For Today
People’s responses to God’s Grace can all too often be rejection and attack of the messengers.
God’s Word is not affected or restricted or limited or stopped. God’s Word permeates the universe like the strings that physicists theorize may make up the universe.
The Word, like subspace transmissions, travels faster than light, travels instantaneously everywhere.
Jesus Christ lives. Not even death can stop God!
God’s Word will where it wants, makes what it will.
We know, it wills not that we are enslaved, but that we remain free in God’s own good creation: free to choose to love instead of hate; free to choose to do righteousness for others instead of harm others striving for our own self realizations; free to choose to sacrifice ourselves in order that others may live, as Christ did for us; free to choose to live an abundant life, measured not by comfort, things, privilege or power, but measured by how many other people benefit from us reflecting God’s free, gracious, generous forgiveness, renewed life, and spirit (sometimes called chutzpah or gumption or nerve) to reflect the Light of Christ instead of our meagre attempts to shine.
The Word
travels instantaneously to where it is needed,
to strengthen the defences against the Devil and his evil perversions of good creation.
to heal our every ill
to renew life.
There is nothing else that is trustworthy other than God’s Word.
Full of honour and majesty is his work, and his righteousness endures for ever.
2 Timothy 2:19
God’s firm foundation stands, bearing this inscription: ‘The Lord knows those who are his’, and, ‘Let everyone who calls on the name of the Lord turn away from wickedness.’
Words of Grace For Today
The Lord knows those who are His.
Are you one of God’s, one of Hers or one of His?
Do you know that even those who call on the Lord’s name need, desperately need, to turn away from wickedness?
If you do not, where have you lived? Have you lived with blinders on? For those who gather in Jesus’ churches think, say and do as much wickedness as anyone else.
Where are you living your days? Wherever it is and with whomever you keep company, God’s work is full of honour and majesty. It is not cheap or deceptive. It stands clear in the open and those who keep secrets to develop schemes and cheap lies cannot stand with those who do God’s will. The righteousness of God endures, no matter the cheap tricks, secrets, and schemes that supposed good people pursue, as if theirs could ever be the work of God.
May we and our loved ones turn from the wickedness that tempts each of us. May we turn instead toward the goodness that we should all remember from at least a fog tinged memory. For God has not left any of us without an idea of goodness.
Let us enjoy and trust all that God does, in righteousness, honour, and majesty.
Washed in the waters of baptism we know God’s work is righteous.
The challenges of Covid 19 raise the background tensions so high that people are behaving madly, and still we know God’s work is righteous.
The challenges of Covid 19 are not the restrictions, lock-downs, and new practices we must follow. The challenges of Covid 19 are the mental-health-deficit-craziness that good people jump into without a sane reflection of what it will cost them, and us all.
Still we know that God’s work is righteousness, honour and majesty.
Let us pray that the Holy Spirit will keep us from this madness, and firmly rooted, humbly in God’s Grace, so that God can work through us … to bring righteousness, honour, and majesty to be also here, today.
Worship the Lord with gladness; come into his presence with singing.
Colossians 1:12
Give thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light.
Words of Grace For Today
The Movie “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” portrays a hero who can with compassion, listening and friendship transform us from angry, cynical realists who doubt anyone is or can be really good, into kind, compassionate, loving spouses and fathers (or mothers, not to leave anyone out.)
The movie’s byline is We Could All Use a Little Kindness. Today’s polarized political worlds, the echo chamber of self absorbed opinions available on line, and the falsehoods presented as truths by those we previously would have respected, leave us needing kindness, compassion, and a renewed hope in humanity. We need a few new heroes to inspire us to be better people, especially with those people who are different than us.
We need a bit of truth to prevail, and decency: Hope Lutheran Edmonton’s council just voted and distributed material to the members: They know it is against their constitution, but they have, without proper process to leave the ELCIC voted to hold a mail-in vote to call a non-ELCIC pastor. It is blatant breach of trust.
