Time of Day – Page 60

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – Sept 23

Wednesday, September 23, 2020

Fall Arrives with Colours

in the Light.

There’s old stories in all that.

Isaiah 25:8

He will swallow up death for ever. Then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces, and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken.

2 Corinthians 5:4

For while we are still in this tent, we groan under our burden, because we wish not to be unclothed but to be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.

Words of Grace For Today

In a word it’s done: God swallows up death, wipes our tears away, takes away our disgrace from earth!

While under this tent (the firmament, the sky) we groan burdened down. We wish not to be disgraced further by being stripped of everything of life. Rather we wish to be robed in Christ’s glorious robes, so that what is mortal, frail, and failing (sinful) in us will be swallowed by God’s Word, which gives us and all creatures and plants life, and indeed brought the universe to exist in its good order from nothing.

There is disgrace before other people, sometimes deserved, more often fabricated by others to destroy innocent people. This is difficult to bear, until one realizes that the fabricating of disgrace 1) has been going on since the first generation, 2) it does not constitute actual disgrace for us, but 3) it does constitute real disgrace for those who fabricate disgrace for us. Still this disgrace is a terrible burden to bear.

In the scheme of the universe created in good order disgrace before others (real or fabricated) is nothing compared to disgrace before God. Fabricating disgrace for others is only one way in which so many disgrace themselves before God. The Devil has his wiles in endless variety.

While disgraced before others we groan with the burdens of trying to survive each day. We seek relief in so many ways. So many require that we throw off life, what little we have left, and throw away all that is of value and joy in this mundane world. As if disconnecting ourselves from our bodies, from the grass, trees, and lakes and oceans, from other people whom we love and whom love us, and from other people who suffer like us and so much worse. Tossing away life given to us by our Creator cannot give us life. This is another wile of the Devil. It merely furthers our disgrace.

Disgrace seems to swallow up all of life, before others, and before God. Death pales in comparison and merely gives relief from disgrace.

God does not leave it to be so. God speaks a Word. With a Word (of might beyond our imagining) God removes our disgrace from all creation. God robes us in Christ’s glorious robes of unconditional love. Death is swallowed up by God’s giving us re-newed life, life in Christ’s name.

With a Word. God speaks and it is so.

Human masters can speak words and order others to make it so. God speaks and all of creation is so.

More power cannot be.

And this power clothes us in Christ’s righteousness, covering our sins, our disgrace, freeing us from disgrace fabricated by others, and we are able to engage fully in life, for ourselves and more. We are able to follow Christ, sacrificing all we are and have and can do in order that others will hear this Word of life.

Hallelujah!

This is the old, old story of Jesus and his love.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – Sept 22

Tuesday, September 22, 2020

Dark

No Matter How Dark the Days

Christ’s Light Shines Each Day

Psalm 13:2

How long must I bear pain in my soul, and have sorrow in my heart all day long? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?

John 16:33

I have said this to you, so that in me you may have peace. In the world you face persecution. But take courage; I have conquered the world!’

Words of Grace For Today

It is good to know that Jesus has won the war, because our enemies certainly seem to be winning a lot of battles, even when I refuse to fight any battles.

Now the Psalmist knows exactly what it is like, not just for me, but for so many people through the generations: our enemies seek the destruction of whatever and whomever gets in their way in order that they can pretend to be powerful, powerful enough to make their way without God. Once they start to ‘win’ by destroying others, they seem not to be able to stop.

This is the persecution that followers of Christ have faced in every generation.

Our hope is sure. Christ has conquered the world, and more so, Christ has conquered death!

What is a series of battles lost, when life eternal awaits us? Certainly we can survive …

though today in the middle of these huge losses, it feels more like the world comes to an end, at least for us already today.

Thank God, we are not on our own.

Through all our pain and sorrow, through all our persecution, we know we are not alone.

God is with us.

With God we can hope to survive these trials and persecutions.

With God we can hope with a sure hope that ALL God’s promises will come to pass, including that our enemies will be defeated, not by their defeat. Rather by the Holy Spirit transforming them into followers of Christ.

In the end, since Christ has conquered death and the world, everyone wins. Finally we will win, in God’s way of giving life abundant for all. We win life now and eternally.

