For the Lord is righteous; he loves righteous deeds; the upright shall behold his face.
Ephesians 4:23-24
For surely you have heard about him and were taught in him, as truth is in Jesus. You were taught to put away your former way of life, your old self, corrupt and deluded by its lusts, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to clothe yourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
Words of Grace For Today
Ah Ephesians, Ephesians. So like so much truncated and 1/4 turn twisted faith. Jesus shows us we cannot save ourselves. The twist is simple: after Jesus saves us, then we are able to save ourselves.
Ha!
The world and people in it would have to be of an entirely different creator for that to be possible.
Yes, the Holy Spirit gives us the courage to recognize that we should, and by God’s grace sometimes do,
put away our former way of life, you old self, corrupt and deluded by its lusts, and to be renewed in the spirit of our minds, and to clothe ourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
This is a marvellous miracle for us when God accomplishes this in us, and in those around us, or anyone on this planet … and then we go off the rails, back to our old ways
like Ephesians, thinking we can save ourselves, and not being able to at all, but making up story after story as if we can, have and will …
which is the devil’s fertile ground for all the destruction that follows in such self-delusions.
So we beg: God save us again,
and again,
and again,
and again without end,
so that we might reflect the power of your grace for us, so that others may know your grace for them.
Oh, God, give us a bit of righteousness, today, if you could. We certainly do need it. We all need it.
I will lead the blind by a road they do not know, by paths they have not known I will guide them. I will turn the darkness before them into light, the rough places into level ground. These are the things I will do, and I will not forsake them.
1 Peter 2:9
But 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
Jim sat in the darkness of the bright day.
He could not see the horizon out there where the sun should have been. Not that many years ago he’d met Beatrice and she swept him off his feet before he knew what was happening. She was in her mid-thirties. Jim was 8 years older. Then he’d fallen in love and given everything to her. They proclaimed their love for each other and promised their lives to each other, until death did them part. They were madly in love with each other and everything looked so wonderful.
Jim moved in with Bea in her grand house and he worked to turn it into their shared home. They travelled to France and then to the Maritimes. They went sailing in the Caribbean for a week. It was all a dream come true. Their second year together their twins arrived, a girl and a boy. As agreed he stayed home to raise the children so she could go back to work. He put his career on hold. That first year was a dream come true.
The honeymoon shine wore off soon after Bea became pregnant with twins. He did everything he could to support her. She flew off the handle at him and others, making wild accusations. Her screaming at him cut him to the quick and he’d be silent trying to ‘fix’ whatever Bea ‘needed fixing’. He interpreted everything she did in the best possible light and went out of his way to bolster her fragile ego. She tore strips of him, saw everything he did in the worst possible light and worse blamed him for things he had nothing to do with.
Jim tried valiantly to reconnect her to her parents and siblings, though she seemed to hate them for no real reason. He met them and they were pretty good people, and as in-laws they were very supportive of him, even in awe of him. Bea refused to have anything to do with his family or his friends. She’d have a wild tantrum, throwing things, and even beating on him every time he spent time on the phone with them. Visiting any of them was out of the question. Soon he gave up keeping any contact with them.
Then Bea started telling ‘stories’ about Jim to her family. They were things he had never done. Some Bea had done to him. When she told them that he was the one beating on her, they stopped talking to him all together. He heard from their daughter’s teacher at school that she said he was sexual with her. It wasn’t true but soon it was impossible to go to school with the children for anything. People at church started to avoid him.
That had been more than a year ago. Jim could barely sleep. The doctor put him on one drug, then another, then another until he was taking 5 medications besides his allergy medicine and the sleep apnea machine he wore at night. Every two weeks he got either a testosterone or a B12 shot. He was so dragged out he could barely get anything done. He would often sit down alone after everyone left for school and not notice anything until the bus arrived to deliver the twins home. He talked with two different therapists by phone, and once a month travel 3 hours to see one of them. His hair turned grey and already the first year with Bea he’d lost 50 lbs trying to please her. He just went hungry and did not eat. No one could tell him what the matter was with him. He prayed, he meditated, he gave Bea gifts for no special occasion. He had worked out at the gym for a year but gave up on it when he injured his shoulder. He tried to walk but it was slow going, nothing like the running he’d done when he was in his 20’s. He told his doctors and therapists that he felt like he was 85 or 90 and barely able to think, work, sleep or even exist.
