Time of Day – Page 37

Whose Story Do Our Lives Tell?

Tuesday, June 29, 2021

It’s hot!

It’s so hot that I put out six eggs, cheese, and spices

by the outside propane stove.

Then I went inside to get the iron skillet for making scrambled eggs

and they were hard boiled before I could crack them

and the cheese was burned to charcoal.

The spices were still good.

We are to be like the hot spices for life!

2 Samuel 14:14

We must all die; we are like water spilled on the ground, which cannot be gathered up. But God will not take away a life; he will devise plans so as not to keep an outcast banished for ever from his presence.

Luke 5:30-31

The Pharisees and their scribes were complaining to his disciples, saying, ‘Why do you eat and drink with tax-collectors and sinners?’ Jesus answered, ‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick [do]!

Words of Grace For Today

The secret to life really is to recognize how screwed up everyone is, how far from God’s good books we all behave and remove ourselves. We like to cast others out, out of God’s house, out of civilized company, out of our lives. In fact the ones who do the casting out are usually the ones most deserving of being cast out. They not only are so screwed up and so far from behaving justly, lovingly, and with gratitude for God’s gifts; they also deny they are anything but perfect or maybe just slightly flawed.

GUFFAW

The other part of the secret to life is to recognize that nothing can help us, especially not ourselves, and not even chocolate or coffee or scotch (or any variation on those themes.) Nothing can help us except God. Knowing God, fearing and loving God, frees us to recognize that God WANTS us! God works all kinds of miracles to convince us that God actually forgives us! God freely and generously gives us forgiven, redeemed, and renewed life, again and again and again and … without end.

God wants us to know God walks with us always.

God does not banish us. Other people pretend they can, but God remains by our side. When we get tossed onto the garbage heap of life and even tossed out into the darkness of hell itself, God walks with us, and keeps us walking right out of that darkness back into life abundant.

Jesus came not to care for those who thought they were healthy. Jesus came to show us that we were all sick, and that Jesus was ever ready to heal us of our every illness.

Death will come to us all. That will end the injustice done by many. Still God does not abandon us, nor give us our enemies’ deaths as the only hope for a better life. Already today God gathers us into Paradise with all the saints in light, if we will only see and recognize all that God does for us! At our deaths God keeps walking by our sides and gathers us still into Paradise with all the saints in light, who have accompanied us on our sojourn each day, hoping for us, hoping that we will also be the saints who share Jesus’ wonderful healing presence and promise with those the world casts out, and those who cast others out.

God continually devises plans so as not to keep an outcast banished for ever; God sends Jesus the physician of the universe to all who are sick; God sends us to heal the sick in heart, spirit, and body with Jesus’ Word and Jesus’ story.

Child’s Play? Rather a Parent’s Pleasure!

Monday, June 28, 2021

We Are More Than Mere Reflections

Wondrous as They Are.

We Are Children!

Malachi 3:17

They shall be mine, says the Lord of hosts, my special possession on the day when I act, and I will spare them as parents spare their children who serve them.

Ephesians 1:5

He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will.

Words of Grace For Today

To be a child, not an orphan, means one belongs to those who are very alive, a parent or more parents.

If one’s parent(s) are good parent(s) the future is always filled with promise and hope.

When God adopts us as children our parent is the best parent, and our futures are filled with more promise and hope than we will ever realize.

Each day, no matter the challenges beyond comparison or even joys that seem to free us from any need for God or darkness for which we cannot find words nor coherent thoughts … each day because God claims us as children, we need not fear anything, not anything at all. We can be assured that in all things God walks with us. God claims us as special children, children that God spares from the destruction of the Evil One.

This is God’s good pleasure, that we can live free from the destruction to which the Evil One would subject us.

We can count our blessings.

Barriers to Truth

Sunday, June 27, 2021

Breathe the Light,

See the Loon’s Wail,

Know God’s Power,

For God Walks with Us!

Psalm 147:5

Great is our Lord, and abundant in power; his understanding is beyond measure.

