Time of Day – Page 56

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – November 6

Friday, November 6, 2020

All Creation bends to honour Christ,

The Light of the World.

It’s there for the seeing!

Isaiah 45:6-7

So that they may know, from the rising of the sun and from the west, that there is no one besides me; I am the Lord, and there is no other. I form light and create darkness, I make weal and create woe; I the Lord do all these things.

2 Thessalonians 3:5

May the Lord direct your hearts to the love of God and to the steadfastness of Christ.

Words of Grace For Today

The constant question that a thinking, self-aware, honest, and inquisitive mind asks is what are miracles?

Are they the power of God above all else, to form light and create darkness, or make weal and create woe, making God’s ultimate absolute power over reality known from the rising of the sun and from the west?

Or are miracles the power of God to transform hearts and minds so that we people actually do some good in our small lives?

The question is then also, do miracles happen, or are they just things of the past? Does God exist? or is God dead? or a figment of our imaginations? and are we creatures or mistakes or happenstance in an ever changing universe?

The answer depends much on what one wants in and from life. If one wants to play godlet over others, then God cannot exist or God is just an imagination used to control other people. This manner of living provides great rewards, if one can stomach the dissonance in one’s heart and mind and conscience.

If one wants to be what everyone says what they want; peace, love, happiness and true prosperity, or at least giving lip service to the idea, then one cannot greedily work to secure life and privilege and comfort for oneself. One needs be comfort, compassion, and breath for the most downtrodden, outcasts that the rest of the world would ignore.

One’s experience in life is determined by how we choose to live … at least until we notice God knocking at the door to our hearts, minds and strength … from the inside, asking us, begging us, to open up to the whole of creation.

That’s where true joy is hidden in plain site.

So where do you want to go today, tonight, tomorrow and each day and night thereafter? Into your own self created hell, or into God’s city and into the wilderness of miracles in every little mundane thing and event?

Wherever you choose, God walks with you, waiting for you to ask what you can do for God, carrying you when you cannot even walk, and reminding you of God’s love and Christ’s steadfastness.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – November 3

Tuesday, November 3, 2020

No matter how cold we are to God’s love

the Light of Christ finds us

and we will reflect God’s Grace

as surely as ice reflects still the sun.

Isaiah 66:10

Rejoice with Jerusalem, and be glad for her, all you who love her; rejoice with her in joy.

Luke 2:38

At that moment Anna came, and began to praise God and to speak about the child to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.

Words of Grace For Today

Once we realize what God has done for us, for all of us children of God, Israel and all, there is great cause for celebration.

Some people among us have the ability to see what God is doing, while others remain blind and work against all that God calls us to be and do.

Those who see like a child, like Anna, see God at work in the simplest things. Like seeing children who are the future. Like children who can be treated like the important people, the intelligent people, like the loving people they are and will be.

It is a wonder to behold, to see an adult finally realize that all the pretense and pomp they have tried in vain to hide behind is worthless, and the only saving thing about life at all, at all, is the Grace of God … for them and for all people.

Then we get to celebrate with God that one more person has seen the Light of Christ, and that God wins hearts and minds from the Devil even among the worst people we meet.

I know more than one pastor who is a clear sign that God’s Grace is stronger than evil, for they are pure evil, liars to the bottom of their lives as they make their way to power in the church, to power over people, to power over … well actually over nothing, for it is power that is a pretense, the Devil’s work. They only pretend to live and speak as if God were real, to be feared and loved. In reality they make themselves to be their own godlets, or they make power, wealth, or privilege and comfort their godlets. Yet God makes wondrous things come of their work, in spite of the rotten stench that is their lives.

Pastors are not the only ones. Those who make the country what it is, those with power, those who judge and arbitrate corruptly, those who patrol and say it is for peace but whom wreak havoc on others with their lies and bullying, those who hire themselves out to protect others and merely take their money to sell them out, i.e. lawyers. And there are doctors who treat their patients to shorten and end their lives and falsely accuse the patients of being improper, when they are they ones who seek to destroy life. Really there is no one who is not included. They are all alike perverse; there is no one who does good, no, not one.