Bea’s promise to him, and his to her, that they would love each other until death did them part, looped endlessly in his mind. The only sense he could make of anything was that he needed to die, to be free of the weight, to finally be accepted by someone somewhere. He already had a new bottle of sleeping pills. He bought 2 large bottles of the cheapest whisky he saw at the liquor store. He cleaned the house, sorted the garaged, and their two vehicles. He made sure the groceries were bought for the coming two weeks. The fridge was bursting. He even took the recycle bottles to the depot and the garbage and recycling to the transfer station. Months ago he’d made sure his life insurance was in order. There was nothing more he could do to make things better.
Jim sat in the darkness of the bright day.
There was no distance between the end of the horizon and his arms stretched out pleading in prayer. No one heard his voice. No one had heard his voice for longer than he could remember.
It was a Sunday evening. He read a story to the twins and said good night. He made sure everything was secure in the house. He grabbed his backpack with the whisky in it. He put the sleeping pills in his pocket, put on a warm jacket and walked a mile to the woods. He sat on his special log, took all the sleeping pills, drank one bottle and most of the second before he was numbed and so tired. Finally he would be able to sleep and be free and be home.
Jim knew well most of the Bible. He was familiar with Isaiah’s words: I will lead the blind by a road they do not know, by paths they have not known I will guide them.
He had to trust that this path he’d taken was the only one God had for him.
There were no shelters for abused men. People could not imagine that men are abused just like women are, not the therapist and certainly not the doctors or the teachers or their pastor or any of Bea’s family … or any one at all.
Not one single person could imagine a man being abused, not one person Jim had talked to in the last 9 years as he suffered … until he could not take any more.
Many of them may have been members of a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that they may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called them out of darkness into his marvellous light.
But no one thought they could help Jim find the light of life, because, well, women may beat on men, but they do not abuse them, not women. Reports are abuse kills ten times as many men than women, many of them by abuse that drives them to suicide. It is important to stop men abusing women, because it always ends in death for the abused. But, they say, men are not abused,
so they say.
So Jim is just another statistic that is ignored. And Bea will find another man to raise the children for her, and abuse him and the children. He will likely die, and they will become abusers if they survive.
But women do not abuse men or
so they say.
Oh, God, save us!
Save us all, though it is too late for Jim and millions like him, God, save us!
Turn the darkness before us into light, the rough places into level ground.
…
Do not forsake us!
Do not forsake the men who are abused to death!
Do not forsake the children who never have a chance to know what love really is.
.
Today, many men will sit in the darkness of the bright day. No one will see them. No one will hear them.
Oh, God save them and us who do not see and do not hear and cannot imagine the darkness of their reality of being abused.
Save us, we beseech you, O Lord! O Lord, we beseech you, give us success!
Hebrews 13:20-21
Now may the God of peace, who brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, make you complete in everything good so that you may do his will, working among us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory for ever and ever. Amen.
Words of Grace For Today
What is success, that we ask God for it?
To save us is clear. We are in trouble (what’s new, mostly of our own doing) and we’ve exhausted our own ideas on getting ourselves back in the clear, so we turn to God, our last hope and refuge.
But to ask for success! That’s another huge step up the rung of audacity in begging from God!
Success as a Christian has always had the colour of offering oneself to follow in Jesus’ footsteps, which leads to a cross and sure death. Which, for most people, looks quite different than the success that we humans pursue in our short, cruel, and brutish existences on earth. Do we intend to ask for this success, that our lives be offered as a sacrifice so that others may live. NOT usually, unless …
unless the Holy Spirit guides us to understand and live out the love by which the world will know the followers of Jesus. This love is unconditional, self-sacrificial, life altering, powers undermining, universe transforming, living water love.
When that is the love we indeed live then the whole world is changed for us. The New Jerusalem is arrived and we are at home in it, and God dwells with us, and
wonders never cease.
For God has indeed made us complete in everything good so that we may do God’s will.
Examples are endless through the history of the saints.
