Category: Sunset

Self-Pity for Our ‘Little Bush’

Sunday, October 3, 2021

These Trees Will Soon Fall to Erosion by the Lakeshore

Shall We Consume Ourselves in Lament for Them?

Or

Get about Bringing Climate Change to an End?

And Pandemics?

Shall We End Them

Before They End Us?

Jonah 4:10-11

Then the Lord said, ‘You are concerned about the bush, for which you did not labour and which you did not grow; it came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?’

James 5:11

Indeed we call blessed those who showed endurance. You have heard of the endurance of Job, and you have seen the purpose of the Lord, how the Lord is compassionate and merciful.

Words of Grace For Today

We ought to be concerned (as God tells Jonah) not just for our little ‘tree’, our little corner of life. Rather we MUST be concerned for the whole nation, or rather, the whole earth.

Make that we ought to be alarmed in concern for the whole world.

Climate change is still denied by politicians, as if it would go away, as if is somehow not so clear that ‘the planet is angry at us’ as last year’s extremes are this year’s normals, and this year’s extremes are next year’s normals. Soon it will be last month’s extremes become this month’s normals … and on until we will have an impossible task of finding refuge on our own planet, anywhere.

The pandemic, Covid 19 is in it’s fourth wave in North America, and we seem to be preparing to suffer worse pandemics, perhaps even simultaneous pandemics, in the very near future … our future. No more of the ‘one pandemic in a century or so’. And we remain fully unprepared and unwilling to prepare and do what is necessary to prepare. We have leaders who ‘wish’ this Covid-19 away, and in doing so invite an even more brutal wave upon us all.

See the article in the Atlantic by Ed Yong https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/09/america-prepared-next-pandemic/620238/ if you wish to read it put even more bluntly.

We can certainly trust that God is compassionate and merciful and we can use Job’s endurance as a role model. Doch! We ought not invite such great need for God’s compassion and mercy, nor for Job-like endurance, down upon so many of the earth’s whopping 7.4 billion and growing population.

We may not have planned this population overburdening of the planet, but we certainly knew it was coming and we collectively did very little about it, least nothing effective!

Sitting ‘where our bush used to give us shade,’ wallowing in our self-pity does no one any good. We need to get up and proclaim the Good News and God’s judgment for ‘Nineveh,’ whatever that will look like for us. We pray that we may see God at work as God worked through Jonah’s speaking to Nineveh!

No one would dare to venture on such a mission, without trusting God’s grace, abundant and endless, flowing for us all.

So what are we waiting for?

Come Home, Come to the Feast!

Friday, October 1, 2021

This is the Feast

(for the eyes)

of Paradise

Many Times Each Week

Jeremiah 31:8

See, I am going to bring them from the land of the north, and gather them from the farthest parts of the earth, among them the blind and the lame, those with child and those in labour, together; a great company, they shall return here.

Luke 14:16-17

Then Jesus said to him, ‘Someone gave a great dinner and invited many. At the time for the dinner he sent his slave to say to those who had been invited, “Come; for everything is ready now.”

Words of Grace For Today

God gathers the people together to come back home after being in exile. The blind, lame, the pregnant, those giving birth, all are invited to come together. All are invited home.

Jesus tells of the wealthy person who invited a great number to a feast, and called them when it was ready. Those who were invited had all sorts of excuses why they would not come. So Jesus tells how the gracious host sends his servants out to invite in people from the streets, the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame. When that does not fill the seats at the table the host sends the servants back out to compel anyone and everyone to come and feast with him; except those who are invited are excluded!

How are we in exile today? We (in North America where I live) live in countries that we call home, where health care is provided for everyone (if you can get in to see a doctor, a doctor who is not too exhausted to provide care, an honest doctor who will not lie to be rid of you if you have serious health concerns), where housing is available to protect us from the cold of winter and the heat and beasts of the hot summers (if you have enough money to buy or rent such a home, the rest of us remain in substandard houses or in no houses at all), and where our voices are heard in elections (if we buy into the most popular version of fake news and vote for the corrupt people who create fear in order to convince us to give up our protected freedoms in favour of their ‘dictator like control’ over us.

Are we not in exile in our own countries, where truth was long ago sacrificed, and where the wealthy gain their advantage with lies and deceptions so terrible they cannot admit their own sins?

