It is I who by my great power and my outstretched arm have made the earth, with the people and animals that are on the earth, and I give it to whomsoever I please.
Matthew 5:5
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
Words of Grace For Today
We work so hard to survive.
And when that is accomplished or given to us by our station at birth or by sheer insane luck, stupidity, or corruption we humans always look to have more from life. We measure it in what is ours! not theirs.
Yet God created this earth not for us to divide it up among ourselves. God created it good, sufficient for all, held together by love, renewed by Grace, and sanctified to be wondrous – including us!
The bold seem to win the most at this inane game of possessing what cannot be possessed, love, land, security, hope and the future.
Jeremiah and Jesus puts it clearly that God is the creator and the one who gives the earth to stewards, and those stewards are not the bold and victorious in our inane human games we have reduced life to.
The meek will inherit the earth.
After we are done ruining it, the victorious will not want it. They will move on to other planets, other challenges, other inane games that they can use to ‘prove’ they are significant.
Only God determines who is significant and for what we are significant.
Have you any clear idea for what we are significant?
Or who is significant to God?
What does the old, old story of Jesus and his love teach us about for what we are significant and who is included in this ‘we’?
…
Right, all are included (even the deluded ‘victorious’) for we are significant at all to God, solely because …
They came upon me in the day of my calamity, but the Lord was my stay. He brought me out into a broad place; he delivered me, because he delighted in me.
Matthew 9:9
As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, ‘Follow me.’ And he got up and followed him.
Words of Grace For Today
The life I live is limited by many restrictions. While so many others feel the restrictions to protect us all from Covid 19 (or sort of at least), years before Covid 19 the reality of abject poverty, a ruined reputation, and injustice profound kept my horizons down to surviving one day, one week, one month, one season interrupted by desperate, life threatening needs.
As at no other time in my life, though some have come nearly as close, I have known that God walks with me,
and
that I am blessed with a life abundant.
I, with so many other humans through history, know well these words as my/our own:
They came upon me in the day of my calamity, but the Lord was my stay. He brought me out into a broad place; he delivered me, because he delighted in me.
Perhaps you do, too?
This I have known as well, that God has called me, perhaps not like Jesus calling Matthew away from a life as a hated tax collector, but to be one who shares God’s Grace with as many people as I am able.
As I have followed Jesus, knowing that God delights in me, I have given my all each day as I was able. I have delighted in God’s claim on me, and the promise that God will walk with me no matter what, and that there is nothing that can separate me from the Love of God. For God has claimed me, a sinner of my own making, and made me a saint of God’s own making. In that everyone has hope. If God can save me, attacked as I am by foes yet each day, surely God can save anyone.
God created this earth, and us in it … and when it was done God said, “It is Good!”
So we can be good this day, too. Why not! If not now, when?!
Take to heart all the words that I am giving in witness against you today; give them as a command to your children, so that they may diligently observe all the words of this law. This is no trifling matter for you, but rather your very life; through it you may live long in the land that you are crossing over the Jordan to possess.
John 6:63
It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.
Words of Grace For Today
May Day
God has spoken, commanded, given wisdom so that we may live long in the Promised Land.
God’s Word gives us life, renews our spirit, revives the body, and calls us to live abundantly.
God’s Word created this wondrous world we live in and are working so hard to destroy in order to provide ourselves comforts and luxuries un-dreamed of by most of all our ancestors.
Yet, on this first day of May, God’s Word comes alive, as it often does for those who care to listen, breathe, and respond to the call to live, and live abundantly.
What a marvellous thing to wake up, without having had to have a fire going to keep things from freezing, to light the fire laid last night, and walk about under the trees down to the lake, in the sun and in the shade absorbing warmth in the just above freezing fresh air and the cool breeze from the ice piled on the shore from yesterday’s westerlies.
What a wonder that the air moved as wind is powerful enough to move the weight of the ice against itself and pile it up four and six feet high on to the shore, exposing crystals formed last fall to the open air and camera lens.