Mark 10:27

Jesus looked at them and said, ‘For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.’

Words of Grace For Today

Tina stood outside her camper, breathing in the sunset air with light pounding against the still lake waters. How had it come to this? Such beauty, wonders, and peace after a decade of Gaslighting?

She had not earned it, nor felt any claim to it, though her attachment to the land and waters ran through her bones deeper than it had a right to.

For mortals this would be impossible to imagine; but even this is not impossible for God.

For years what troubled her is that people could do what they had done: lied, gaslit, scapegoated, made false reports to the police, blatantly lie in court (even police officers), and then the lies the judges told in order to convict her, send her to prison. How could people choose to do such things? How could people think they would get away with it, and then it seemed they got away with it.

She had always known she had not committed the crimes, or done the terrible things reported and rumoured about her around town. The impact of being declared a criminal though ran deep and she questioned what she had done wrong to ‘earn’ this kind of treatment, even if people were so evil, corrupt and cruel to do to her and say about her the things they had.

It took years of loneliness, despair, prayer, hope, and many repeat acts of people lying about her, pushing her back down as she tried to gain a voice. That was it for the first few years, silenced about the false police reports and false charges. Then silenced about the lies told to the courts. Silenced by unjust and cruel judges. Everyone was so afraid of the truth, now that the ‘game was afoot’ to scapegoat her for evil they had previously, otherwise done, and which they still continued to do.

It took years of coming to understand that the evil done to her had very little if anything to do with her at all. All those years of confusion, pain, loneliness, silence, and lost hopes. Slowly, ever so slowly she came to understand how very little it had to do with her and how terrible the things were that she had learned about, the lies and games that people played creating the lies, the horrendous perversions that people participated in and covered up, with influence, money, and raw force.

Arnold had invited, begged, persistently courted and pursued her. In court he’d said she was the one who had pursued him, for his money, for his children, for his home. All of that was lies. He had pursued her for the good company she was, for her great way with children, and, after he’d seduced her, for the sex. He made out that he was charmed, needy, and fulfilled by her. But he really knew nothing about love at all. He begged her to marry him and not just have an affair. She agreed and he promised they would marry when she was divorced. And when she was divorced he said they didn’t need to get married, that it would be just like they were married.

On it went, a marvellous, unbelievable six months of being in love, with the isolation from friends, the constant critique of little things mostly of things he did and blamed her for, the silence about her past, and all the stories about how perfect his first wife was. All that even after he confided to her that he had driven her to kill herself when her two life insurance policies overlapped and both paid out handsomely making him a multimillionaire in months. She was perfect in every way, and when she made a wrong decision he made sure she changed her mind and made the right one, especially the last decision to end her life.

He went to work on Tina right away, and got her on a drug that caused her to be suicidal, and he drove her hard, hard, hard until one day with half a bottle of sleeping pills and a bottle of alcohol Tina was ready to find her freedom from Arnold’s abuse.

How had it come to this?

How had that come to sitting by a lake breathing in the sunset with light pounding against the still lake waters. Such beauty, wonders, and peace after a decade of abuse, Gaslighting, and one suicide that failed only because the cream in the Irish Cream slowed the absorption of the sleeping medication – that took three days to work it’s way out of her system?

How had it come to this after that?

Great is our Lord, and abundant in power; God’s understanding is beyond measure.

So many times Tina had resigned her to God’s care and understanding of what was being done to her, for it made no sense at all, not at all, at all!

It took years but it had come to this, by the lake.

Tina still did not understand, though she agreed, For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.

…

Where are you today? How did you get there?

What unbelievable challenges blocked your path so many times in so many ways?

How has God shown you, that for God all things are possible?

Hot Party! or Keep Your Cool!

Saturday, June 26, 2021

No Matter What Fogs Up Our View of the World

God Will Bring Blessings Each Day

and the Cool Blessed Days Will Return

Isaiah 12:6

Shout aloud and sing for joy, O royal Zion, for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel.

Luke 19:37-38

As he was now approaching the path down from the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen, saying, ‘Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!’