Where is the feast that we are invited to, as Jesus’ listeners were at the meal hosted by the leader of the Pharisees where Jesus heals on the sabbath, where Jesus teaches them about claiming false honour, and where Jesus warns them about refusing God’s invitation to the great feast?

Some say the feast is the Eucharist hosted by your local church. Others say it is the feast of luxuries and comforts (enjoyed while others are hungry, thirsty, and dying for lack of life’s essentials.) Others say it is the food kitchens and food banks provided for those who are hungry.

What do you bring to the feast, to share, to enjoy, with those from the streets, who are invited and compelled to come and feast? Are we truly the saints who bring God’s Grace to be for all other people?

Simple

Tuesday, September 28, 2021

Simple Tree

Simple Sunset

…

Simple Truth:

God’s Love is Life.

Genesis 3:19

By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

2 Timothy 1:8b-10

Join with me in suffering for the gospel, relying on the power of God, who saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works but according to his own purpose and grace. This grace was given to us in Christ Jesus before the ages began, but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Saviour Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.

Words of Grace For Today

There is always work to do, to survive, or to prepare to survive … unless of course one has gained privilege and comforts known previously only by kings, pharaohs, and rulers, that is the privilege of having survival needs long since met and one can luxuriate in life. As the dust we are from and to which we will return, when such comforts and privileges are ours, we inevitably consume our hearts and minds with un-graceful things, schemes to gain more at others’ cost, and concerns that have next to nothing to do with being God’s people.

In such positions of privilege we look on the work of the Gospel, the work of being the unconditional love for all others, as if it were such a great sacrifice for us to take on. Reality is that this is nothing more nor less than what we were created to be and do.

Our obsessions with survival, and all it’s replacement-substitutional (ersatz) concerns, is not at all the life we were created to live.

We always find our way into some perversion of the life God intends for us, as we struggle to escape death. We cannot escape it.

That is not our death toll, though. For Jesus has come to defeat death, and offer us life eternal.

The story is simple: provide care for all people, heal all people, love all people unconditionally, and allow (without fear of losing anything) those who would attack and maim you, who ruin your reputation with lies and schemes and scapegoating, and who would kill you to do as they must.

God is with us, always, all ways, and there is not enemy that can take God’s love from us. More we need not expect of life. For our God has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works but according to his own purpose and grace.

Hope, Like No Other

Sunday, September 26, 2021

The Light Shines

No Matter the Darkness

Of Our Days

Psalm 146:8

The Lord opens the eyes of the blind. The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down; the Lord loves the righteous.

Ephesians 1:18

With the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints.

Words of Grace For Today

Amid the pandemic that threatens our livelihoods and our very lives, we pray that God will cure us of the blindness that allows us to live unaware of God’s presence in, with, and among us.

Through all generations God has lifted up people who have been able to provide witness to God’s presence in, with, and among us , for the many people who remain blind to God’s presence. These are the saints in light, the Light of Christ.

The Light of Christ, the reality of God’s creation as blessed, shines through the saints, so that even the blind may know what they could see if they allowed God to heal them of their blindness.

This light shines as clear as the morning sun on a clear, blue-sky day. This light shines in all the dark corners where people would hide their sins and evil deeds.

This light shines clearly on the Covidiots, the Antivaxers, and those who intentionally spread false science. They spread the lies to create fear, for out of fear they are able to promise false solutions, and with false hopes they lead people into dark places from which they are able to be lead, giving their leaders power, dark power, power that would destroy faster than it heals or gives life.

Christ’s Light shines even today, especially today. For there is no shortage of saints, God-made-saints who see God in creation and give clear witness to God’s presence, and God’s guidance that would lead us all to life, and life abundant. For when we live, knowing that God is with us, we receive a hope that is beyond compare. This hope shines for us like a brilliant light through all the darkness of evil and sin in this world. This hope shines for us pulling us through the darkness of these days to a better future, a future that is blessed by God, where we can breathe clear, clean, uninfected air … even as we stand shoulder to shoulder with our sisters and brothers on earth.

This hope shines brightly for us each day so that we are able to pray (even mid the pandemic that threatens our livelihoods and our very lives) that God will cure us all of the blindness that allows us to live unaware of God’s presence in, with, and among us.

