Sunset – Page 20

Giving Freely, or Taking and Destroying

Saturday, August 7, 2021

The Greatest Gift Given:

To Share the Beauty Evident Everywhere

Even in a Simple Blade of Grass

At Sunset.

1 Chronicles 29:5

Who then will offer willingly, consecrating themselves today to the Lord?

2 Corinthians 9:7

Each of you must give as you have made up your mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.

Words of Grace For Today

Arnold began life in poverty in a dictator run country, occupied by the Soviet Union, the son of a pastor, who served a number of small community parishes. That position came with a parsonage and large parcel of land. It was the pastor responsibility to provide care for all the people in the parish and to care for the land and the parsonage … and all the churches he served.

That meant that the ‘poverty’ that Arnold grew up with was relatively luxurious. He enjoyed running water and a toilet that flushed. Apartment complexes had toilets at one end of the building, the excrement falling in a large pipe from each floor to the bottom. There was no running water, just a high trafficked ‘outhouse’. Coal provided heat though it meant gathering it, carrying up the stairs, starting and stoking the fire for cooking, warmth and hot water. The smell of coal smoke was everywhere. Out in the country in the parsonage with it’s land the smell was barely noticed. Where many had not place to run and play, the parsonage land provided all sorts of places to play and find solitude with birds and animals the only noise to be heard.

In the world of adults, though, the secret service police recruited so many informants that one never knew who was watching and who would inform on you, even if it was not the truth. Arnold learned well from the secret police how to observe others and to make the best of their weaknesses for one’s own good.

Arnold lived his whole life vowing never to be one of the people others took advantage of. He would be the one to enjoy the best luxuries of life, whatever that cost other people around him.

Arnold was a ‘taker’ and a destroyer, an accomplished fabricator of lies to cover his own weaknesses and to destroy others who threatened him, most of all those who knew his weaknesses. Being a destroyer and a taker has it’s high cost … of guilt or psychotic oblivion to others or dread of being discovered. Arnold suffered terror jags every day, as most destroyers do knowing well that ‘what goes around eventually will come around.’ Hiding the truth costs more and more lies, until one cannot tell what is true anymore, not at all. The terror becomes inexplicable and inescapable.

Tina grew up a missionary kid in Africa, then in Minnesota. Her parents were medical missionaries, ones who brought caring and curing as the reality of Jesus’ old, old story in this world. Their actions spoke God’s love. They gave up lucrative careers in Minnesota to serve in Africa. When a tropical disease almost killed and fully disabled her mother, they returned to Minnesota to serve as medical ‘missionaries’ even there, giving all they had to provide care for many children and patients and people in the community.

Tina learned early that no matter what happened, the measure of life was certainly not money nor luxuries nor privileges enjoyed. The measure of a good life was in giving what one had. In all she did, she worked hard, listened to people, provided good words, assisted people further in their own lives, and never developed any idea that she had to acquire or possess or earn property, things, wealth, position, status or power. Serving was it’s own reward. Life would take care of itself, or rather God would provide what was needed in life.

Tina was a giver, a self-denier in order to provide for others. Tina enjoyed what she did, even when Arnold took her to the cleaners, ran her through the courts and into prison for crimes she had not committed, and left her destitute, so far in debt she would never be out of debt in this lifetime, barring a miracle of money. Even destitute Tina gave and gave and gave, even when all she had was a funny word, an encouraging word, or just a smile. Long ago Tina offered herself, being ordained as a pastor, dedicating her life to sharing the old, old story of Jesus and his love, not merely with words but also with actions of caring for all people and all creation.

These passages have long been used to encourage people to give generously to their congregation’s coffers to cover the costs of churches equal or greater in majesty than the wealthiest in their communities. Sometimes, well rarely, the pastor was compensated well. More likely the parish saw it as their duty to keep the pastor in poverty so that she or he would not sin with the evil’s of money, which really was the parishioners’ sins of greed and coveting the education of the pastor (well what used to be the good education of the pastors. Now that education of pastors is watered down to only the basics of learning how to do whatever will keep parishes alive, serving whatever passes for faith – which is more likely corrupt power. Forget any integrity in caring God’s Word or the traditions and heritage of the church alive in the parishes. So dishonest pastors flourish, corrupt parishes thrive, and the rest suffer. Nothing new for the Devil has always worked best in churches.)

These passages speak to a much more profound part of life. It is not the offering plate or the volunteering in the parish that is so crucial. These are of minor importance in God’s Kingdom. These passages address our attitude of being grateful for everything we are and have at our disposal – our gratitude for God providing all that is needed and more, our gratitude that when we were and are still wretched sinners, God chose and chooses to love and forgive and give renewed life and walk with us.

Giving to God flows freely and cannot be forced, or it corrupts those who force and those who give. It also corrupts those who try to force others and those who do not give, but take everything they can get from life.

The crucial matter is how we make up our minds to give what we give. Do we decide to give so that it makes up for the ‘taking’ we do in the rest of our lives? Are we like Arnold, takers and destroyers, giving only to cover up our greed, hatred of others, and our scrapping to have everything we can get? Or do we decide to give because God has given us everything? Are we like Tina, givers and bearers of Jesus’ love that brings life to others? Do we share, knowing that what we share never was ours anyway? It is all on loan from God for the purpose of sharing it with all other people, in Jesus’ name and as signs of God’s love for all people?