Words of Grace For Today

July 1, 2021 approaches and the end of all (almost all) health orders providing restrictions because of Covid 19 will come with it, in Alberta. Unless or until the Delta or some other variant changes everything, again.

Still people are hungry for release, for freedom, for the lack of order that can be filled with their chaos, for ‘life like it used to be’ but really never was – which is always a stupid person’s excuse to want things so simple that dictators can easily take over. There will be a party of all parties, with instances duplicated all over the province, in kitchens, around dining room tables, in halls and in door conference spaces, in tourist destinations and next to the lakes, and in the bush … well that party has already started here, down the way, with fireworks and drinking, smoking and loud music and screaming into all hours of the night. Why not!?! It’s freedom, Right!?

Everyone loves a good excuse to have a party, well almost everyone, or truth be told everyone does except for the introverts (which is estimated to be somewhere between 15% and 50% of everyone).

Jesus enters Jerusalem. He is known to speak with authority and that the authorities are threatened by him. He is the common people’s hope for change. Even though he rides on a foal of a donkey, people shout and throw palms and lay down their garments for his path into the city. Which is a great excuse for a party … and for the authorities it is a great excuse to be rid of him once and for all.

God enters our days, usually quite quietly, walking with us, inspiring us to be the saints forgiven by God that God has made us to be. We make no fanfare.

Jesus is heralded as King with great fanfare, noise, and pomp. Yet he is not the people’s king to free them from foreign dictators. He is King of the universe, and King of our hearts, minds and breath … and of out lives if we continually accept that we need forgiveness, Christ forgives us, and we can live free from sin and the free from the power of the Evil One.

Each morning we have more reason to celebrate, to shout for joy, to bring on a party, than even when Jesus enters Jerusalem.

Yet it is quiet. The sun shines bright and hot on the cool of the morning, so warm already even the song birds are done until evening. The shadows are long from the northeast, the shade provides a momentary cool. God has been here even before it became light and we are quiet, the meadows and woods and lake are quiet. The partiers from last night are now quieted.

There is no need to make loud noises, for this is common, everyday, every place: God is long since been with us.

We pray that God will be with us on 1 July and for months beyond, for Covid 19 is here to stay with us so we pray that the vaccines will stay effective, that the whole world will be vaccination soon, and that we will learn to be the opposite of covidiots – covid-smarts, and all-life-smarts, knowing and trusting God’s Grace as our sole breath and life.

The Words of Life

Friday, June 25, 2021

Fly Baby, Fly!

Psalm 91:4

He said, ‘If now I have found favour in your sight, O Lord, I pray, let the Lord go with us. Although this is a stiff-necked people, pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for your inheritance.’

John 8:31-32

Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, ‘If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.’

Words of Grace For Today

Finding favour in God’s sight, and continuing in Jesus’ word; there is nothing better in life, for though we are a stiff necked people, God has pardoned our sins, and given us the promise that we are God’s children, inheritors of all that God has to give.

While the world goes nuts with fake news, deception, and gaslighting of whoever can be had, Jesus gives us the truth and makes us free, free from the all our sins, and free from the losses from others’ sins, and most of all free from all the sheer craziness of life formed from lies, from the foundation on up to the latest addition of the day.

For that we can rest at night and dream of things unreal at night, because during the day all is tied clearly to reality.

So we ask:

Can

Canoe

Sit in the dark

And stand against the wind

Alone?

Or does it need company,

Security cameras,

Or chains

To hold it down.

‘Fly baby fly’

Might not

Be the mantra?

Rather the words

that give one heart

are ‘Come, let us see the loons,’

by which we mean the birds on the lake

not the two legged nutters

that waste life from sunrise to sunset.

‘Rest, baby rest,’

in Jesus’ hands

all is well, all is well, all manner of things are well.

Blessings in All Things!

Tuesday, June 22, 2021

The Blessing of Winter is there are no Mosquitoes

The Blessing of Summer is …

You can say what you will about summer.