To Die, To Live … To Live Free

Monday, September 20, 2021

After the Autumn of Our Lives

(at whatever age this occurs for us)

When We No Longer Live for Ourselves,

We are Free to Live and Love for Christ!

Psalm 118:17

I shall not die, but I shall live, and recount the deeds of the Lord.

Galatians 2:20

It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

Words of Grace For Today

Audrey had always had to fight to get anything. At home it was her two older brothers who made sure she had as little as they could arrange, including by stealing things from her and plain taking from her what they wanted, which was anything she showed that she treasured. She looked out for number one, and only number one. By the time high school came around she’d perfected her methods of manipulating, lying, and cheating for whatever she wanted. She had excellent grades, some of them she had even sort of earned. Most of them where given to her by teachers who were afraid of what she would report them for. She’d already laid waste to one teacher’s career and personal life with rumours of sexually abusing her.

When it came to dating she made sure she dated the boys she wanted to, and most of them were hardly aware of the trouble she’d gone to. University was a fools game for her, passing with grades she hardly earned, ruining any instructor who gave her anything less than a B+. Then she met Jacques, and for a few minutes one might have thought her ways would change. She even went to seminary to fit in with his family of pastors, a powerhouse in the church for generations. Jacques finished his degrees a year before she was done, and she could not be bothered to stay in seminary another year. Every one was too kind, naive to how the world worked. The most she got from any of them was fear or out right condemnation for her way of making it through at everyone else’s cost.

Through all her middle age adulthood she continued, as a respected (and feared) member of Jacques’s powerful family. Jacques’s kindness helped to cover up her rather crude and cruel ways of getting what she wanted. Anyone who knew her well, knew she would readily say she was ‘going to hell’ for this or that latest caper she’d pulled off at someone else’s expense. No one disagreed with her; that would be to put oneself in her sights and she never missed. The thing she never seemed to understand was that people were also sure that God had no room for Audrey, at least there was no evidence of it in her life.

In her late adult years she came down with cancer. She fought hard to survive. Most people thought she’d finally gotten what she deserved and could not cheat her way out of. When she lived a few wise, kind and gracious people said that God had given her another chance at life. They meant that God had given her a chance to see how to life life with grace, kindness and unconditional love. Most people who did not know of Audrey’s dark side sympathized with her; here was a cancer survivor after all. Audrey had, it seemed a new lease on life. The kind, gracious and faithful people saw she really did have a chance of learning something new for her: how to be honest and kind.

When a posting came vacant and the congregation could not get a pastor (since they ran through them like horsemen with swords), she volunteered. The bishop, having no other options to offer the troubled and destructive congregation, appointed her as lay pastor. People marvelled at the mysterious ways that God works, Audrey serving as a pastor in a congregation. There could hardly be someone with a life time more antithetical to Christ’s work. Still it was impossible to say anything about Audrey’s past; sympathy ran too wide for her. The congregation fell in love with Audrey, she knew exactly how to win their loyalty. It was the dirty work of destroying men that she jumped into with gusto, and soon the matriarch had what she’d thought she’d wanted for decades: a congregation run by women.

Those that looked on from the outside marvelled at how successful Audrey was as a pastor. Those who knew how she operated, those who knew her before and people that just met her, saw that her ways had a new face, but her heart was all about destroying other people in order to get her way.

Then Jacques came down if a terrible, painful, and incurable disease. Kind, gracious, faithful people saw that God offered Audrey great hardship, and also yet another chance to rest in God’s grace.

This surrender, of one’s own enjoyment of life, in order to give other’s life (the opposite of how Audrey had lived) is what Paul describes in today’s verse: It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

There is no other more poignant manner to describe this than to realize one faces death, head on. And one survives, but one’s life is not one’s own anymore. One’s own life, in large strokes and in the finest details, has become God’s life given to one to live as Christ calls us to live:

filled with truth, kindness, grace and unconditional, self-sacrificing love.

This life then is not our story, it is not that we live to be our own story. Instead we live to tell (with everything in our lives – thoughts, words, and deeds) of God’s great deeds, to tell Jesus’ story, and to tell the stories of the saints who have gone before us … so that the next generations will learn the stories, and learn to live them, and live them well.

There is in this new life lived as not one’s own, the greatest freedom and peace … as God intended us to live.