Consider Chai-Shin Yu, who is an ordained (Korean) Presbyterian pastor and professor of Korean culture and religion as the University of Toronto. In 1950 the North Korean Communists invaded South Korea. Chai-Shin Yu, then a student and heavily involved in church work, managed to hide for some months, knowing that as a Christian he was a prime suspect. In September 1950, S. Korean and United Nations troops landed in Inchon Harbor and the N. Korean soldiers began to prepare their retreat. Yu was apprehended by the Chief of the Communist Intelligence Bureau and so began days of interrogation and torture. Finally, along with others, he was taken to what he was sure was the execution ground, for he could hear gunfire. Instead, he and the other captives were forced to carry arms & supplies for the retreating N. Korean soldiers! Day after day they were forced to carry heavy burdens, ever on the lookout for strafing American planes.
By early October they were deep in the mountains. They began to come upon wounded Communist soldiers abandoned by the side of the road. One wounded soldier was staring vacantly, his leg covered with clotted blood. But he seemed familiar, and Yu stopped to look in his face. He recoiled; it was the Chief of the Intelligence Bureau! “Move on,” Yu told himself, but a voice within replied, “no, his life can be saved if he gets some help.” So Yu argued within himself, until a voice said, “But don’t you believe in Jesus Christ? He told you to love your enemy. What would Jesus do if he were here?”
The Chief finally recognized Yu as the reactionary he had planned to kill. He closed his eyes, expecting to be killed in revenge. But Yu said, “Get on my back.” The argument raging inside him was resolved. After some persuading the wounded Chief crawled on his back. Yu’s feet were blistered and bleeding from 150 miles of dreadful walking, and he was exhausted. But he gritted his teeth and kept on. Once he tripped & they both fell. The Chief finally broke the silence. “Friend,” he said, “you know that I hated you and wanted to kill you, don’t you?” “Of course I do.” “Then why are you going to all this trouble to save me? All my fellow soldiers have deserted me. Why are you trying to save your enemy?”
After a long silence, Yu said, ” Love is stronger than hatred. Even though you planned to have me killed, I still love you. Love is stronger than death. I hate your hatred, but I love you as a person” The man wept and confessed, “I have killed so many people. I don’t deserve to be saved.” And they wept together.
They Yu took the Chief up again & moved on. Ten miles down the road he found an ambulance being repaired, & arranged to have his passenger taken to the Pyongyang Military Hospital. The Chief protested, “I won’t go to the hospital. I’d rather stay with you and die. Where ever you go, I want to go with you.” But Yu forced him into the ambulance. “You ought to live,” he insisted.
By the end of October Chai-Shin Yu & the others had walked 200 miles. During an attack by American paratroopers he escaped & walked all the way back to Seoul, and eventually was reunited with his family. (Source Unknown)
For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every secret thing, whether good or evil.
Romans 14:12-13
So then, each of us will be accountable to God. Let us therefore no longer pass judgment on one another, but resolve instead never to put a stumbling-block or hindrance in the way of another.
Words of Grace For Today
Today I repaired a wire on the truck I borrow. Not a big deal, just a speed sensor for a wheel, without which the computer stabilizer to help avoid sliding (it’s the computer program that nearly threw me into oncoming traffic when the roads were icy!) , to supposedly maintain traction (when one or more wheels is wont to spin), and to determine when to use the ABS braking. Only the last is worth much, but still it’s best to keep everything in repair. One can turn off the other two if need be.
The thing is the wire to the speed sensor is not in a place where it can get caught on anything, and the wire did not wear through or break. It was cut, not just once but twice (so the wire did not hang down I would guess after the first cut!) Someone came out here while I was bicycling to town and intentionally cut the wire, twice. Talk about … well dirty dealing, sabotage, and something someone is going to answer for! Well, not because of me.
It’s just we always trust or at least hope that those that do dirty deals will eventually be caught and will pay for what they have done.
Our scriptural record tends to support that as well.
‘Even if other humans never know what you’ve done, God knows and you will have to pay for what you thought you got away with’, or so goes the thought. Much like the wall hanging I once saw and was caught off guard by enough to take a photo of it:
Karma, I have a list of people you seemed to have missed. Come around again, please.
The list of popular sayings along this line are endless, for example:
What goes around, comes around.
