If our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the furnace of blazing fire and out of your hand, O king, let him deliver us. But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods and we will not worship the golden statue that you have set up.
Acts 4:20
For we cannot keep from speaking about what we have seen and heard.
Words of Grace For Today
When God speaks, there is no one who ….
Well, that cannot be true, because people react on the full spectrum from loving worship to full our rejection that God exists, yet alone speaks clearly to people … for people to hear.
God is not a puppeteer, pulling the strings of control over humans, or any part of creation. Yet when some people hear God speaking, clearly, lovingly, they and we cannot keep from speaking about what we have seen and heard. That is the life of a sacramental mystic, who encounters God talking at every turn in creation, even in and among those most dangerous of animals, the two-legged kind that speak every kind of word on the spectrum from life-giving truth to life-robbing, evil lies.
What kind of word do you speak this day?
Amidst a pandemic, do you speak truth that supports, enhances, and inspired people to life healthily and abundantly, blessed by God.
Or are you off worshipping another kind of godlet, one who demands strict adherence to reality denying lies, controlled thoughts and expressions, and (like the king who is ready to throw Daniel and his companions into the furnace), the painful death of anyone who will not ‘fall into line’ worshipping your life-sucking godlet.
The powerful king who demanded Daniel worship his godlet, had not encountered God, Daniel’s God, who may or may not deliver Daniel (and us) from the fiery furnace of destruction (the actual fires of burning or the fire of lies that destroy our reputations.) Whether God chooses to deliver us does not deter us from remaining faithful. For we will not begin to worship a godlet who takes life from so many people, promising the greatest life, and delivering it’s followers into a long life more painfully greedy and selfish than death in a fiery furnace ever could be.
We have seen. We have heard. We have known. God is gracious, unconditionally loving, and prodigiously generous. We need nothing more than God’s blessings and opportunities to worship and serve God … with every word and breath … even if it be our last.
On the spectrum from life-giving, self-sacrificial, unconditionally loving (reflecting God’s Grace for us all) to the Devil’s empty promised, self-made life at the expense of others’ lives:
What kind of word do you speak this day?
From the outcast homeless poverty captured person to the most powerful ruler or judge of the day, God allows a simple question to sit before us each day:
The time is surely coming, says the Lord God, when I will send a famine on the land; not a famine of bread, or a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord. They shall wander from sea to sea, and from north to east; they shall run to and fro, seeking the word of the Lord, but they shall not find it.
Luke 11:28
But Jesus said, ‘Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it!’
Words of Grace For Today
A great many religious efforts through history and on-going today are well described by Amos’ Words from God: They shall wander from sea to sea, and from north to east; they shall run to and fro, seeking the word of the Lord, but they shall not find it.
To make up for the futility of our great and desperate searchings, we humans make up all sorts of things, religious things, rituals, ‘truths’ which are certainly nothing of the sort, ways of speaking, judgments against other people, wars, and great empires and ideas.
It is as if we have ourselves convinced that if we are seeking the Other, the divine, then what we do must be other than … well other than everything sane, practical, real, truthful, reasonable, understandable, and even reverent.
Yes, God is OTHER than we are, so other, infinite, immortal and on goes the list of how great God is compared to how miserably un-great we are.
All our efforts to bridge the gap between us and God are doomed to fail. That is the kind of gap that it is between Divine and us humans. Ah, you say, then with a long tradition behind you, ‘Why bother with God at all! Most likely God does not even exist!’ There certainly is no irrefutable proof of God’s existence, for sure!
The origin of our very idea of God is not knowable.
And for the faithful it does not matter.
We do not bridge the gap.
God created us and has gone to great lengths (in human terms of reference) to demonstrate to us that God already has bridged the gap between the Divine and us humans.
In a word we refer to it as God’s Word.
Jesus, the Word of God, God’s self, become human, so that we could encounter God as one of us, points us to how we can respond.
First off, we stop trying to reach God, or win God’s approval, or become one with God. God has reached us, given us God’s approval (freely, that’s Grace), and has become one with us.
We do not and cannot ‘have God’ in anyway, not in our hearts, minds, souls, or special religious rites of any kind.
God has us.