So when God saves one more, we have every reason to celebrate.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – November 2

Monday, November 2, 2020

A Beauty

that could not stand on it’s own

falls hard, and skews it’s world

but not God’s.

Psalm 14:3

They have all gone astray, they are all alike perverse; there is no one who does good, no, not one.

Romans 3:22-24

The righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.

Words of Grace For Today

They have all gone astray …

We would like to think that these are other people of whom it is spoken, because the truth is frightening indeed. While many gaslight others (as they have me), and falsely accuse and convict them of terrible things (which are simply not true at all, not at all) before God we are all the ones who have gone astray.

Before God, only through the justification of Christ given to us as a pure gift are we redeemed, and made worthy of anything before God. We are not just made something. God makes us pure and righteous, though we deserve nothing but extreme condemnation. We are made holy saints, God’s own children.

Gift has a new meaning for us after we realize once again how costly a gift this is that God gives us: both how much it cost God to give it to us, and how precious it is for us.

We should never live, and yet we live abundantly.

Now what are we going to do with this gift? Will we pretend we have earned our place in life, the air we breathe, the water we drink and the food we eat to survive yet another day? Or will we pretend that we have made it this far without God? Or will we pretend that we are powerful enough to beat God in a game of life, when all we’ve done is sell our souls to the Devil thinking we can get away with doing evil to others in order to ‘get ahead’? No, thinking we can live without God’s grace is trying to live without a head. A chicken can appear to live without a head for a short while, but we vanish into the folds of time never to emerge again …

Doch God’s children life in peace and prosperity of spirit, until the day God gathers us in and gives us an everlasting home.

Meanwhile we children have the work of God on earth to be about, sharing Grace with all, and being the bearers of Good News.

Breathe, for God loves you! God loves us, poor wretched sinners, all of us who have gone astray…. Only Christ makes anything good come of us, for Christ shows us how to see and share the beauty of creation, astounding as it is as it is to be loved, unconditionally.

Breathe. Rest. Live courageously, share the Good News, and trust that God walks with us.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – November 1

Sunday, November 1, 2020

As the darkness falls over the land and water

the Light still shines for us.

No darkness can overcome Christ’s Light.

Psalm 18:28

It is you who light my lamp; the Lord, my God, lights up my darkness.

Mark 10:51-52

Then Jesus said to him, ‘What do you want me to do for you?’ The blind man said to him, ‘My teacher, let me see again.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Go; your faith has made you well.’ Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way.

Words of Grace For Today

What do you want me to do?

Let me see again.

It is sight that Christ gives to us, to see in the darkness that encompasses us on all sides, and not just to see but in the full Light of Christ to see Truth, to know truth, and to speak Truth, no matter the threats of danger that brings upon us by evil’s minions.

Daylight Savings Time was replaced by Standard Time. and extra hour of night, made for a great night, and dark arrives earlier.

The dark ends with great light. The dark begins with great light. The dark is just as deep, and Standard Time does not make it darker, or longer. It gets longer this time of year regardless.

Like all of life, time now progresses, shorter time for the sun, longer time for the darkness, or for the moon to reflect the sun.

We also get to reflect the Light of the Son of God, with grace and unconditional love for everyone.

Truth is … always the key to life abundant.

Truth is … pretty dangerous for those who live by deceit.

Truth is … amazing

unless you’re hiding from it with all your heart, mind and strength.

A walk in the snow, in the clear air, above the cool water with ducks swimming, and the regular darkness of rest will come easy and long this night.

In the morning, we will rise, in the Light of Christ again.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – October 31

Saturday, October 31, 2020

The day done, a deserted place, and the prayer is always the same:

Thank you for all that you bless me with,

and sustain me, when others would take my life from me.