I’d say, it is that

winter will come again

so there will be no heat (except in the furnace)

and no mosquitoes!

Psalm 103:15-16-17

As for mortals, their days are like grass; they flourish like a flower of the field; for the wind passes over it, and it is gone, and its place knows it no more. But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him, and his righteousness to children’s children.

Romans 5:2

Our Lord Jesus Christ is through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God.

Words of Grace For Today

We always like to think we are more than we are.

It’s almost built into our DNA.

We strive to achieve more, to become our own godlets, to no avail.

We are but like grass, here one day for a short season, and blown down, mowed to nothing, overtaken by weeds, eaten up by even vegetarians, and the gone, just gone with only a few people who perhaps remember us to live on after us.

Short and brutish … that’s how life is described by poets and philosophers and even wise theologians and priests … though the last along with other wise people do not stop there.

They also go on to give God thanks for the greatness of creation we are privileged to participate in, and especially God’s Grace which gives us more than meets the eye, or rather just as can meet the eye of a faithful mystic, one who looks and sees God at work in the most common things of every day life.

Jesus brings us the story that tells us this Grace is ours to live in, to enjoy, to trust … and to share.

It is this steadfast love of God that gives us breath even when we should not be still alive at all. It is God’s steadfast love that promises that everyday common and usual events and things are much, much more … and we can see them as works of God’s steadfast love.

As we fear and love God, God is able to show us that we live in, work from, and can prodigiously share God’s steadfast love with all people.

Hot long daylight days, short ferocious loud and destructive storms, and cool calm after the heat of the day … all are blessings from God.

I’m not sure about the mosquitoes that just devoured me while I was outside for a few minutes … okay even they are blessings from God. I was driven back in to write and give God thanks.

This is God’s blessing – that we know how, can, and do give God thanks for all things … so much so that we pray for our enemies unceasing, that they may be a part of a double victory for Christ.

Let the storms come, let the heat come … even let the mosquitoes come in droves. There is calm after the storm, there is cool after the heat … and there is ammonia based glass cleaner to dry out the itchy poison the mosquitoes inject to get blood to flow to their bite. Itch, itch, itch. Itch to distraction, endless itch .. until the ammonia works it wonder and the bites settle finally to a comparatively marvellous calm. Thankfully there is no malaria here!

And the night settles in, the day is done. The only thing to do is give thanks, wash up, and sleep deeply in God’s embrace. Tomorrow promises to be another marvellous day, all in all.

Weary? You Bet!

Monday, June 21, 2021

Rest, at Sunset, In the Calm

That Christ Offers

Isaiah 12:3

With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation.

Matthew 11:28

Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.

Words of Grace For Today

Like no other words these are so welcome …

now after 15 months plus of Covid 19 restrictions and unknowns,

when my enemies pile on more lies and destruction, take more money I will never have piling debt on debt, and when it seems there are too few people who know who I a really am. Because I certainly am not the person reported to and by the RCMP, or testified about in the courts, or convicted and labelled a vexatious litigant by judges who care not for the actual truth,

when illness and disabling arthritis and injury combine to keep me from doing what I had planned to do to keep healthy, busy, and keep the mosquitoes at bay: mow, mow, and again mow,

when the death of a loved one rips the foundation of life out from underneath us,

when the darkness of the Evil One convinces us that the world is always going to be dark, even when the sun shines longer today than any other day in a year, and that evil will always win the day,

…

What we thirst for at those times, and now, is a place to rest in safety and

Jesus calls to us:

Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.

Once again God works to convince us, to reassure us with hope beyond hope, that

With joy we will today draw water from the wells of salvation.

There are no better words that these:

Come you who are weary and I will give you rest, so that with joy you will draw living water from the wells of salvation!

When we have rested, and washed ourselves and souls once again clean, when we have drunk our fill, then Christ calls us to share these words, these opportunities to rest and be renewed, and this living water. Christ calls us because there are so many people weary, carrying heavy burdens, who lose themselves as if they were separated from the love of God.