For today we pray, and struggle to remain filled with gratitude.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – Sept 21

Monday, September 21, 2020

Golden Sun

Living Water

Beauty and Life Forever

Psalm 88:9-10

My eye grows dim through sorrow. Every day I call on you, O Lord; I spread out my hands to you. Do you work wonders for the dead? Do the shades rise up to praise you? Selah

John 17:15

I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one.

Words of Grace For Today

Water. It is the basis of life, the cleanser, the thirst quencher ….

What can we do when our eyes water with tears of sorrow?

What can we do when we call on God, with upraised hands … and yet there is no answer.

What will come of us when there is no more life in us?

We will no longer be able to call on God, nor will God be able to answer us.

So while we live … yes, while we live we call upon God for all good things, with hearts filled with gratitude, and hopes of high expectations for all that God has promised.

The real challenge of life is not mere logistic chaos to organize, or engineering problems to designed to a resolution, or stories of lives that have gone amok, and not even the real lives that the stories represent. The real challenge in life is to face, with almost no expectation of relief, the deepest depths of the Devil’s work. For we knowing we could only be lost if we are left on our own.

Yet, there is no danger, for Christ is with us, not to take us out of the world to another place. No, Christ has stood with us each hour as the Devil works his terrible wiles, and protected us, and given us the best that life has to offer: Living Water. This is the water that quenches all thirst in life, and gives us life so abundant it carries us beyond all imagination.

Each day, drinking in the living water, we call upon God, knowing that Jesus hears our every word and the Holy Spirit guides us to be all that we can be, as God’s children.

Selah!

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – Sept 20

Sunday, September 20, 2020

Not everything is a rose.

Nor does anyone smell like roses through and through.

Where is your place in the universe,

Where Roses die and rose-hips take their place?

Exodus 20:12

Honour your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.

Romans 15:7

Welcome one another, therefore, just as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.

Words of Grace For Today

One hopes always, not just for oneself, but for each child, that the parents are honourable, and worthy of being honoured. Of course no one is really worthy. Being a parent is not a skill set one is born with. It is acquired through trial and error, lots of trials and lots of errors.

As in almost everything, if one is kind as a parent, that goes a long way to making everything else possible to work out or work with.

Yet no matter one’s parents, there is value in honouring your parents. This only starts with treating them with respect, though not always obedience as one becomes an adult oneself. The real gist of honouring one’s parents is to recognize one’s own place in the universe, right down to the family.

As child to parents, even more so as one becomes an adult child, one receives great blessings in learning to value your parents, just as they are. No good comes of painting them either better than they are, nor from painting them worse then they are. The blessing is in taking them just as they are, and honouring them for their trials and errors raising you, or not if they did none of that (which means you were probably better off than with them.)

This is an essential step in maturing as a person. One recognizes one’s parents are fully human. An accompanying step is to recognize that you, too, are fully human, trials and errors included.

Learning how invaluable kindness is, and how it helps one make up for so many other terrible things is also an essential step in maturing.

God gave us this commandment that we might become healthy, mature people, always children of God.

Honouring one’s parents, knowing one’s place in the universe right down to the family, accepting others and oneself as flawed and wonderful humans, and being kind: these are the stepping stones that enable us to welcome one another, just as Christ has welcomed us.

Of course so many people say they do this just fine thank you. It’s just ‘those’ people, the strangers, the homeless, the different orientated, the people of a different faith, the people of a different race or face or tongue, ‘those’ people (you know who we mean, they say), those people are not welcome.

When Jesus returns to judge the living and the dead, Jesus will welcome the inhospitable people just as they welcomed ‘those’ people.

Gracious God gives us time now for the amendment of life, to mature enough to recognize Jesus in the face of ‘those people’ before it’s too late and we now longer have the opportunity to share God’s Grace as God has so freely given it to us.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – Sept 18

Friday, September 18, 2020

Great Beauty

is always

Despite the weeds

and intrusions

Isaiah 61:8

For I the Lord love justice, I hate robbery and wrongdoing; I will faithfully give them their recompense, and I will make an everlasting covenant with them.