The Bishop or the Bishop’s representation must be present at the meeting for it to be legal.
But if the council will vote to act against the constitution, and blatantly so, who can trust that any of the rest of the process will be anything close to fair or even decent.
That, and many stories like it, leave us knowing we need a LOT more kindness, compassion, and a renewed hope in humanity. We need a few new heroes to inspire us to be better people, especially with those people who are different than us. We need a few good people, a new kind of hero, to stand up to blatant evil and put it in it’s place.
There is nothing to support this hope, or to fill this need.
Instead we worship the Lord with gladness and come into his presence with singing. We give thanks to the Father, who has enabled us to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light.
For no matter what or who assaults us in this life, we know who transforms us from wretched sinners into saints, who can only share God’s sacrificial Grace with all people, even those who exercise such blatant, and raw evil against the little ones of Christ.
We know that our very breath relies not on the goodness of other sinners. Neither does the terribleness of others’ sins take our breath, our spirit, our faith, our gratitude, our love for all people, nor our hope from us. For nothing can separate us from the love of God, and the love of God is what gives us life, no matter what else we face.
Thanks be to God.
Covid 19, you have got nothing on the sin and hurt that people are capable of causing others. We are thankful for all the people who are kinder, more compassionate, and more loving, having grown through the challenges of Covid 19.
Stay safe, for yourself, but even more so for those around you! We are in this together, this entire journey on the good creation earth.
Only the Holy Spirit can show us how love blesses everything and everyone.
Psalm 8:6
You have given them dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under their feet
Ephesians 5:1-2
Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
Words of Grace For Today
God gave humans dominion over the works of God’s hands, over creation, putting all things under our feet.
It is true that we, humans, do appear to be able to work our will over many aspects and creatures in creation. Certainly we do not have dominion over everything in the universe.
Since we pretty much destroy so much of what we attempt to control, perverting even our own good intentions into things terrible beyond imagining (remember how nuclear bombs, declining faithfulness, and pastor shortages came to be), it is probably good we have not mastered the entire universe.
Where we show most fearfully our successes is in our efforts to control and/or destroy other people. Warfare has developed to the point where we can all too easily dispatch a drone to blow up a village, missiles from a plane, ship, submarine, or land based silo that can obliterate whole cities, or suicide bombers to blow up a crowd. Terrorist attacks come by land, sea, air, and cyber means delivering projectile, poisons, explosions. Infamous leaders turn words that have no bearing in reality into deadly weapons, inspiring hate crimes, that invite protests, that are hijacked as violent riots, which in turn are use as excuses for more hate crimes inspired by infamously dangerous and irrational power hungry leaders.
Where did all this hate come from?
From our fearful hearts!
We fear that our share of the pie is disappearing, so we want to blame someone else, instead of take our own responsibility for living lives that demand others destroy air, land, and sea … and people, in order to satisfy our insatiable appetites for things that do not satisfy the soul.
How different Jesus’ life story is, filled with healing words and touches, wise words that reach the soul with truth, actions that demonstrate God’s omi-present, all-powerful, self-sacrificial love.
Be imitators …
not of those who pursue dominion over creation and creatures, especially other people.
Be imitators …
of Jesus, extending love, especially to the strangers, to the ones who is different, to the ones who cannot return our love, to the most vulnerable, to the most needy and to our own selves.
You can tell, in a congregation, who the people are who do not love themselves as God loves them. They always worry and try to make something (usually something impossible) happen according to their own plans. They lie. They cheat. The sow chaos, trying to keep their plans in the dark until the destruction is beyond repair, as if they somehow win with their lies, secrets, and interpretations of constitutions, bylaws, and contracts that are only possible if one suspends normal manners of thinking. While they demand more and more of others, they produce less and less real, loving work. What appears as loving actions is really power games to gain influence in order to rise out of their own chaos as a saviour.