Crime does not pay.
If you live by the sword, you will die by the sword.
Everyone gets what’s coming to them, eventually.
Except, despite all our wishes that it were so, this is not how God tells us God works.
Yes, what is hidden or secret will come to light.
Yes, though everyone else may not know, God knows. God knows everything.
Yes, there will be judgment for everyone.
Yes, yes, yes … except.
God’s clearest statement for us is in Jesus’ life, ministry, death and resurrection, by which it is clear that God’s foremost and consistent manner of dealing with us is grace, ie God judges us and forgives us our sins. God judges our enemies and all evil doers, and all people, and God forgives us all … except some sins God does not forgive … but we will never know what sins God will not and does not forgive.
We can bind or retain all the sins we deem worthy of such note, but we do not judge others. Only God judges, and God judges us all, as God knows all, sees and hears all, and reads every mind and heart.
Where does that leave us?
Should we toss every care to the wind and make our way through life of sin and evil with no care in the world, because God will, after all, forgive us anyway?
Should we not notice other people’s sins and care that their sins hurt not only us but many, many other people?
Should we just give up!
No, none of that, not no way, no how!
God graciously deals with us and equips us to love … to love ourselves, to love our neighbours all, and even to love our enemies.
Our task is to share God’s Grace, not to pretend we can judge others for God.
Yes each of us will be accountable to God.
But the best we can do is get out of God’s way, and not get in other people’s way of seeing God.
Let us therefore no longer pass judgment on one another, but resolve instead never to put a stumbling-block or hindrance in the way of another.
That is the tricky part: not being a hindrance to others, and not putting stumbling blocks in others’ way to seeing God’s Grace for them!
Tall order, for short people … but short people well equipped for the gift of life and grace for all.
(The Parties are the BEST. I do the sweaty labour, God does the drinking, Works out the best for us all!)
And I Keep Getting New Invitations!
Isaiah 42:6
I am the Lord, I have called you in righteousness, I have taken you by the hand and kept you; I have given you as a covenant to the people, a light to the nations.
Ephesians 3:12
We have access to God in boldness and confidence through faith in Jesus.
Words of Grace For Today
When Sheila gave gifts they always spoke loudly of the strings she attached to them. She gave her husband, a high school math teacher, two airline tickets to Hawaii one Christmas, and a membership in a local fitness club. It went without saying that she expected him to get fit to show himself off in a bathing suit by the middle of February when they would be on their way to the sun and beaches and the surf.
Sheila gave her three kids full scholarships to the university of their choice along with memberships in the local chapter of the conservative political party. It went without saying that she expected each of them to pursue a career that would gain them recognition so that their contributions to returning the conservatives to government happened sooner rather than later. When her oldest daughter decided to major in philosophy, political science, and economics she was pleased. She was not as happy that her daughter chose the university most noted for it’s liberal, even socialist, professors. She didn’t know about the anarchist movement among the PPE students. When her daughter decided to continue on to law school, her mother was so proud. She even offered to pay for law school. Her daughter graduated at the top of her class and passed the bar in three provinces. And she accomplished the extraordinary: she passed the bar in three American states as well. About that time her second daughter was just finishing her degree in education. Her mom didn’t say much. But when her oldest, the lawyer, took work with the innocence project and then her second daughter started teaching in an inner city school, both living, working and contributing to political parties not their mother’s conservatives, she demanded they repay her for their education costs.
Both thanked her again for her generous support, and told her there was no way they would think of trying to repay her.
About then the youngest, Sheila’s only son, looked at what his mother was demanding of his older sisters. He passed on university and his plans to double major in architecture and engineering. Instead he took an apprenticeship. He figured he could work 5 years and save enough for his first year of university and maybe figured it out on his own from there to get his degree. He had no plans to owe his mother for anything, and he had no plans to join any political party. He volunteered at the local food bank and helped out at a weekly soup kitchen. His long term plan was to design and build low cost housing that promoted healthy living, but he’d never dared tell his mother that.