1 Thessalonians 4:6

No one wrongs or exploits a brother or sister in this matter, because the Lord is an avenger in all these things, just as we have already told you beforehand and solemnly warned you.

Words of Grace For Today

Forgiveness is our manner of living with everyone.

For Jesus, the primary command for us and others is to love one another, even our enemies, to forgive 7 times 77.

Yet not all that Jesus is about is forgiveness, as we read today, Jesus is also the avenger of robbers and wrongdoers, and for those who wrong and exploit a brother or sister.

This is quite the thing, another side of Jesus’ Word for us.

Where are we supposed to go with this?

Are we supposed to love and forgive? Or are we suppose to let the sin and Evil of every day and person rot in our hearts as we wait for God to avenge the wrongs done to us?

What is this?

If one cannot walk on water, or trust God’s other miracles, there is no way we know what to do with these passages, God’s Word.

It is rather simple in the end.

Our life is all about loving one another and forgiving each other, and even our enemies.

Any avenging is left up to God.

We live forgiveness. We trust God.

Evil that comes our way is easier to forgive when we know that God will deal with what cannot be forgiven.

That’s how we celebrate all that God has done and continues to do for us.

Do not fear. God is with us.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – Sept 16

Wednesday, September 16, 2020

Rewards

for a good day at the harvest:

a great, golden sunset!

Proverbs 3:9

Honour the Lord with your substance and with the first fruits of all your produce.

Luke 6:35

Love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked.

Words of Grace For Today

The leaves have begun to turn, not colours wondrous, but brown spotted. This is not healthy I would think.

As the harvest is gathered, though I have no produce to gather in, we hear the call to honour God and God’s people by sharing, not the left overs, the trickle downs, but the first fruits of our produce and our substance!

Many people the world over have no produce to gather in. Food is grown in massive quantities by massive farm operations, processed and distributed in stores for sale for those who are so fortunate to live where and how food can be purchased.

So what first fruits do we share?

The brown spotted, diseased leaves of the trees struggling to stay alive against some unseen disease or environmental shift too swift for them to adapt to?

We may not have produce or even healthy plant life around us, but we do have substance. Each and every one of us has substance.

At harvest time, and at every time, God calls us to use our substance, our heritage and present being, our contribution to our lineage as God’s people, in order that:

We will love our enemies!

We will do good!

We will lend expecting not to be repaid!

We will imitate Jesus, being kind to both the wonderful people of God and to the ungrateful and wicked people, infested with Evil.

For by being kind and gracious, we imitate Jesus and share what he has given us, our lives. And more: we may indeed in our time bring others to hear, experience and trust what Jesus has done for us all. And even if not in this generation, we live the story that will be told for generations, of how Jesus calls us to give grace upon grace, so that in future generations others may hear, experience and trust what Jesus has done for us all.

The Harvest goes on to the end of time, and our contribution is only a tiny spot in a long line of hope driven love that will give life as a gift that keeps on giving … long after the leaves are all gone.

We give what we have received without merit: life abundant.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – Sept 15

Tuesday, September 15, 2020

Were our ancestors Vikings or Voyagers?

That may be where our joy of canoeing comes from.

Genesis 12:4

So Abram went, as the Lord had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran.

Galatians 3:7

You see, those who believe are the descendants of Abraham.

Words of Grace For Today

Ancestor stories are one’s identity. Who are we in this time and place starts with who are we descended from. It hardly stops there, though one’s ancestry often reveals more than the obvious, like what hereditary diseases are you susceptible to and what precautions can you take or preparations if precautions are of little help. Like what values have you been surrounded with as you grow/grew up. Like why are you fascinated with a particular way of looking at the world (which may influence your profession or avocations.)

Is your hair orange, your eyes green? Is your hair black, your face oval? Are you short and stocky, tall and lean? Are you near sighted or far sighted? Do you have a ‘liver spot’ on your left hand between your wrist and your thumb? These are interesting though not too significant.

Most significant is your identity in relationship to the Creator of the universe. What heritage do you have, can you claim, do you trust and rely on? What faith have your ancestors handed on to you? Was it life giving for them? Is it life giving for you? Does it offer the best of life to those around you, or is it a selfish faith that destroys others around you or different than you?