Unfortunately people always follow leaders who create chaos and false fears, like Hottelstedter, who will then say they really had no idea where all the people disappeared to, those the cattle cars carried through their village… on the way to the extermination camps.
One has to pity those who are so fearful that the best they can imagine for the future is to create chaos and false fears to drive people to do irrational and destructive things. Yes! the pitiful have exercised dominion, the kind of dominion the Devil tempts us to, the kind that eats out our own souls and corrupts each piece of creation it touches.
Thank God, Jesus’ love, which the Holy Spirit equips and empowers us to imitate and act out for all people, even the most pitifully corrupt, cannot be overpowered by the Devil and his evil work, no matter the guise they come in. We are not separated from the love of Christ, not even by the Devil himself, not as God’s love flows into us in overwhelming measures, nor as it flows over, around, and through us to everyone around us.
Thanks be to God.
Therefore we pause at all hours, to be astounded with gratitude for all God has done for us.
Therefore we pray each day: may we not forget the over-abundance of God’s Grace and Love which saves us, even from ourselves.
Therefore each day we pray: may this day bring us to share God’s love with those so thirsting and hungry that they succumb to the Devil’s empty promises.
Yes, let us have dominion over all creation, as we imitate Christ, for Jesus’ kind of dominion is to pour God’s unconditional, irrationally prodigal Love and Grace into life around us … at all costs to ourselves.
But you, O Lord, know me; You see me and test me—my heart is with you. Pull them out like sheep for the slaughter, and set them apart for the day of slaughter.
John 15:9
As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love.
Words of Grace For Today
We all have enemies. You may call them adversaries.
Maybe you’ve lived so as to win every conflicted encounter and you’ve left destroyed people in your wake as you’ve moved forward, progressing, you’ve called it, in you life … accumulating power, and/or wealth, and/or fame … and you’ve done this not so outrageously that people have stood against you with all their might, so that in your bubble of life you may not be aware of all your enemies. But you have earned your enemies by being against many people. Whether they count you as their enemy or themselves as your enemy depends.
Maybe you’ve lived like that and accumulated great power, wealth and/or fame and many people would tear you apart if they could, because you have destroyed so many people along the way to your ‘top’, which is really the bottom of a pit of … what to call it other than evil. They know you are their enemy, and whether they are your enemy depends.
Maybe you’ve lived just struggling to get by and you’ve not had the wherewithal to notice who stood against you or how. It was simply always something that took everything from you and gave so little back: an employer who took advantage of you and underpaid you for years, a colleague or boss up the ladder who took all the credit for your work and left you in the dregs, or ….
Maybe you did yourself in with self destructive choices. Or your ill-health took the focus of your life away. Or someone else, a friend or person of trust gaslit you until you thought you were the problem. Or maybe you just never had a chance to be anything the world values.
Maybe you’ve lived as I did, always taking it on the cheek, turning aside from destructive people and allowing them to have their way, just trying to ‘duck’ so as not to be caught so much by them.
Just maybe there are a few people, who like me, while ducking from the blasts of evil, we’ve done our best to provide for ourselves and our families AND we’ve sought to give as generously as possible our time, skills, compassion, kindness, wisdom, and/or resources to anyone who crossed our paths. We work to sow truth and peace wherever we are. Perhaps you started out as a pacifist, or ended up that way simply out of practice being at peace with all you were allowed to be or as God blesses you to be.
As sure as the rise of the sun is in the east, and the setting in the west, our enemies gaslighting us and their evil behaviours toward us, do not define us.
Their gaslighting, lies, and working in the shadows define them, each of them, no matter their position, power or wealth. They are defined as corrupt. They become a poison to the world around them. Things that could have been good decay from the inside. Their worlds rot like ant eaten tress under the pressure of the sins, and their turning from God to serve the Evil One. When the wind of even a small storm blows, they fall, shattering as they hit the ground. So much that could have been … is lost.
As the Psalmist writes: But you, O Lord, know me; You see me and test me—my heart is with you.
Then comes what seems like the good part (though it is not)
Biblical Rache, revenge.