Sheila’s husband graciously accepted the airline tickets for two, visited the ‘fitness club’ of his choice, and in February took that trip to Hawaii with his ‘fitness’ club’s owner, who was two years younger than he was, but about as committed to nothing as anyone Sheila knew. After the first 5 hours he and the ‘fitness club’ owner agreed to go their separate ways. Sheila’s husband didn’t need to put on a swimsuit once during the vacation and he enjoyed every minute of it out in the sun and inside in the air conditioning. He’s filled for divorce and never looked back.
God gives us greater gifts. There are no hidden, unspoken expectations. There are no performance reviews, or right political party to join (though there may be a few not to join). God provides everything we need, and only asks (and asks clearly for anyone to hear who has ears to hear) that we share everything God gives us (less things and more so Grace, forgiveness, love and life abundant) with everyone we possibly can figure out how to share them with.
Most importantly God takes us by the hand and guides us, if we but listen. We are not on our own, ever. Secondly, God does not deal with us so graciously so that we can hide it all under a bushel basket in the back yard and pretend that life is somehow the same. Everything is different, not because we have earned it or changed, or done the right things, or not even that we’ve believed the right things. What changed is that we have acknowledged that God is there with us.
God presents us, like any proud parent would, to the world. God is not bragging about us, but showing off what God can do … with sinners like us. God invites the nations into God’s kingdom of grace. God puts us on the invitations as examples of how life is good for those who acknowledge, with boldness and confidence through faith in Jesus, all that God has done for us!
Have you seen the invitation with your name on it, or are you still trying to ignore it? First God wants to give you everything that life has to offer and then God wants to show you off as a covenant to the people, a light to the nations.
O Lord, you are my God; I will exalt you, I will praise your name; for you have done wonderful things, plans formed of old, faithful and sure.
Ephesians 1:4-5
… just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love. He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will ….
Words of Grace For Today
Oh Ephesians, Ephesians! The end of one thought ending a sentence and the beginning of another in the next sentence, and both thoughts could stand separate from their sentences, to be placed together as they are here, in one sentence, and since there was no punctuation in the original Greek maybe we can get away with it, and maybe not. Though I’d think so, for now.
By contrast the thoughts in the Isaiah reading are repeated often enough in scripture: God created long ago, marvellously created the entire universe and it was good; and it is all created as God planned and we are a part of that.
So the Ephesians writer (psuedo-Paul) is on track: God created us. More than just create our species and let it run its course in time, God planned for each of us in the particular, knowing we would sin, and answering that with a plan for salvation for us all. In that salvation plan, demonstrated to us in Jesus’ life, ministry, death, and resurrection, we are not merely grabbed and dragged along for the remainder of our lives. We are given a history (Jesus’ record) of being holy, pure and blameless, filled with God’s love for all of creation and all people, and then sent out free.
More than free we are adopted, and destined to be adopted long before time began, – adopted we are as God’s own children. Just because God so chose this for us. And as God’s own we get to be God’s grace for all other people!
Covid Blues, and anything else that may come our way, you are nothing compared to the life, pure and blameless that God adopts us into. Come what may, God has prepared us for all that, and for being God’s adopted for other people.
A 5th wheel 40 foot camper unit was moved in last fall before the snows fell. The owner said he was there, homeless with no where else to go, but there only for two weeks, the legal limit. Two months later his truck still came and went until …
nothing.
No tracks.
No guy.
Spring melt came, traffic came.
Still no truck.
Still no guy.
Still the 5th wheeler sat unattended back off the road, yet so visible along the entrance road to the random camping area.
Fishing season is done.
Very little traffic comes and goes.
The two huge dips in the entrance road fill with ice-water-slush.
For weeks it takes an off road, raised 4×4 to get in or out.
Then two guys, one tall and lean the other shorter and stocky, show up in a red diesel truck on a Sunday afternoon, ‘just back from working up north’ and they wanted some peace from their women, or they say.
The next day with no sign of any other traffic in and out the locks on the 5th wheeler are broken, the door left swinging in the wind, and things have disappeared out of and from around the camper.
The next day a crossover stalls after getting through those water-ice-slush filled dips in the road into the random camping area. Lucky for the couple within a small infant, with an hour a truck comes along, and pulls that poor wheel-locked crossover back through one of those dips (the deepest one) and out of the way. But the crossover sits there for two days, unmoved before the couple returns to retrieve it.