Psalm 59:17

O my strength, I will sing praises to you, for you, O God, are my fortress, the God who shows me steadfast love.

Mark 1:35

In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed.

Words of Grace For Today

In the morning, while it is still very dark … this describes everything in the morning here for months. The sun rises at 8:00 ish, later, it’ll rise at 10:00.

he got up and went to a deserted place … this describes every morning, for thankfully this place is deserted. No one is around to threaten me. I’ve had my fill of lies about me and people trying to Gaslight me to think I did something wrong when I have done very honourable and courageous things.

there he prayed … and each morning I pray, with thanks for what I still have available to sustain my life and make it even blessed, fresh air, water, fire for heat and sometimes even hot water, food, clothing, a bit of shelter, work and love.

I have every reason to sing God praises, for God is my strength. In the face of all this gaslighting, of late some very transparent and intentional, God shows me all the steadfast love that holds the world together. Indeed God is my fortress.

Those who lie about me, and Gaslight me … these people I know could not survive with the little that I have. I can with God’s blessings survive many many years. They would give up, capitulate or simply die of an accident of their own making, dying by fire or by ice.

They have fancy houses, houses of privilege, houses made with deceit and fraud, yet their houses crumble even now, for the comfort they enjoy, the conveniences, the relative safety, … all that is won by dishonesty of whatever kind will crumble not from others or from mice and ants, but from within themselves, from their own corruption.

And you, have you provided life abundant for anyone lately, OR

or have you taken life’s essentials for yourself and left others without?

Who is our God, if not the God that is knowable in how we behave when the stress is turned up high, as it has in Covid 19, especially now with the 2nd wave, which as predicted is worse than the first?

In the early morning, in a deserted place, what are doing each day?

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – October 29

Thursday, October 29, 2020

Shows Us the Way Home

Do You See, the Beginning Place for Life

Starting with an Egg?

Deuteronomy 4:2

You must neither add anything to what I command you nor take away anything from it, but keep the commandments of the Lord your God with which I am charging you.

1 John 2:7

Beloved, I am writing you no new commandment, but an old commandment that you have had from the beginning; the old commandment is the word that you have heard.

Words of Grace For Today

God created a wonderful universe, and us in it. We also can be as God created us, wonderful.

As scientists explore, research, and experiment, they come up with formulations of theories, which if they prove to be reliable become known as laws. These are serious, accurate descriptions of how the universe works. Until they are not … not reliable, not serious, not accurate descriptions of how the universe works. Or sort of.

We still call Newtons Laws, laws, even though they fail on so many levels.

Still scientists plug on to describe how what happens around us … and as a result they or others are able to develop amazing technologies.

Computers are one example. Not just the one on many people’s desk or hauled with them in a pack pack. – I remember when the computer at the University of Minnesota which one could book time to run one’s punch cards through and receive answers on punch cards and reels of magnetic tape filled more than one floor of a building that occupied a long, very long block. I got to visit with my dad, a post grad student, in the input room and walk the hall, looking in the windows at the air conditioned rooms that held monstrous rows of tubes and wires and what ever not! I was impressed, sort of as a kid. This was bigger and more powerful than the computer that sent the first men to the moon.

That computer had the power of one of today’s hand held calculators, a simple one.

The computer carried in a back pack today is what? millions and millions times more powerful than that computer at the UofM?

The laws of physics allow technologies that make computers possible. And they are everywhere, in vehicles, in almost everything with a combustible engine or electric engine or even an electric anything.

We know more, and we seem to know less about the universe, than we know and do not know about God and God’s Will for us humans.

God sends us signs, and laws, and prophets, and rituals grow out of all the extra-ordinary experience of God.

Evil people have since the beginning of time used religion, changed it, bent it and perverted it to serve their own purposes of control over others.

So God spoke to Moses and commanded that not one iota could be removed from the law, and not one iota could be added to it. That really did not stop people from trying and seemingly doing just that.