Second Jesus points us to obedience: Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it! We’ve made great traditions of obeying in order to be good enough for God. It’s all and always futile and destructive to us and those around us. Hearing God’s Word and obeying it is to trust that God has provided the Word for us to hear. It is trusting that we can hear it, without some special rigmarole or religious effort. It is trusting that we can obey it, not to earn God’s favour, but in response to knowing God has already granted us God’s favour, unconditionally and overwhelmingly abundant, so that we have enough to share with everyone else.
So we all know where that leaves us. We humans fight with each other who has God’s ‘real’ Word, and who ‘really’ hears it and obeys it.
Ahh Quatsch. Get over ourselves. God’s Word is not something we can claim over other people’s claims. It’s there. Written by our ancestors as they encountered God, mind you quite imperfectly so. God has put God’s Word all around us, in nature, in the materials we build houses and cities with. God’s Word is the stuff that makes a city a community, and a house a home.
Obedience is simple. Listen. Hear the ten commandments. They set limits. Hear Jesus’ Commandment: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and strength, and your neighbour as yourself and love even your enemy.
Limits and goal. Life is pretty simple. Listen and give it all you’ve got. You cannot take anything to the grave with you, so ‘spend’ it sharing God’s Word here and now.
If not now, when are you going to do what God created you to do?!
The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.
Romans 12:13
Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers.
Words of Grace For Today
Strangers and aliens are citizens with us in God’s Kingdom, which is at hand, here on earth already today.
We love because we are loved first by God.
We accept the alien, the stranger, because we were once aliens and strangers in a foreign land. If we do not have that story in our lifetime, we have ancestors who do.
An elderly woman, frail of body and sound of mind asked the pastor visiting her to help her make a donation to CLWR, a donation to give a goat for Christmas in a far away, never seen country. She did not care where. She did not need to know the circumstances of need. She trusted her church for those details. She had to make the donation as she had every Christmas. This might be her last Christmas. She had to make the donation.
The pastor asked her why it was so important. Could she not rest in these her last years and leave that work to others, for she was barely able to provide for herself as it was.
No, she insisted. She must make that donation. She recounted how as a young teen, she and the others in her village were rounded up, and set on a march west. The crops had been plentiful, but all the grain was taken away by train, so they marched. There was so little food, day after day. Then there was no food, and they filled their bellies with grass to stop the pain of an empty stomach eating away at itself.
No, she insisted. My son was here and he refused to help me. Now pastor, you must help me. I have to make that donation, for I am still here.
We do what we can. Sometimes it is no more than a donation. Sometimes it is our years. Sometimes it is all the energy we have to welcome refugees and strangers, aliens come into our land hoping for a life, a new life.
We do what we can, for we know (if not from our own history, then from our ancestors’ history) what it is to be a stranger and an alien in a new land … in a new land with nothing to our names but trust in God and God’s people.
The Lord appeared to him from far away. I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you.
1 John 4:16
So we have known and believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.
Words of Grace For Today
There are too many people ready to lie, and lie, and lie, and do as much damage to others as they can with their lies.
How can we respond?
We can be sure only that God loves us, and as God enables us to love God, God abides in us. God continues to be faithful to us.
While voices continue the lies, shutting us out, denying us voice, gaslighting us, expanding the terrible lies about us, how can we respond?
We can respond with grace, only truth and grace.
Those ready to destroy us will show no mercy. They care not at all for the truth. They care not for God’s creation or any of God’s children. They care only for their own advantage, their own power, their own false record of appearing to be just but actually being very unjust.
Those who wish to destroy us are of all kinds, from the smallest child to the highest powers, and many in between.
How can we respond except with grace, only truth and grace?
For while those ready to destroy us will persistently pursue us, God is more faithful than any person could ever be, even those who relentlessly pursue us to destroy us.
We count on God, for God has continued God’s faithfulness to us.
We fear and love God greater than we could possible fear or love anyone else.
Who are we that God continues God’s faithfulness to us?
We are God’s children, God-made saints, yet simultaneously still sinners – though we are not guilty of the charges made against us, nor of the convictions falsely made against us. This is truth. This is Grace.
Do not rejoice over me, O my enemy; when I fall, I shall rise; when I sit in darkness, the Lord will be a light to me.
1 Thessalonians 5:5
For you are all children of light and children of the day; we are not of the night or of darkness.