The 5th Wheeler, though, still sits there abandoned as it has all winter long, though now it’s door swings in the breeze.
For this, the owner of that old camper, homeless as he may have been, certainly was not prepared.
Maybe no one can be prepared for losing nearly everything and then having the little bit that is left vandalized and open to wild animals (especially the real wild and dangerous kind on two legs).
Even if that were to happen to us, we are adopted, and given new life, pure and blameless, as God’s own.
God save us!
Still we pray fervently to be spared this further indignity and threat to our very life … and we work diligently to prepare that nothing is left unattended, un-watched, secured as best anything can be. It cannot be God’s plan, that homeless people are victims of thievery, losing the last bit of everything they have to keep them alive. So we pray, God save us. And we work to be ready for all the tomorrows that we may yet live to enjoy.
Always,
Always,
Always,
Especially in the face of dangerous wild animals,
We trust God,
and since God has chosen us as children, long before the beginning of time, so that in this time all will be well, all will be well, all manner of things will be well.
He shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.
Acts 10:36
You know the message he sent to the people of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ—he is Lord of all.
Words of Grace For Today
In the quiet of the hermitage, holy by years of holy celebrations, the rain fell mixed with snow, and chilled the air, still above freezing.
This is peace.
This is peace,
For there is no war,
not here.
This is peace,
For there is no one seeking to kill me,
not right now, right here … that I know of.
This is peace,
For in the cool of the evening just begun the warmth from the woodstove promises safety and comfort against any chilling cold.
This is peace,
For there is plenty of clean water, plenty of healthy food and drink, and plenty of work to do so that boredom and lack of purpose have no purchase here … for now.
This is peace,
For the wind that has beat the tarps about is calmed, and the music of the meadow is natural other than the fans to cool the solar power systems, and they are reminders of what can be done with next to no carbon footprint.
This is peace,
For this is what God has provided, for this day, hear and now.
This is peace, for come what may, God walks with me in this meadow and beyond, as God walks with you where you are and beyond.
For all this we give God endless praise and thanks.
There are so many places and times that are not peace.
We remember the people who suffer
causing the lack of peace, and
those suffering the lack of peace.
For them we pray this day, that God will provide them peace, and a peace that ends violence and suffering.
But hold fast to the Lord your God, as you have done to this day.
2 Corinthians 3:5
Not that we are competent of ourselves to claim anything as coming from us; our competence is from God.
Words of Grace For Today
How does one remain focused, determined, clear headed, and adamantly sure of one’s identity when …
when one’s very physical existence is challenged each day by hunger (can faith feed one’s body?),
when one’s very physical existence is challenged each day by the struggle to survive in an environment that would do one in were one not vigilant, determined, and persistently at work preparing for the next challenge to life itself (can faith protect one from minus 40⁰ cold, plus 40⁰ heat, wasps, mosquitoes, bear, and coyotes?),
when one’s very physical existence is challenged each day by dependence on the good will of those who would strip one of any identity they cannot bear to acknowledge (can faith please the demands to be other than faithful, when those demands are made by those who provide the necessities of life?),
when one’s very physical existence is challenged each day by the overwhelming apparent ‘successes’ of those who have surrendered their identity to become other than God’s people and the overwhelming apparent ‘failure’ of one’s own life while maintaining one’s identity as God’s chosen, forgiven, restored, and sent messenger of Grace embodied in thought, word and deed? (Can faith provide success when there is none in the past, present, or future to be seen?)
Old Joshua, after years of leading the people to conquer and claim their place in the Promised Land, reminds the people to remember Moses’ Law and not to deviate to the beliefs of the foreigners taken into their midst and the ways of their new neighbours.
Paul reminds the cantankerous Corinthians to trust that their competence in all matters depends not on themselves, but on God’s work in and through them.
Does that help us maintain our faith and identity, when it is under siege? Will God send us a competent new ‘Joshua’ to lead us to claim a place in our ‘Promised Land?’ Is there a ‘Promised Land’ for us here on earth?
Will God provide clarity in Moses’ Law (interpreted through Jesus’ life, ministry, death and resurrection) for us so that we will receive justice when we stand before the courts that continually work from the lies presented to them, and the lies they add on to the pile of lies, to further rob the security of life that even the government would provide to seniors caught in poverty, a poverty created by the courts injustice?