Jesus, God’s Son, came and lived as one of us. God’s Will for us ‘spoke’ to us in his life, death, and resurrection. Jesus is God’s Word.

Many thought that made different laws from God the by word of the day. It’s been done so many times that religion of every kind is full of the results.

Jesus, the Word of God, John wrote to teach us, was at the beginning. This Word created the universe.

There is no ‘new’ Word.

For many there is a new hearing, a new comprehension, a new life for sure.

God’s Word remains the same.

Adding to it, or taking from it does no one any good.

The mystery is grand enough that if we love God with all our heart, mind and strength, and our neighbours (including our enemies) as ourselves (as Jesus loves us – unconditionally) we are in for a life of discovery, research and experimentation, of happiness, grief, despair and profound joy, and of faith, love, and hope.

We do not add or subtract from God’s Will or God’s Word, but there is always more to comprehend, and more sins (ours and others) to forgive, and more life (ours and others) to redeem and set anew.

From the beginning of life to it’s end we have only Grace, which is the old, old story of Jesus and his love.

It’s old, and if you engage with it, it will always surprise you as if it were new … in it’s demands on you and in it’s rewards for you and yours.

Warp drive or not … plot in a course … engage.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – October 28

Wednesday, October 28, 2020

The Light

The Light of Christ

The Light of Christ that is the Life of the Universe

God’s Son, Much Greater Than Our Sun

Psalm 18:32

God who girded me with strength, … made my way safe.

1 Corinthians 3:11

No one can lay any foundation other than the one that has been laid; that foundation is Jesus Christ.

Words of Grace For Today

Building a house is a tremendous experience. If one did not have to have the extremely fraught financial limits and stresses it would be more than tremendous, and that already while building, not first decades later – when the stress and pains and angst have subsided in one’s memory and the finished result, so well built, remains still to this day.

The challenge for one who has never built a house before is that from the first few steps to the last piece of trim nailed into place, every step builds on the previous one’s.

I brought the power into the middle of the building. The thing was I did not know that I could not do that above ground, in the building itself! So after the foundation was poured I had to dig the trench for the power cable from the pole, to the foundation – through the weeping tile rocks that I had to dig in after the foundation was poured, since I did not know about them either! All that was done with a backhoe.

Inside the foundation, whereas before the foundation was poured the trench could have been dug with the backhoe, now I got to dig in the hardpan clay a 20 foot 18″ deep trench by hand. When the cable was laid, on top crushed rock I put in by hand having hauled them in with a wheel barrow, along with the water line and a spare water line just in case, and an empty 4″ pipe in case I had forgot or had to redo something, then I got to fill in the trench by hand as well, first with crushed rock and then with clay, tamping it down so the eventual insulation under the cement floor with heating pipes in it would not heave if the ground there got wet or (God forbid) the ground there froze!

Then I got to redo the weeping tile and rocks above the trench outside.

Then we moved on to build the foam blocks to hole the rebar and concrete for the walls up to the rafters, and to pour the upper floor concrete to hold the in floor heating pipes. Solid, a great mass that a geothermal furnace kept warm in the coldest of times that stayed cool in the all but the longest hot days of summer. It all sat on the foundation we poured, that with only a 6 foot level was at most an inch out of absolute level, which was less than the foam blocks settled when the weight of the concrete was poured into them. The rafters were no more than a half inch out – but that was luck with the walls settling … and the skill of the one man who helped pour and finish the top of the upper wall.

Practical and easy to describe and see: everything in building needs be done in the right order. The foundation (not without disastrous cost) cannot be redone. Everything depends on what is done before, and everything depends on a solid foundation.

Christ as the foundation is as rock solid as God, and cannot be replaced.

On Christ the whole of creation, the entire universe (or multi-verse if that’s how we see it now) is built on Christ.

Why? How is that?

God designed us humans to run on self sacrifice and love, while we have the choice to be selfish, cruel and destructive to each other as well.