What a wonder it is that these tall trees (tall for Alberta at 40+ feet) can stand against gravity and those winds, until they do not. In the recent high winds (the new norm) more than a few have had their tops snapped off falling to the forest floor they are so weighted. Old trees have been knocked clear out of the ground, broken at the root. One green and budding 50+ foot poplar is snapped clean off just above the ground, falling through everything on it’s way to bounce not at all off the ground, around 1000 lbs of tree become dead become wood at the onslaught of one last wind. Other trees in the nearby woods similarly have taken it ‘on the cheek’, or rather ‘off the root’.
It is a glorious morning time, before the noise of the day, of human activity and campers’ abuse of the woods, of oil industry traffic dimming in the distance to be replaced by the dull roar of the plants processing heavy bitumen into heavy oil, thinned enough to pump through pipe networks to gas plants and shipping ports.
For now all is still here near the lake and far into the woods, until the birds sing and flit about, the birds on the ice screech and geese honk, the owl hoots a few last times before the day’s rest. Shadows from the sun reaching past the bare tree trunks reach the grass and leaves on the brown and green grass, striping it with stark lines pointing toward the water.
The one huge pain of this tree budding season lays in wait ready to ambush my body’s immune system, overloading it, scratching at my eyes, piercing my sinus with pain, running fluid into my throat and into my lungs. Allergies will sap more than half my energy as my body fights an invisible, unknown, unassailable opponent for more than the 60th season, giving it everything and losing it all to not even a tie-breaker. Medicine will relieve the losses, day by day, and take days off the end of my life, even now leading to infections in my lungs, bronchitis which robs me of my breath, and occasionally pneumonia laying flat on my back inches from needing a hospital’s oxygen to survive.
This is a glorious morning, with it’s inherent promise of surviving another -30⁰ and colder winter that will still come my way, God willing and ‘the creek not rising’, and it’s twinges in my nostrils and scratches in my eyes that foreshadow the battles to be fought and lost yet again against an invisible, unknown and unnecessary foe.
This is a glorious morning, a blessing provided by God’s unending Grace.
This is a glorious morning, which I will enjoy and be profoundly grateful for, for God has rescued me so that I can survive the lies, the scapegoating, the gaslighting, the false testimonies and affidavits, the injustice, the false convictions, and the cruel rulings that benefit no one, especially not the children.
Breathe.
This is a glorious morning in and by which God continues to bless me.
Breathe.
And prepare for the days’ hard labours, which keep this aging body able to move against arthritis, decay, gaslighting, and cruel injustices.
Breathe.
…
…
…
God has spoken, commanded, given wisdom so that we may live long in the Promised Land.
God’s Word gives us life, renews our spirit, revives the body, and calls us to live abundantly.
God’s Word created this wondrous world we live in and are working so hard to destroy in order to provide ourselves comforts and luxuries un-dreamed of by most of all our ancestors.
Yet, on this first day of May, God’s Word comes alive, as it often does for those who care to listen, breathe, and respond to the call to live, and live abundantly.
Breathe even, and especially, in these times of new normals.
For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
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
Sometimes, unfortunately not always, when a child is born the parents and others hold such hope for the child. They wish the best, the greatest, the most for this child. They hope this child will become an amazing human.
Sometimes this hope for the child becomes something more. It can become something ugly, destructive, and evil. It can become that the parent or others take the life of the child and try to force the child to become what they hope the child will become.
It can also become something beautiful, life-giving, and blessed. It can become that the community sees the individual, respects her/him, and gives everything they have to allow the child to grow into a full human, a sinner and a saint.
Being a parent is a great and marvellous honour and responsibility. Sometimes that responsibility creates so much fear a parent does not parent. Sometimes a parent completely ignores the responsibilities and the child suffers immeasurably.
Sometimes that responsibility is met with new found maturity, and both the parent and the child grow to know God’s blessings. The first of those blessings is the daily (re-) discovery that one cannot do it on one’s own. One needs family, church and community to help out. Even that is not enough, not ever and one learns to trust that God will walk with us parents, guiding us, forgiving us, loving us, and renewing us, so that we can be that example for our children.
Then, every so often a child is born, and the weight of all the hopes and dreams of a community, a people, a planet rest on that infant’s shoulders even before the child is able to talk. There is no lack of need for saviours for the people and for the planet. Today is no exception! History records many times a saviour was needed, and almost as many times that the people saw a saviour come their way, a few times it was a child. Very seldom the saviour actually was able to save the people.