Abram and Sarai are characters in our ancestors stories of our relationship with God. It is clear enough that while Abram and Sarai were historical people, real people, the stories that are told and the characters developed in those stories are most certainly a collection of stories that belong to a number of historical people. They are then a collection of our ancestors’ stories attributed to two individuals. That’s a marvellous way to collect stories about one’s ancestors, and it is done for us.

While we may or may not be from the actual blood lines of Abraham and Sarah, by faith we are ‘adopted’ by God into the family of their children, and made children of God. DNA testing is not relevant. Here if one views ancestry as both nature and nurture, we are included by virtue of nurture. That’s a marvellous thing as well. It’s like being made honorary member of an indigenous family by virtue of one’s participation in and contribution to the life of that family. Yet God makes us members of Abraham and Sarah’s family, and children of God, not by virtue of anything we do or are. It is all gift. Undeserved gift.

That is something most marvellous.

God includes us, though we are strangers, and though we are not worthy, nor have we inherited from anywhere something that makes us worthy. Pure gift.

So into what kind of family are we adopted?

Abram and Sarai’s story begins: at his ripe old age of 75 God calls Sarai and Abram to uproot themselves from everything that is home, and to venture out into God’s world, to a land unknown and foreign and a family that is not yet and will be long in starting.

No matter our age, God calls us to uproot ourselves from all that would hinder us from following Jesus’ Way. That Way is simple to describe: we follow Jesus’ example of sacrificial, unconditional love, giving everything, even our very lives, so that others may live and live abundantly. (That’s got next to nothing to do with material abundance, it’s life abundance!)

Covid 19 or not, Christians have always been the people who volunteered to stay and care for the sick and dying as others moved away from diseased areas and inexplicable widespread death.

Our ancestry is marvellous, and it challenges us to go places we have not imagined, to do things we hardly envisioned possible, and to share that astounding attitude of God towards us with everyone: that God loves us, unconditionally.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – Sept 14

Monday, September 14, 2020

Rocks

Rock on With the Wonders of Light

The Light of Christ

Isaiah 41: 14-16

Do not fear, you worm Jacob, you insect Israel! I will help you, says the Lord; your Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel. 15 Now, I will make of you a threshing-sledge, sharp, new, and having teeth; you shall thresh the mountains and crush them, and you shall make the hills like chaff. You shall winnow them and the wind shall carry them away, and the tempest shall scatter them. Then you shall rejoice in the Lord; in the Holy One of Israel you shall glory.

Romans 5:11

More than that [i.e. having been reconciled, we will be saved by Christ’s life] we even boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

Words of Grace For Today

Worm Jacob and Insect Israel, judging the mountains!

Jesus reconciling wretched sinners, so that we can boast of the mighty sacrificial love of God.

When we know our place, there is no joy in threshing, crushing, and scattering the mountains and our enemies.

There is only boasting in what God has done for us through Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross. Who can give us life?

There is no life in judging others, especially not for what you have done yourself in order to make yourself appear better than you are. Worms and insects abound and do not make good judges.

Doch, to receive reconciliation, that is to receive as a gift that everything between us and God is made right, not by our own feeble and futile efforts, but by God’s own miraculous work through Jesus’ death and resurrection. Now that is a gift that keeps on giving every minute right into eternity.

Now every day, the simplest visions of light, colour and hope spread God’s glory before us to be seen, acknowledged and celebrated.

We may be mere worms and insects, doch through God’s own will and work we are made to be saints, bearers of God’s blessings of light and grace for all the world.

Shine Jesus shine, in us and through us.

Let Jesus wonders be scattered throughout the universe.

Let us remember the marvellous light of Christ, even on cloudy days when it rains, even when Covid 19 still runs rampant, aided by fools and deniers and ‘I’m done’rs’.

Because God has made everything right between us and God, the our lives are made right in every way. Challenges become opportunities to share God’s grace, in our mundane tasks and among our enemies that work to kill us.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – Sept 13

Sunday, September 13, 2020

The Paths Forward

Press on toward God’s Light

Jeremiah 32:17

Ah Lord God! It is you who made the heavens and the earth by your great power and by your outstretched arm! Nothing is too hard for you.