Words of Grace For Today
Are we to be good?
Are we to be evil?
Sometimes the difference between what we are to be is what we know about ourselves.
In knowing truth, there is hope that cannot be lost.
Darkness is powerful. It tempts many to lie in wait, to prey upon the weak, to put all their weight into the lie that will bring them forward.
The Light gives Life as God created us to live it.
Who are we?
Who have we been in the past?
Who are we going to be in the future?
God knows.
God knows who we are.
God knows who we are is what most of us have lost track of.
So God expends so much to show us who we are, to give us freedom from our past to be what we are, to guide us into the future so that we will be who we are, and who God created us to be.
YET
YET we always are so eager, able, and willing to choose to work the dark work of the Devil, to try to take shortcuts to a better life. There are no shortcuts. Shortcuts or cuts at all are not what is needed.
God’s work in us is all that is needed, and it is the only thing that can move us to live in the Light.
The Light is frightening for most of us, we’ve hidden from our sins for so long. The light is the only way that God created us to live. So we remember even in the face of our enemies:
when we fall, we shall rise; when we sit in darkness, the Lord will be a light to us, for we are all children of light and children of the day; we are not of the night or of darkness.
Asa went out to meet him, and they drew up their lines of battle in the valley of Zephathah at Mareshah.
2 Corinthians 12:9
But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.’ So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me.
Words of Grace For Today
We humans are so ready to test our strength against others, to draw up the battle lines, to commence fighting to gain what we want.
We do not need warriors or real war. We create battles, with battle lines, against those who stand in our way. So it is in a world run on greed.
Our world runs on greed.
God’s creation, the Kingdom of God, runs otherwise. It is not our strength that wins us anything. It is God’s strength that brings life to all people, not just mere struggling to survive kind of life, but life abundant. God does this by giving away God’s favour freely, generously, unconditionally.
The way God’s way of living, by Grace alone, becomes clear to us living in a world of greed only when we allow our weaknesses to be the opportunities that God’s strength is made obvious for all.
God accepts our weaknesses, pays whatever price we think needs be paid, and sets us on our way to be renewed, living in God’s favour. Thus we are able to reflect in our way of living the Grace and unconditional love that God created the world to live on.
In today’s world the greedy and ‘strong’ prey on those who are ‘weak’ to gain advantage for themselves. In today’s Kingdom of God the saints pray for the greedy and the weak that they will see God’s Grace at work in life all around them, and join the work of the saints in light.
The saints work is to be the faith that will give hope to the coming generations; our weaknesses do not separate us from God. As Leonard Cohen penned well enough in his song Anthem, “It’s through the cracks the Light gets in.”
But you, gird up your loins; stand up and tell them everything that I command you. Do not break down before them, or I will break you before them.
2 Corinthians 4:5
For we do not proclaim ourselves; we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus’ sake.
Words of Grace For Today
It is sometimes presented as a glorious calling that we receive in our baptisms: to serve Christ, to proclaim Christ, to obey Christ.
Jeremiah (though before Christ’s life in time on earth) knew well the calling to serve God, to proclaim God’s Word, and to obey God.
God makes it clear: Jeremiah is to proclaim God’s Word, clearly, loudly. He should not break down in front of powerful people or great rulers or in front of anyone. If he does God will show the powerful people and great rulers and everyone else how much more powerful God is than they: he will break Jeremiah as an example, a warning to them.
Driven by God’s command and warning Jeremiah proclaims God’s Word. Most people do not want to hear it and turn on him, the messenger, as if that could ever stop God’s Word! Jeremiah suffers humilities and punishments that would break most people. He survives and continues to proclaim God’s Word, the true inconvenient Word of God, to an obstinate people. Sometimes it is a Word of judgment and warning, other times it is a Word of love, forgiveness, renewal and hope. The people really do not want to hear any of it; for hearing any of it at all, any at all, requires that they recognize their own sins, confess them and return to serve God alone.
They are having too much of a good time serving themselves. They are having to lousy a time suffering as slaves for foreign powers. They do not want God to change things. They want to change things themselves for themselves. They want to become the oppressors of other peoples so that they can enjoy lives of privilege and power and comfort. God will have none of it.
God desires that all people receive life abundant.