Jesus arrives, the Isaiah passage is repeated this time apply to Jesus, and all the hopes and dreams land on the infant in the manger. This child does grow to be a saviour, one for all people of all time, and for all creation!
What we’ve made of Jesus is always an interesting reflection on the us. In Acts Luke reflects that Jesus came to bring peace. Except Jesus says ‘Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.’ (Matthew 10.34)
This leaves us with much to learn from Jesus’ story. We are never done learning from it. So we need to hear the familiar old, old story of Jesus and his love. When we think we are so familiar with the story, or parts of it, that is when we need to hear the story again and again, told simply, clearly, gracefully … so that we do not ‘self-correct’ the story we remember into something foreign to Jesus’ story.
Moses implored the Lord his God, and said, ‘O Lord, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians say, “It was with evil intent that he brought them out to kill them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth”? Turn from your fierce wrath; change your mind and do not bring disaster on your people.
1 John 2:1
My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.
Words of Grace For Today
There is not one person who will not sin, turning from God even after God has made clear that by Grace (forgiveness and renewed life freely given by God) alone we live well.
Our human response to such great generosity given at such a great price, but taken and then squandered would be to wipe such a person from the face of the earth. We would so judge others, and hope that we would not also be judged. Or, for far too many people, we fear and ‘know’ that we will not be met with Grace again by God, so we go about blasting our way through life, destroying people left, right and centre, taking all we can from others and from life, sure that there is no God for us.
So Moses fears God will do to them, killing them in the mountains, and consuming them from the face of the earth. Answering God’s call Moses has led this rag tag band out of Egypt, but they have many times revolted in small ways against God and Moses demanding more and more. Then this hubristic band turns to worship their own smelted golden calf; it’s a full out revolt against God.
It is our story. It is the story that each of us can find in our own behaviour. We wish we would not sin, yet we still do. Too often in our hubris we turn in full revolt against God and worship our own gold-smelted-whatevers.
God could just as well kill us and consume us from the face of the earth. Yet God does not. God sends Jesus to save us yet again, and we live abundant lives by Grace alone, again … and again … and again. Jesus advocates for us. We learn how not to sin. We return to sin gravely. And Jesus saves us.
Now, given that God sends Jesus to save us, not once or twice or 77 times 7, but as many times we turn from God to sin, how are we going to respond to others who sin, again and again?
We can judge them, ‘killing’ them, and working to consume them from the face of the earth
OR
We can exercise God’s Grace for them … as Jesus calls us to. As God called Moses to lead the people out of slavery.
It’s a no-brainer …
because it’s not rational or reasoned or effective or productive or pious or righteous.
It was I who taught Ephraim to walk, I took them up in my arms; but they did not know that I healed them.
2 Peter 3:15
Regard the patience of our Lord as salvation. … Our beloved brother Paul wrote to you according to the wisdom given to him.
Words of Grace For Today
In time everything changes. This morning it’s a thing, quite a thing, to go to bed with grass showing
grazed on by deer
and then
to wake at 3:00
to see the flakes flying in the flashlight
and to wake
before breakfast
to see the whole of everything and beyond covered
well by snow still falling.
But then that is life
and weather in Alberta by the lake.
Change is not always so survivable, especially not when it is evil, aimed at eroding or emptying our souls of unconditional love, forgiveness, grace, courage and hope.
Then we come to know that we need God every day, whether we see and know God or not, to heal us and to fill us with wisdom of living as those who have received salvation as a gift from God.
Only by grace are we able to live having received and sharing unconditional love, forgiveness, grace, courage and hope … with all people no matter what comes our way,
I took you from the ends of the earth and called you from its farthest corners, saying to you, ‘You are my servant, I have chosen you and not cast you off.’
Romans 11:1
I ask, then, has God rejected his people? By no means! I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin.
Words of Grace For Today
The history is that God chose the Israelites, only the Israelites. Everyone else was unchosen and unclean. This we humans do to make ourselves special: we claim that we are chosen and all others are not. This does not make us special. It makes us typically self-centric, arrogant, and judgmental.