Ferocious Winds Or God’s Blessings

Friday, September 17, 2021

The Night Before

The Storm

…

Provides Promises of Blessings

To Come

Psalm 103:22

Bless the Lord, all his works, in all places of his dominion. Bless the Lord, O my soul.

Luke 13:29

Then people will come from east and west, from north and south, and will eat in the kingdom of God.

Words of Grace For Today

Cold autumn rains fell, ferocious through the night, and then steady with only a light wind pushing them across the horizon. Still the winds, with wet furry, had torn apart Tina’s camp.

It took the morning to patch up most of the damage, and set her mind busy with plans, imagined and then reworked and reworked, to brunt the blast of damaging winds. Ideal would be a solid wall, though that was not possible. Perhaps some kind of wall made of the available recycled items collected in the past summer from garbage which she was allowed to pick and choose from.

There was no protection possible from the ferocious winds of false rumours that people used as excuses to ignore, deprive, and outright attack her. There was no wall to be built. Only God’s grace kept her safe, protected, alive, and filled with awe and hope.

There are works of humans that are impressive in their majesty, though where humans excel is in their ability to destroy each other. Arnold had tapped into this method of getting ahead when he was still young, informing on his family to the secret police. It had brought him apparent success even as he watched his family disintegrate before his teenage eyes. He’d gone on to become a multimillionaire on the backs of many people. Tina was only one of many left in his wake of destruction. The police had used this corrupt power to bring false charges against Tina. The courts had used this power of destruction to falsely convicting her. It seemed as if there would be no end. But their destructive power, if not already, soon will come full circle to rest in their lives again and again, leaving them each and all desperate for relief, for rescue, and for salvation. Only God knows if they will be brought to an end by their own destruction, or whether God will redeem them and claim them as saints. So it is will all who use the destructive power at which humans excel so well to construct their lives of deceit and greed.

God’s kingdom is constructed differently, without the need for walls to protect oneself from the ugly blasts of destructive deceptions and schemes to gain advantage at other’s cost. God’s kingdom is built on God’s works of mercy, steadfast love, and wonder. There are no words, actions, or direct assaults which can diminish God’s works. God’s mercy is forever, God’s steadfast love is unfailing, and God’s wonders are unassailable and omnipresent.

Here people from all lands, east, west, north, and south gather together to feast under God’s protection that cannot be compromised. Together they give testimonies, true and wondrous, of God’s great works through which God has blessed all people.

Cold autumn rains fell, ferocious through the night, and then steady with only a light wind pushing them across the horizon. Nothing in God’s kingdom was changed one iota, and Tina feasted in solitude with the hermit saints of all times, with the people of the earth from all places and all times. As God blessed Tina, and all the saints of all time, together with Tina they all blessed God with thanks.

For all that is, comes from God, and all is well, all is well, all manner of things are well.

It’s All for the Birds (and Us)

Thursday, September 16, 2021

Creation and All In It

Is God’s Gifts

For Us All!

Psalm 36:7

How precious is your steadfast love, O God! All people may take refuge in the shadow of your wings.

Matthew 6:26

Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?

Words of Grace For Today

Take refuge in the shadow of God’s wings, in the safety of God’s steadfast love. All other ‘security’ is an illusion, a deception, and a departure from God’s kingdom into the Devil’s realms. Under God’s wings, like that of a great bird of the sky soaring at will, God brings us to adventures we would not imagine, to places and understandings where life is abundant, and to challenges and work that fulfill all our yearning to participate in creation.

As autumn sets firmly in on the land, giving great respite from the bugs, the heat, and the huge influx of 2-legged animals in the wilderness (only some who are dangerous or greatly destructive to the land, scarring it with tire ruts, garbage strewn about, feces and toilet paper in the woods, and all sorts of materials half burned in the fire circles that sterilize the soil beneath and pollute the air above) …

As autumn sets firmly in on the land, we breathe easier.

As autumn sets firmly in on the land, great flocks of geese of 100s and 1000s, make a distant chorus, moving in V’s for days to traverse 1000s of miles from the waters of the north to the temperate winters in the south.

As autumn sets firmly in on the land, birds of prey, great hawks, owls, and bald eagles screech high as they circle for hours seeking their prey. Song birds like my neighbours the robins spend all hours out in the meadow hunting worms and bugs for food.