These words, these offers, this living water is all we have, it’s all we need to be able to share, it is all that anyone needs from life.

What joy comes when God calls us out of our weariness, and we share it all with others!

Responding to Wickedness with Grace

Saturday, June 19, 2021

In The Darkness

Christ’s Light Shines

For All,

Even Liars, Bullies and Tyrants

Micah 2:1

Alas for those who devise wickedness and evil deeds on their beds! When the morning dawns, they perform it, because it is in their power.

Matthew 20:25-26

Jesus called them to him and said, ‘You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. It will not be so among you; but whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave; just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.’

Words of Grace For Today

There is evil planned and done … simply because people can. Words of tyrants and bullies – I do this (evil to others) because I can.

Jesus provided a life-giving example for us: we give our lives ‘as ransom’ for others, so that they may live.

One of the many times I was falsely arrested Constable Jones stood across the counter from me after I was processed and she alone remained in the room with me. She boasted, “Lofstrom, do you know why I do this?”

Now I had not yet figured out the extent of the lies told about me, and her involvement in recruiting false reports from other people, even the lay pastor of the church I attended, Anne Zimmerman. Nor had I figured out that there would be no real trial, no truth provided by anyone except me and my words would be rejected and the lies accepted as evidence. I had not figured out, nor could I anticipate what storm of gaslighting was undertaken to get me charged, nor the lies that even the judges would tell in their decisions to convict me and deny my appeals. So many of the lies were little but the decisions relied on them, and materially on the judges’ own lies in order to convict or deny me.

I had not yet figured out the extent that this was standard procedure, easily done, building blocks of lies into bigger lies until the whole process was not even at all about what I had or had not done, said, or written. I had not figured out that the process was not about me at all. It was about the people who lied, being able to lie and get away with it, and being able to make a decent, honest, and kind man suffer an injustice of their making. I had not figured out any of this. I had respected the police all my life. Now turned on me, I was caught in a kafkaesque nightmare. It seemed I’d woken up in a twilight zone. I was silent, hurt, and scared witless.

Jones answered her own question, “Because I can!”

Micah writes, “Alas for those who devise wickedness.” Indeed one needs pity Jones, Zimmerman, and all the many others who devised this wickedness of lies against me, especially the judges. If one lies so easily, so profusely, so readily and so finally against decent, innocent, kind people, that means that their hearts are so twisted from reality around them, and so twisted from God’s goodness for them that they live in a self-made hell from which their is no escape …

except by God’s Grace.

We are not called to live by lies, certainly not to exercise them against innocent others simply ‘because we can!’

Christ exercises Grace for us, giving us renewed life each day. So we take that Grace, so prodigiously poured out on us undeserving sinners, and we direct it’s flow towards those around us. We follow Christ’s example and serve others, striving not to be ‘first’ or to rule over others. Instead we give all we have and are so that others will see the Light of Christ shining for them.

In the darkness of night, we know the Light of Christ shines for us, so that our deepest fears need not rule over us. At the dawn of each new day, we know the Light of Christ shines for us, so that we can live free of fears that cripple us, so that we can be as generous with Grace for others as God is generous with Grace for us.

We say we do this, not because we can, but because Jesus shows us that this is how we can live abundantly, and the Holy Spirit makes us able.

Rich Storehouse

Thursday, June 17, 2021

The Golden Light

God’s Promises of Renewed Life

Brightens Everything

Deuteronomy 28:12

The Lord will open for you his rich storehouse, the heavens, to give the rain of your land in its season and to bless all your undertakings. You will lend to many nations, but you will not borrow.

1 Peter 2:3

Indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.

Words of Grace For Today

The promise God gives us is sure: God will open for us God’s rich storehouse.

We might conclude that God’s blessings can be measured in the rain that falls in season on our land, so that we do not need to borrow from anyone, but have plenty to lend to many people of many nations.

We might conclude that if the rain does not fall on our land we are not blessed by God at all.

God’s goodness and God’s blessings cannot be equated to the material things that we are able to enjoy in this life, or that we do not have in this life.