Does Moses’ Law (interpreted through Jesus’ life, ministry, death and resurrection) or God’s competence build us sufficient shelter each season to protect us from the increasingly dangerous climate and the animals of the wilderness?
Does Moses’ Law (interpreted through Jesus’ life, ministry, death and resurrection) or God’s competence preserve our identity and continue to provide us the basics of life in the face of our generous providers who demand we become someone else, more like them as hypocrites who profess faith in God and yet live by lies and destruction of others to cover their sins, instead of accepting forgiveness and restoration and being that restored truth-justice-grace for all other people?
These all seem to be impossibilities that leave us vulnerable to the demands and challenges placed on us by the injustice based on lies worked against us.
This is not the end of the story! Not by any means!
God sends messengers to revive faith in us amidst the greatest challenges.
A scriptural passage, a devotion, a commentary, an insightful sermon, a soul probing song and melody, a book, a news report, a quote: all of these God uses to restore faith in us, to remind us of who (and whose) we are, and to rejuvenate hope in us, a hope that carries us forward through all challenges, blessed to be a blessing to all people.
Malala Yousafzai Malik is one such person. Her book, I Am Malala, is full of inspiration as she spoke out for education for girls (and boys). Wikipedia provides the following among many words about her that inspire one to persevere as God’s chosen:
She left Jon Stewart speechless when she described her thoughts after learning the Pakistani Taliban wanted her dead, saying:
“I started thinking about that, and I used to think that the Talib would come, and he would just kill me. But then I said, ‘If he comes, what would you do Malala?’ then I would reply to myself, ‘Malala, just take a shoe and hit him.’ But then I said, ‘If you hit a Talib with your shoe, then there would be no difference between you and the Talib. You must not treat others with cruelty and that much harshly, you must fight others but through peace and through dialogue and through education.’ Then I said I will tell him how important education is and that ‘I even want education for your children as well.’ And I will tell him, ‘That’s what I want to tell you, now do what you want.”
Stewart visibly moved by her words ended the conversation saying: “I am humbled to speak with you.“
Stewart would again have her as a guest on the show after the 2015 Charleston Church Shooting, in which he started the show citing no jokes saying, “our guest is a incredible person who suffered unspeakable violence by extremists and her perseverance and determination through that to continue on is an incredible inspiration and to be quite honestly with you, I don’t think there’s anyone else in the world I would rather talk to tonight than Malala so that’s what we’ll do and sorry about no jokes.”
In the face of violence that threatens her life, she would eschew violence of any kind and speak, offering education and then say ‘now do what you want.’
May we all acknowledge that we have the Peace of God, the competence of God, the guidance in the Law of Moses which we need in order to remain faithful, always, even in the face of those who would kill us, undo us, try to corrupt us, and name us as failures.
So we pray: Help us Lord, to remember the successes you have brought in our lives to many others, the faith you have shared with many through us, and the hope that you have poured through us to so many people. In gratitude we acknowledge all your people whose thoughts, words and deeds inspire us (and many others) to trust in your promises to walk with us, and, in the end, to bring us home with all the saints in light.
Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice, and let them say among the nations, ‘The Lord is king!’
Matthew 28:18-20
And Jesus came and said to them, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.’
Words of Grace For Today
In our lives there are all sorts of challenges to finding one’s way forward to a life of purpose, meaning, and maybe even success.
There are plenty of songs about those challenges and the Covid pandemic has certainly made clear for us how these challenges play out for us. Take all those challenges and add isolation and separation and the risk of breathing one’s last in great pain, or recovering and suffering long-Covid for years and … well it’s just overwhelming.
We want to speak out, and have for years, about the lies made up about us, the lack of truth in so many times and places, lies told to help others accumulate money and power. Yet our voices are taken from us. Our words squashed into oblivion.
Our words echo in the wells of silence … as if the best we can do is get them whispered in the sound of silence.
In this place with no voices, a deserted place, this wilderness of a ‘twilight zone’ where nothing is real and everything stands against us no matter what we do … and so little makes any sense, we are just about to give up hope until …
Just when every ray of hope was gone, I should have known that you’d come along, I can’t believe I ever doubted you, my old friend the blues.