Christ, the embodiment of self-sacrificial, unconditional love, sits at the heart of everything in the universe. Try to rip that out and replace it with anything else and the whole universe would crumble.

It would be no different than the concrete walls of our home that would have cracked and crumbled if one tried to remove the foundation to lay in a new one!

I did not build with only my skill or knowledge. I had a friend, a wheel chair bound 83 year old builder and designer, who helped with the engineering and who made the construction plans for the house from my rough designs.

We live our lives, one day at a time, building a collection which is us.

Christ, unconditional, self-sacrificing love, is how we are designed to live.

But oh how we choose other, to our own pain, cost, and destruction … and we almost always take down a whole lot of other people with us.

And then Christ steps in, to forgive, redeem, and renew us for yet another day of living in God’s Grace!

A living, forgiving, life infusing foundation … God built well!

No freezing cold of hate, nor searing heat of evil and hell can disrupt God’s well designed and laid foundation.

Covid 19, nor the idiocies the pandemic exposes, nor corruption at the highest levels can disrupt God’s creation build on Christ the foundation of life.

Breathe easy, just not someone else’s contaminated air droplets or aerosol.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – October 27

Tuesday, October 27, 2020

Simple Light

on Ice

As Easy as Kindness

Job 9:2-3

Indeed I know that this is so; but how can a mortal be just before God? If one wished to contend with him, one could not answer him once in a thousand.

Mark 12:32-34

Then the scribe said to him, ‘You are right, Teacher; you have truly said that “he is one, and besides him there is no other”; and “to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength”, and “to love one’s neighbour as oneself”,—this is much more important than all whole burnt-offerings and sacrifices.’ When Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, ‘You are not far from the kingdom of God.’ After that no one dared to ask him any question.

Words of Grace For Today

Jesus brings wisdom, wisdom that the intelligent, the powerful, the wealthy, and the privileged rarely comprehend yet honour and embrace.

Jesus calls the simplest part of each of us, the kindness string of our DNA, and commands us to love God with all our heart, and with all our mind, and with all our strength”, and to love our neighbours (all of them) as oneself.

It is not complicated. It is not really difficult.

It just goes against the selfishness that drives most people to success with wealth, power, privilege, and intelligence. Love is not built on one’s own accomplishments.

This selfless, unconditional, complete love for God, one’s neighbour (including one’s enemies) and oneself can only grow out of one’s acknowledging that God provides as free gifts all that one needs for life.

Many fools with power, privilege, intelligence, and wealth have attempted to argue with God that it is the way they have lived that is God’s will. It is a futile argument. No one can contend with God, nor without God’s Grace survive.

Thanks be to God. We live, breathe, and laugh. Kindness and real honour win the day, for all eternity.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – October 26

Monday, October 26, 2020

Though Evil Leaves Us Isolated

God Comforts Us

and Promises Us a Home,

eternal …

starting already today on earth!

Isaiah 51:12

I, I am he who comforts you; why then are you afraid of a mere mortal who must die, a human being who fades like grass?

1 John 4:4

Little children, you are from God, and have conquered them; for the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.

Words of Grace For Today

Some days, there is so much work to do that one has little time for anything else, except to eat and sleep.

It is not fear of mere mortals, it is that one has a strong drive to survive and the courts are set on bringing me to my death, bullying me toward that end, with empty threats. But from nothing they have convicted me of crimes I have not committed, not even nearly. And for my good behaviour in court faced with a dirty, unethical, blood thirsty lawyer’s blatant lies I was declared a vexatious litigant.

One used to respect the courts, least I did. Not so much any more. I know that they lie and cheat, bully and threaten, and destroy and kill faster than others, for they are immune from criminal prosecution. One hopes the office of the Court can still be respected, but that decays pretty fast when those that fill that office treat their own office with such disrespect. The horrendous failings of the Courts needs to be addressed and corrected, soon, before the whole thing collapses on itself and we are left in a barbaric reality. It’s no video game, it’s gonners for most of everything we hold dear, just because those with power and authority corrupt and abuse their positions and the people they deal with.