Pull them out like sheep for the slaughter, and set them apart for the day of slaughter.
Revenge is hardly where I go with that at all. I do have to bind the sins of all those who contributed to the gaslighting, the lying, and the work in the shadows to do what cannot survive in the light of day. I’m not bothered to keep track of who did exactly what; God will deal with them. I will not prejudge them as ‘sheep to be slaughtered’ even if I am sure they have earned that. I will give them time for the amendment of their lives, time to set right what they have done.
Why not ask God to set them apart for the day of slaughter? Because we all rely solely on the Grace of God to breathe, live and hope. Maybe God will be gracious and forgive these people and doers of evil deeds. I cannot know. I move on, not forgetting, working to stop this kind of injustice, but re-engaging in God’s good creation that I still have time to enjoy.
So all that evil bears down on each day, not countered by a wish to do in one’s enemies, and still life is blessed. Even my life is blessed, relegated as the old hermit in the woods living on $40/month. My life is blessed, not because it is easy or comfortable or secure.
My life is blessed because it is as God chooses, and as I trust God makes it.
My life is beautiful, wonderful, and it is ‘cool!’
I encounter it in the oddest ways at the most unexpected times. God breaks in on my life, wonderfully so. So I wrote a few days ago as I settle in for the night:
It is cool.
It is cool, 7⁰C out, and 17⁰C in
It is cool, A fire laid for the morning.
It is cool, Hot water on demand and washcloths and towels aplenty to clean up well.
It is cool, How I’ve been able to clean up and distance long grass and buggies from here.
It is cool, How after pressing so hard for days my body just insists and gets a nap and takes 3 hours.
It is cool, The view as the sun has set. It is cool how the process and checklist for restarting worship in person are coming along.
It is cool, The fresh air here.
It is cool The connected-to-the-saints solitude here.
It is cool, To have hard physical work and challenging creative writing to do.
It is cool, The song birds and water fowl fill the air at times with music and noise.
It is cool, The technology that makes so much possible.
It is cool. The Peace that carries us in the face of enemies onslaughts.
It is cool. It is God, 3in1, all
Breaking always in
to our finite bubbles.
Cool.
May God break into your awareness this day and fill you with awe, wonder and peace, as you abide in God’s love.
We have escaped like a bird from the snare of the fowlers; the snare is broken, and we have escaped.
Acts 12:7
Suddenly an angel of the Lord appeared and a light shone in the cell. He tapped Peter on the side and woke him, saying, ‘Get up quickly.’ And the chains fell off his wrists.
Words of Grace For Today
When Jesus forgives us it is amazing.
Perhaps, for us Christians who have lived in the promise of forgiveness it is not so spectacular, since it is an every day kind of thing.
For people, though, who have never realized this promise is for them, well how can we describe it?
If you have ever been in chains. If you’ve ever had your freedom taken from you. If you have, through no fault of your own, been thrown into jail … and someone came to release you, without notice … then perhaps you could understand this.
Or if you had a debt so great, there was no way you could pay it off in this lifetime, and you struggled to just meet the interest payments …
and someone unexpectedly paid off your debt, and put that much again in your account.
Or if you realized that your guilt load was so great that you simply could not make right with the many many people you’d left hurt and struggling in your wake …
and someone came and took that guilt, and gave you the ability to make things right for all the people you had hurt along the way…
Perhaps we can imagine what
freedom, being set free, actually means.
It is astounding, confusing, fear-making, exhilarating, anxiety ridden, and weightlessness in full gravity.
It is what Jesus does when he forgive us. He comes and says ‘do not be afraid,’ and we need not be afraid, such authority and calming compassion as he carries in his voice.
Then he sends us out into the harvest, to forgive others
so that they may live free.
Free to choose to allow God’s love to pour over their heart and mind, and transform their actions into moves of Grace, like an elegant swan, a confident dancer, a child filled with expectation and still calmly waiting …