Whether autumn sets firmly in on the land or not, in all seasons and times, one has to wonder about these words of Jesus. For as God provides for the birds without their sowing or reaping into barns, first: their lives seem to be wholly directed toward finding food and avoiding being food; second: there are and were also in Jesus day so many people who neither sow nor reap and they worry most about what they will eat and what they will wear, for their choices are so many it is only as ignorant shame that they indulge such luxury as most of the world suffers without enough food, clothing, shelter … and now fresh water and clean air, yet alone meaningful work and people to love and be loved by.

The point is clear from Jesus’ words: our attention and concern should be less on all the required labour needed to survive (or luxuriate in over abundance.) Our attention and concern is better spent on understanding the mystery, freedom and peace that is available to us when we, our lives long, learn to seek refuge, meaning, and purpose in God’s steadfast love. For there, comforted, protected, and challenged, we can see life with clarity.

What we see with clarity is that our lives were designed by God and given to each of us by God in order that we can extend God’s steadfast love to others.

We simply cannot do that if our primary concern is providing for ourselves, for then we turn inward and bend reality from God’s great creation to our own insatiable appetites. We become instead of caretakers of creation, destroyers of creation. We become incapable of seeing others as Christ sees them: broken people in need of God’s love.

God help us when we make that turn away from God’s steadfast love as our only sure refuge.

Thank God, God always calls us, welcomes us, and renews us so that we can return to God (… home in God’s kingdom to be the ones who exercise God’s unconditional, steadfast love for all people) so that we can take refuge in the shadow of God’s wings, in the safety of God’s steadfast love. All other ‘security’ is an illusion, a deception, and a departure from God’s kingdom into the Devil’s realms. Under God’s wings, like that of a great bird of the sky soaring at will, God brings us to adventures we would not imagine, to places and understandings where life is abundant, and to challenges and work that fulfill all our yearning to participate in creation. … home in God’s kingdom we are the saints who exercise God’s unconditional, steadfast love for all people.

Mercy, Mercy! How Can We Be Bored?

Tuesday, September 14, 2021

The Tree

The Same Tree

The Same Old Tree

How Can Beauty

Or

Being Merciful

Ever Be Boring?

Psalm 41:2

The Lord protects them and keeps them alive; they are called happy in the land. The Lord does not give them up to the will of their enemies.

Matthew 5:7

Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.

Words of Grace For Today

Yesterday’s headline was “Trouble in the Prairies as surgeries postponed in Alberta, Saskatchewan due to COVID’s hospital burden.”

For weeks now the reports are that the large majority of those people burdening the hospitals with their Covid crises are those that have chosen not to be vaccinated. Meanwhile there are protests against vaccine passports required in order to gain access to events that are perhaps safe, but not if unvaccinated people attend. They put both themselves and others at great risk of being infected, the transmission rates go up (or rather wild) as vaccinated people also spread the virus, and the hospitals are overburdened. The results are catastrophic for so many people. Those with Covid in hospital suffer and die or more likely suffer for years from long Covid (further burdening the health care system). The overburdened hospitals push ‘elective’ surgeries off to an unknown future time, and those they do not result in immediate death, many postponements do contribute to more severe suffering and then earlier death.

The real tragedy is that children under 12 cannot be vaccinated, they are (because of those over 12 who choose not to be vaccinated) infected in greater numbers, and their suffering and death – and the fear of suffering and death – increase dramatically, a fear shared by their families and friends.

One has to ask why we do not gather those who choose to go un-vaccinated, line them up, and shoot them …

the first thought is with lead,

but mercy would dictate that we use needles and vaccinations,

and then many of us realize that we ought only shoot them

…

with a camera, post their photos on the internet, and let the chips fall as they may.

And

there ought to be a Canada-wide mandate that Covid vaccination passports must be established by all provinces and territories, and those without passports or exemptions due to health be barred from gatherings or services or business that they could not access during the height of Covid 19 lockdowns.

We probably will do nothing like that, for the political fallout would be great, where as the political fallout for doing nothing (and refusing to accept scientific guidance) seems to be less (and in some parties it seems to win political support – for fools are in no shortage.)

In these Covid times, we do not need a personal enemy to have our lives put at great risk. The Covidiots are doing that with great efficacy to us all.