When Paul was converted after Saul went blind on the road to Damascus, he studied for years, held himself in retreat from activity. He underwent a profound change, from an effective, eager, persistent pursuer and persecutor of Christians, to a leading proponent of Jesus’ Way of living, i.e. by Grace.
Paul did not restrict sharing the Good News, which he encountered as Jesus’ Way of being God’s people, with just the traditionally ‘chosen’, the Israelites. Paul went out to share the Good News with anyone and everyone who would listen and wanted to be baptized in this Way of living.
That brought the obvious question: were the Jews wrong to claim God had chosen them, or had God changed God’s mind and rejected those God had earlier ‘chosen’?
Paul’s answer is simple: No. God’ choosing people is expanded, not ended. The Jews are still chosen, as are all other people who Christ calls to follow his Way.
History repeats itself. Many times God’s people have declared that only they are God’s chosen. As many times God’s message comes to bear on the mess this exclusive claim creates: God’s chosen are chosen, DOCH God does not choose only some people. God chooses all people.
Our human way of living does not make sense of this very well, if at all.
It does not need to. God still chooses all people and offers them abundant life. Not life in abundance (of wealth, things, etc.), but life filled to overflowing with blessings and the ability to share those blessings with others, all others.
God gathers us from the ends of the earth, from all corners of creation, claims us as God’s servants, does not cast us off, and sends us out to share the Good News. (Like Paul.)
There shall be continuous day (it is known to the Lord), not day and not night, for at evening time there shall be light.
1 John 1:5
This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all.
Words of Grace For Today
North and South of the 60th parallels the continuous day is well known in the summer, though it is matched by continuous night in the winter.
As fierce as the winter cold, wind, and dark can be, this is not the darkness that we need to take heed of and can well fear.
That darkness is the darkness that envelops our souls, convincing us that we are nothing, nothing at all and that we need to make our own way in the world, that we need to make something of ourselves, that we are alone, and that life must be gained at other’s expense.
This darkness is the Devil’s darkness.
This is the darkness that robs it’s victims and their victims of life abundant.
This is the darkness that convinces us that reality is not God’s creation, but some twist, some perversion, some Godless experience that we can make up as we wish or as we feel we must.
This is the darkness that teaches that there is no Truth, only relative experiences which give us at best subjective truths.
This darkness is like the wind that swept through my camp, shifting supports and tarps. The light of day shows that it is a wonder that it all did not come tumbling down in a pile of tarp and supports, rolled together like child’s playdo, taking me with it.
The light of day allows me to make repairs, and to be thankful that in the light of days past I put things together with extra support, and a 2nd layer of extra support, and a 3rd, not unlike the Trinity: One God, yet three persons, together working wonders for us, in us, and for all others.
In the light we can see and anticipate what might come upon us like thieves or wind in the dark of night, and we can prepare.
We can prepare our hearts, inviting God to dwell in us, resigning ourselves to our constant need for God’s Grace and Forgiveness, and practising God’s Grace and Forgiveness for all others.
Then we live each day, trusting that God walks with us no matter what comes our way, for we know, as Kathleen Thomerson wrote for us: We want to walk as children of the Light. We want to follow Jesus. God set the stars to give light to the world. The star of our lives is Jesus.
In him there is no darkness at all.
The night and the day are both alike. The Lamb is the light of the city of God. Shine in our hearts, Lord Jesus.
This is God, our God for ever and ever. He will be our guide for ever.
Philippians 1:6
I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ.
Words of Grace For Today
There is work for us to accomplish each day. We can sometimes easily ignore it, or pretend that life does not demand that we accomplish anything …
… as long as someone else is providing our lunch and lodging.
The real challenge is to keep moving towards getting something good accomplished, and first to know what is the good thing to do.
If we try to calculate that on our own, we will inevitably fail.
Only God can guide us to know what is truly good, and what we can accomplish this day that will be truly good.
God starts with us, and no matter how much we try to run and go it on our own, we need God to guide us toward the good we can accomplish, that God would have us accomplish this day.
Thankfully, God will be our guide for ever.
We are not in this alone.
The one who began a good work among us will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ.