Proclaiming Christ’s Word is exactly that. It’s not admonishments to good living. It’s not threats to live moral lives. It’s not an escape route from suffering and sin. It’s not some holy panacea pill that solves every ill.
Christ’s Word is the old, old story of Jesus and his love; God’s clearest demonstration of God’s unconditionally loving attitude toward all people. When that hit’s us, it’s a life changer, not just the first time but every time we hear it and listen. The Holy Spirit sweeps us off our stayed or escaping feet right into the lap of God’s mercy, love and hope, and then the power of the Spirit inspires us and moves us to exercise that same mercy, love and hope for all other people … so that all people have life abundant.
As messengers of Christ’s Word, we also will be persecuted, riled against, and unjustly blamed for things beyond our possible doing. Welcome to Jeremiah’s club, the club of God’s messengers sent to proclaim God’s Word. God’s Word, the fire giving life to our hearts and all creation.
Nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn.
Luke 11:2
He said to them, ‘When you pray, say: Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come.
Words of Grace For Today
The Lord’s Prayer is known by countless people, said countless times, and desperately counted on more than a few times:
Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come.
For when God’s kingdom comes, then those that have done [fill in the injustice, the lies, the gaslighting, the horrendous abominations] to us and all other people will be brought to stop. Perhaps they will be brought to an end, though God’s preference is that they will be converted to serve God alone.
When God’s kingdom comes, then Nations shall come to God’s light, and kings to the brightness of Christ’s dawn,
and all people will give God thanks for the breath they have, for the water they have, for the food they eat, for the shelter (maybe even homes) they have, for the meaningful labour they have, and for the opportunity they have to love and be loved.
For now … the injustice continues, the lies live on, the gaslighting has not stopped, the horrendous abominations are repeated …
For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.
Colossians 1:19-20
For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.
Words of Grace For Today
Calm
Breathe and Relax
Be Calm
A year ago as Covid 19 spreading across the globe started to invade our lives we were afraid, unsure, perturbed and disturbed though without any focus of at what except an invisible thing that was coming for us! In Lent suddenly we could no longer gather for worship. We stopped and thought we’d start again in a month, right? It was just a temporary restriction, a temporary closure!
A year later, again in Lent, we think we have seen it all, and with vaccines being distributed slowly we hope that it will soon come to an end, though we are dreading what may come first, or almost never voiced, we dread most of all that it might never end. We dread now what we know is not just a very painful death, but even with mild symptoms the effects of the virus’ invasion into our body can leave long term ‘scars’ or scares, as strokes, organ failure and even heart and brain failure, strike without warning. Long-haulers refers to those who get sick, quite sick, but recover only sort of as they remain incapable of working, functioning, or thinking straight for fatigue and pain and …. The cost to all humans is more devastating than we could have imagined. Now the variants spread more quickly, perhaps more deadly, perhaps more devastating in the long-term disruption to our bodies’ functioning.
This is our life, suddenly foisted upon us, whether we were settled and bored or at least boring in our privileged lives, or whether we struggled to survive each day as our very lives were under threat of war’s violence, starvation or dying of thirst for lack of water … or whether our lives were already lost to an existential thirst for living water. No matter where or how or what we were before, now Covid 19 is upon us and has been for quite some time now, still an unknown quantity despite all we have collectively learned about it.
God remains.
God remains as always with us.
God remains as always with us and for us.
God has plans for our welfare and not for harm, to give us a future with hope.
To demonstrate God’s intentions and plans for us, Jesus lived as one of us, and as we (not God as some would claim) demand payment for sins God sacrificed Jesus’ life to our jealous, sinful, greedy, corrupt injustice.
Through him God was pleased to reconcile to God’s self all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of Jesus’ cross.
What lengths God goes to. What lengths we need God to go to, in order that we may be convinced that God’s attitude toward us is reconciliation, forgiveness, redemption, sanctification, and renewed life!
There are countless reasons to panic, to be in dread, to be overwhelmed with angst.
There is one ultimate reason to be calm.
God is with us and for us, and spares nothing to convince us that our future is good; we have every reason to hope.
For all will be well, all will be well, all manner of things will be well.
Relax.
Breathe.
Be Calm.
Be God-made saints (though we remain simultaneously sinners.)