So work, to the best of my ability I did. While the cold of fall set deep freeze in the air, into the ground and through the lake, so that it is partially frozen over.

God has conquered these evil people’s intentions and evil works. Fear is not how one need respond to corruption. Pity is more appropriate.

They and their evil and poisoned produce of theft and lies will fade like the grass. God’s grace and we, God’s saints, will survive, for yet another day on earth, and in eternity when our days on earth come to an end, long and full or cut short by evil it does not matter.

In Christ we have a home, even though our home is taken from us on this earth and we are left to live rough, managing as we can, with help from friends who are barely able.

Ahh, Grace and Kindness and true Friends: these are gifts from God that help us stand up to the evil that hounds us day and night, and to say with Christ: get behind me Satan.

Now, to breathe fresh air, enjoy the warmth of a fire, and the quiet of the wilderness night, from a warm down covered bed among the trees.

Life is still wondrous.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – October 25

Sunday, October 25, 2020

Following Jesus

Guarantees

The Best Life Possible

…

That Ends in Death

100% of the time

Amos 7:14-15

Then Amos answered Amaziah, ‘I am no prophet, nor a prophet’s son; but I am a herdsman, and a dresser of sycamore trees, and the Lord took me from following the flock, and the Lord said to me, “Go, prophesy to my people Israel.”

Mark 1:16-17

As Jesus passed along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the lake—for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, ‘Follow me and I will make you fish for people.’

Words of Grace For Today

There are so many excuses not to serve the Lord our God; excuses not to fear and love the Lord with all our hearts, minds and strength.

It is a narrow path by which we find ourselves, completely turned around in our lives, doing the last thing we expected to be doing, all in service to our Lord Jesus.

That narrow path is not ours to find on our own. God finds us and pushes us on to it, like Amos. A herdsman and dresser of sycamore trees who God seconded to be … a prophet.

A quiet, hard labouring life, at the bottom of the human food chain, being a shepherd was not an elevated station in life, not even an inch or millimetre elevated.

A prophet, an official prophet, could be very lucrative. But a prophet of the Lord, that was not so. That meant speaking the truth, not what the wielders of power wished to hear. As a consequence prophets of God were most often terribly abused and eventually killed … because they followed God’s instructions and challenged evil corruption in all ways it disrupted and corrupted God’s people.

Simon Peter and Andrew were fishermen, hard working men who ventured most days out on to the surface of the lake, the bubbling, boiling, roiling surface of anti-creation that swallowed more than a few fishermen with the sudden storms of winds and waves that sent boats, men, and their catch to the bottom.

Jesus walks along and calls them and for some reason they follow this glutton, itinerant preacher, teacher, and healer who has no home and nothing to pay them. They leave honest labour to become dependent on the donations and care of others. They become servants of a man they do not know, of whom they perhaps have heard much, or maybe nothing. They are uneducated, working near the bottom of the human ‘food chain’ subject to little respect, but upon whom many are dependent for some of their food. Following Jesus does not elevate their status. They, like the prophets, are eventually killed for following Jesus.

God calls and leads us down paths that demand everything of us, and eventually we will (as history proves) be killed for following Jesus.

The world just does not like good, honest, gracious, and holy people. We show up the corruption that the world tries to hide as normal or necessary for life.

But what a life God calls us to!

We live fully, participating in all of creation as God created us to be able to. Sharing Grace with all we meet. We are, like Patch Adams, bullied and gaslit for being excessively happy, excessively honest, excessively kind and gracious.

It is the life that is a well lived life, more than any other. We cannot find it on our own. Only God’s Holy Spirit can guide us to this life, in our own particular way, where Grace and Truth mean more then money or privilege or comfort … or even survival.

On this path of life, called by God to be here, we see God each and every day, visible in the the beauty and pain of even the mundane of life.