We think there is nothing and then we realize that this is as good as it gets and we still have one friend left.
Another lonely night, a nameless town, if sleep don’t take me first you’ll come around, ‘cause I know I can always count on you, my old friend the blues.
All the other people in our lives drift away, if they ever were really an actual part of our lives.
Lovers leave and friends’ll let you down, but you’re the only sure thing that I’ve found. No matter what I do, I’ll never lose my old friend the blues.
Yes, at least we have our old friend the blues.
Except, God knows this about us as well, and the blues are not the only one who sits through the lonely, sleepless nights, with us. In this place with no voices, a deserted place, this wilderness of a ‘twilight zone’ where nothing is real and everything stands against us, God sits with us as well, keeping watch, looking for ways to inspire us to live fully, no matter what our past is like, no matter what will come in our futures.
While we may end up down in the dumps, all around us the heavens are glad, and the earth rejoices, they say among the nations, ‘The Lord is king! And the hills, mountains, lakes, rivers, trees and meadows resound with the chorus ‘The Lord is King!’
If only we had ears to hear!
For now, we pray, Lord Jesus, take my hand and lead me, whither I do not know, but teach me to trust your guiding hand, to share your Grace and love with all peoples.
Maybe there’ll be a bit of chicken for lunch, and juice for supper with popcorn. These are the blessings of God, walking with me.
For this is as good as it gets.
So we learn to speak truth into the silence, welcome the blues, and watch for the dawn to break in on another day where God’s glory is everywhere, and, even if we are alone, we see God everywhere, as the deer graze the meadow and the rabbit nibbles an early meal, and geese fly from nest to food and back, here in God’s own country.
Though the fig tree does not blossom, and no fruit is on the vines;
though the produce of the olive fails and the fields yield no food;
though the flock is cut off from the fold and there is no herd in the stalls,
yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will exult in the God of my salvation.
God, the Lord, is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, and makes me tread upon the heights.
Luke 10:20
Nevertheless, do not rejoice at this, that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.
Words of Grace For Today
There are a great many natural disasters that occur. Now with climate change there are even more. Each previous year’s extremes have become the next year’s normals. How the wind howls! How the polar ice caps melt! How the flood waters rise and swamp so much. How the wildfires roar. How the earthquakes shake the foundations of all we’ve built. How the volcanoes spew forth their venom and ashen poisons for thousands of miles.
We no longer survive because of the production from our own land, our own backyards, our own flocks and herds. Instead we allow the produce from far and wide to arrive, mostly by truck and airplane, to arrive onto our grocery shelves and therefrom fill our baskets and stomachs.
Except, as Covid has demonstrated quite clearly, that supply chain is very vulnerable, easily disrupted and a real concern for our futures (and billions of humans current every day) is food security … or simply put, the reliability that we will have enough food today and tomorrow and next year.
Can we understand God’s Grace for us so fully as to say with Habakkuk though the fields yield no food [and the grocery shelves are bare] yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will exult in the God of my salvation.
Most of us will complain mightily to God should this come to pass!
Some of us are privileged and burdened to live in the spirits of each day, and to know how they affect us and others around us, and to be caught in the wonders of God providing for our spirits each day in so many ways.
The disciples of Jesus encounter this when they go out preaching, healing and baptizing … and return amazed that the spirits submitted to them!
Yet Jesus says this wonder is of no lasting worth. They (we) should not relish that kind of power. Instead they (we) should celebrate the power of Jesus’ sacrificial love, which nets them (us) a place in God’s Graces. Their (our) names are written in heaven and God promises to walk with them (us) and welcome them (us) home when they (we) die.
There is nothing reliable about anything we humans construct to provide for our own futures. The only security available to anyone is that of God’s promises, God’s Grace, and God’s breathing hope into us, no matter what may come our way.
When we wake each day and remember our place, beggars at best for God’s Grace, then we can say with Habakkuk: God, the Lord, is my (our) strength; God makes my (our) feet like the feet of a deer, and makes me (us) tread upon the heights.
That is a sure place to start the day, any day, every day.