When we experience God’s Grace, bought for us by Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, then we come to know that we have tasted that the Lord is good …

and we come to know that God’s goodness comes not as material things, not merely spiritual things disconnected from the material world, nor anything that we can control.

God’s goodness is that when we (every last one of us) deserves nothing less than condemnation, disconnection from creation and all in it, and removal from the timeline of life on earth, God instead redeems us,forgives us, and gives us new life … not just once, but continually through our sinful lives (which they continue to be as long as we breathe.)

Once we are given renewed life, then we come to know that God’s goodness is everything that we are able to give to others so that they can enjoy life, and life abundant.

Sunscreen or Sonscreen?

Wednesday, June9, 2021

The Golden Light of Christ

Shines in Every Darkness

Bringing Breath

and

Life Abundant

Isaiah 60:17

Instead of bronze I will bring gold, instead of iron I will bring silver; instead of wood, bronze, instead of stones, iron. I will appoint Peace as your overseer and Righteousness as your taskmaster.

Hebrews 2:1

Therefore we must pay greater attention to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away from it.

Words of Grace For Today

Isaiah 60 begins:

Arise, shine; for your light has come,
   and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.
For darkness shall cover the earth,
   and thick darkness the peoples;
but the Lord will arise upon you,
   and his glory will appear over you.
Nations shall come to your light,
   and kings to the brightness of your dawn.

That is the context of the advancement that God will provide to the people, no longer merely stones, doch God will provide also iron. No longer merely iron, doch God will provide also silver. No longer merely wood, doch God will provide also bronze. No longer merely bronze, doch God will also provide gold.

The story continues through history as God provides more and more materials, until alloys, plastics, composites, rare metals, and oil abound in our lives.

We want more and more. By our wanting more and more, using and burning more and more oil for example, we will bring upon ourselves the darkness that will cover the earth.

Isaiah could not have foreseen what we would do, though Isaiah saw clearly what people are capable of. The story of God’s people was and is and always will be that the people are blessed by God with an abundance beyond our basic needs, we exploit the blessings, perverting it into all that is against God and God’s creation – and against the people, even God’s people, us! So we turn from God. We lose God’s blessings and end up in exile, ruled by others who are perverse and evil.

God does not leave us there. God’s love is steadfast, even if, and especially when, our love of God and God’s creation is so fickle. God comes to forgive us.

That is the message of Isaiah. The people are in exile, ruled and exploited and assimilated by other people of other power.

They hear Isaiah’s words.

The darkness is coming over all the earth, doch God will bring light to God’s people and all the people of the earth will search for, and come to bask in, that light. For it is the Light of life.

Again and again God’s Word sets God’s people free, as the Word of Life, Jesus the Christ did for those who believed in him in those early generations after his crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension. So also Jesus frees us that we may live abundantly.

We need no more than the very bare basics of life. Sometimes we live more abundantly with no extras, no luxuries, none of the usual comforts that so many see as ‘givens’ for life today in the western world. Without the extras we must focus on the necessities, and we soon learn that while the physical requirements to stay alive are significantly important (especially to the billions who do not have them), the requirement of life abundant is not more and more and more.

It is to give, to give, to give to God and God’s people.

It is to serve, to serve, to serve God and God’s people.

It is to love, to love, to love God and God’s people.

It is to forgive, to forgive, to forgive, and to forgive even more all of God’s people.

It is a true blessing from God when we are able to remain fully cognizant of that, even while we are so easily distracted struggling for the basics of life, or more fully distracted by the false promises of a ‘good life’ achieved by having more and more and more.

So we pray that we will give greater and greater attention to what we have heard of the old, old story of Jesus and his love, so that we do not drift away from being the ones who share that Good News with all people, bringing the Light of Life into the darkness that has descended upon so many people in so many places, in so many hearts consuming so many minds. We are to revive those hearts lost to darkness, those minds consumed by the dark.

The Light of Life is here. See it. Receive it. Share it. Bask it in. No sonscreen is needed.