Matthew 28:18-20

And Jesus came and said to them, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.’

Words of Grace For Today

God is with us.

For some those words are the most comforting, promise-filled, powerful words that can be spoken, written or read. They name God’s choice to accompany one through all that life presents to us, both good and bad, marvellous and destructive, and hope-giving and despair oppressing.

For others these words can be the greatest cause of fear, dread, and angst. For they have chosen again and again to act selfishly, relentlessly destroying others for their own advantage, and trying to hide the truth from all. God still knows what they have done. To know that God not only knows, but God also accompanies one through life and the hell one creates for others, is to hear that God is not just aware of what one has done and still does, but God is profoundly affected by it as well. God’s wrath will rise up against one, in the end if not before.

God’s wrath is to be dreaded greatly!

For God has created the universe with God’s own power, with a word and an outstretched hand. Nothing is too hard for God. Destroying a person who has given themselves over to evil every day of their lives and only tries to hide this from others and themselves, and even from God … this kind of destruction is child’s play for God.

God is also so powerful as to send us to share God’s Grace with others, and to be ready to baptize them into the Way of Jesus, the Redeemer of the world. We know that Jesus has commanded us what is profoundly easy to repeat, and on our own impossible to obey: to love the Lord with all our heart, mind and strength; to love our neighbours as ourselves, and to love even our enemies.

This is only possible since God is with us always, that we can love unconditionally as God first loves us.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – Sept 12

Saturday, September 12, 2020

or Dying Star

Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star

For The Traveller You Light The Way

Until In The End We Can Only Hope

That From This Star We Would Be Ever So Far.

Psalm 24:1

The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it.

Ephesians 5:15

Be careful then how you live, not as unwise people but as wise.

Words of Grace For Today

Psalm 111:10 (and twice in Proverbs, once in Ecclesiasticus) The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

Be careful, live as wise people.

Wisdom requires fear.

Why fear God?

God made the world, the universe, and all that is in it, and all that live in it.

Fear is the appropriate attitude to take to the one who creates such a marvellous and ferocious and beautiful and destructive universe.

Watch a star through its life,ending in a supernova explosion*! How can one respond other than in fear of what God has made?

Watch one’s child be born! How can one respond other than in fear of what God has made and given one responsibility for?

Fear is a great motivator. It’s kept us alive as a species as long as we’ve existed. It’s given despots power since before history was written. It’s kept marriages together and blown them apart. It’s kept vulnerable persons alive and sane, and driven the strongest people insane.

By itself it helps move us to survive, but it does not move us to live fully.

Martin Luther begins each explanation in his Small Catechism with “We are to fear and love God so that ….”

Knowingly participating in God’s Kingdom requires fear and love of God.

Love of God, as our response to God’s unconditional love of us, when combined with fear of God, keeps us mindful of our place in the universe and before God, and mindful of the wonders and blessings God provides for us each day, undeserving though we all are!

Together, fear and love, bring us to seek goodness for everyone, to right injustices, and to sacrifice that others may know the good blessings God provides for all people to share.

That is the beginning of wisdom, the kind of wisdom that the Creator of all intended us to live with each day, even as we live with challenges insurmountable, like Covid-19, and the really dangerous rampant denial that Covid 19 is here and does seemingly randomly kill.

* for those unfamiliar with what a supernova is: science.howstuffworks.com/star6.htm

Stars More Massive Than the Sun

When the core runs out of hydrogen, these stars fuse helium into carbon just like the sun. However, after the helium is gone, their mass is enough to fuse carbon into heavier elements such as oxygen, neon, silicon, magnesium, sulfur and iron. Once the core has turned to iron, it can burn no longer. The star collapses by its own gravity and the iron core heats up. The core becomes so tightly packed that protons and electrons merge to form neutrons. In less than a second, the iron core, which is about the size of Earth, shrinks to a neutron core with a radius of about 6 miles (10 kilometers). The outer layers of the star fall inward on the neutron core, thereby crushing it further. The core heats to billions of degrees and explodes (supernova), thereby releasing large amounts of energy and material into space. The shock wave from the supernova can initiate star formation in other interstellar clouds. The remains of the core can form a neutron star or a black hole depending upon the mass of the original star.