So we trust that God protects us and keeps us alive. We know that God does not give us up to the will of our enemies, therefore we are called happy in the land.

No matter the Covid fools that endanger us all. No matter the personal enemies that attack us based on lies told about us to cover the liars’ own terrible sins. No matter the real likelihood that, even vaccinated we will be infected and suffer long Covid in some form or another. No matter how poor health care becomes because the system is overburdened by Covidiots’ and their victims, both intentional and unintentional. No matter the real fear we suffer that our children will contract Covid and suffer or die.

No matter what comes our way, we remain ‘happy in the land’ because we know that God walks with us.

No matter what comes our way, we remain ‘happy in the land’ because we know that God is always merciful with us, and God enables and motivates us to be merciful to all other people.

We have many challenging days ahead (only some of it is responding to Covidiots) never leaving us an excuse to be at all bored. Thanks be to God!

Run or Fight … … Or Be At Home?

Saturday, September 11, 2021

Even as the Evenings

Turn Blood Red into the Dark,

God With Us is a promise of an evening of great delight!

All is Well, All is Well , All Manner of things are Well.

Isaiah 52:12

For you shall not go out in haste, and you shall not go in flight; for the Lord will go before you, and the God of Israel will be your rearguard.

John 14:3

And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.

Words of Grace For Today

There are many reasons to run.

There are many reasons to run away.

There are many reasons to run for one’s life …

and to run fast, as fast as one can run.

When God promises to be with us, the reasons to run do not disappear, though we can be a whole lot less stressed, and have a whole lot less panic in us that rises into our throats, which panic leaves us only a choice to fight, flee, or freeze.

Instead when God promises to be with us, when God promises to be our rearguard, we can think clearly, without haste, for we can trust that God leads us in paths of righteousness.

When everything goes belly up, when the proverbial stuff hits the fan, we can trust that God has our backs. More than that we can be assured that when it seems that God leaves us, in fact God prepares a place for us, a place to call home, where God’s plan for us is always sure, even when we lose track of how God is with us.

Home, with God at our side, before us, behind us, promising to walk every step with us. Home, where our hearts are loved unconditionally by God.

Then, we can be at home where God brings us. No one can chase us away, and our enemies will be dealt with by God. We walk calmly through every hour, knowing that justice will be done by God. No lies, no deceit, no gaslighting, no false reports, no false arrests, no false testimony, no false convictions, no cover up. God sees everything, knows everything. For God a lie is seen and always remains a lie. For God the truth is always known and it always remains the truth.

Home, safe in God’s hands. Home where truth and beauty bring breath and life no matter the challenge. Home. Home in the wondrous creation God created for us to enjoy. Home safe and sound. Home where no one can chase us away and no evil can rule over us. Home.

It does not get better.

Through the Night of Sin and Evil …

Monday, September 6, 2021

The Only Way to Face the Reality of Sin

Ours, Our Ancestors’, and Our Enemies’

Is to Trust the Light of the World

To Guide Us To Share God’s Grace

With All People

Psalm 106:6

Both we and our ancestors have sinned; we have committed iniquity, have done wickedly.

Titus 2:14

He it is who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify for himself a people of his own who are zealous for good deeds.

Words of Grace For Today

There is no shame in admitting one’s own sins, and the sins of one’s ancestors.

To face reality, especially the dark reality of one’s own sins is not easy or common or even possible …

unless first one know that God has, even before time, known we and our ancestors would sin, and God has not ever abandoned us to our sin. God has planned even before time how God would respond to our sins by redeeming us with God’s own son’s life as the model of how to live: sacrificing in order to unconditionally love those least deserving of love, in order that they will know God’s generous and gracious forgiveness.

So we have the story of Jesus, living as one of us, giving his life to teach, heal and guide and in the end to offer himself to be crucified, so that we would see that we need not sacrifice people, we need not scapegoat people, we need not work (futilely and destructively) to free ourselves; God has done all that is required.

We have the story of Jesus’ love for all people, especially the outcasts, the ill and ‘ill-fated’, those forced into and captive to poverty, the corrupt, the arrogant, and even the unjust.

We receive renewed life so that we can be the instruments of Jesus love for those in our time and place.

Thanks be to God, for though we are wretched sinners all, we are God-made saints, called to bring God’s justice and grace to bear on the world we live in.