Choose we do, each time we make a decision: do we serve God or do we serve own ‘interests’?

Each of you must give as you have made up your mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.

Salvation

Tuesday, August 3, 2021

No Matter How Evil Presses in on US

God Promises Light,

Christ’s Light

for God’s Saints.

Daniel 3:28

Nebuchadnezzar said, ‘Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who has sent his angel and delivered his servants who trusted in him. They disobeyed the king’s command and yielded up their bodies rather than serve and worship any god except their own God.”

Acts 12:11

Then Peter came to himself and said, ‘Now I am sure that the Lord has sent his angel and rescued me from the hands of Herod and from all that the Jewish people were expecting.’

Words of Grace For Today

Sometimes God saves people from death by the hands of their enemies and even provides recognition in their enemies of the enemies sins against them, God’s judgment of those sins, and the righteousness of God’s people (by Grace alone … and innocent where the false charges are concerned!)

But that’s the exception.

Peter, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are among the fortunate ones who were not killed (or falsely convicted) by Herod, Nebuchadnezzar, and countless other unjust people of power, including corrupt judges today.

Evil runs rampant in the world, in history and still today … and countless people go missing, having been disappeared. Countless people die of neglect and the consequences of other’s sins: from war, from unnecessary famine, from evil’s need to hide it’s dark and cruel works.

We give God thanks for the few people who were saved from destruction and death. We give God thanks that even those of God’s people who are destroyed or killed unjustly are promised eternal life and justice. We give God thanks that as God is gracious and merciful to us, so God gives those who are horrendously unjust with the power they have that same mercy and grace, giving them every opportunity to repent, recognize God, and confess their sins. God gives so many evil people more than ample time for the amendment of their lives.

Today, we breathe yet another day, enjoying the bounty of God’s creation, it’s beauty and wonders. We bask not in the sun, but in the light of the son, who forgives us each day again and again and gives us renewed life. To Hell with evil (in God’s good time), this is life as God intended us to live it. So we breathe yet another day, grateful and gracious towards others, even those that would destroy us, for we remember the old, old story of Jesus and his love for us and all people.

Because

Sunday, August 1, 2021

Why this photo?

Only because ,

Like Everything Good,

God made it possible.

Deuteronomy 6:5

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.

1 John 4:19

We love because he first loved us.

Words of Grace For Today

You shall … and no matter how hard we try, we simply cannot all the time do what God says we shall … even when it comes to love and especially not when it comes to loving God, yet alone loving God with all our heart, soul, and might.

Doch

because God loves us first, therefore we are able (by Grace alone) to love our neighbours as ourselves, our enemies, and always God.

Loving gives our otherwise meaningless lives purpose and joy … and always brings us pain and sorrow, too.

That’s the colour of love that God gives us, and enables us to live out in our lives, all our days on this wonderful, if lately kind of wild, planet. It’s a full rainbow of colours, even the empty colours of a void … that God gives us and fills with our living in God’s presence.

Blessing Us Dirt

Thursday, July 29, 2021

God’s Light and Blessing

Makes Even

Dirt

Golden

Ezekiel 36:9

See now, I am for you; I will turn to you, and you shall be tilled and sown.

Acts 17:28

We too are God’s offspring.

Matthew 20:1

For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire labourers for his vineyard

Words of Grace For Today

I always enjoy the biblical humour: the good news Ezekiel shares is that God is for the people, and they are compared to the dirt of the earth that is tilled and sown in order that something good will grow from it.

The people are, in this metaphor, nothing, just dirt to be trod upon … until God chooses to use them, to turn them over with the plow, to put something good into them that will grow, taking nutrients from their useless dirt, in order to produce food that will sustain others in life. And yet they, though useful to God’s project of providing food for others, and though God is with them, … they remain still dirt.

God turns to them, and they are tilled and sown.

So it is with us.

The dirt of the earth are we, and yet God uses us, tills us with the plow turning us over into something that lays bare the darkness of us, and then God puts good seeds in us, they grow, and food is produce for others, and we remain only dirt, the dirt of the earth. In this metaphor if we become or are and remain the salt of the earth, nothing will grow in us, and others will have no food. Best we are simply dirt, so that others may live.

This we are, the dirt of the earth. Still God claims us as offspring, as God’s own children. Is it really a jump to a completely different metaphor. Yes, but no not really.

God’s children are only something special and good for the rest of creation because God makes it so. God’s children are saints … only because God makes us saints. We remain stains on the face of creation, sinful stains, even as God makes us saints.

The real story is that out of such dirt and such stains God demonstrates everything about God’s love for us: God makes saints out of stains, out of sinners, out of dirty old dirt. That is God’s miraculous work, that God can make saints out of us.

It may seem humorous to be compared to dirt as Ezekiel pronounces God’s blessing of turning toward us, humorous for the unexpected impossible comparison … but then that is what God does all the time. God surprises us with the unexpected.

God blesses us and claims us as God’s own children … though we certainly do not deserve it.

Now what are we going to do with this unexpected blessing, this daily unexpected, life-giving, astounding blessing!? What else other than to share it with as many people, especially those the world would call unfit, unacceptable, incapable of being a blessing for anyone.

God calls for workers, to care for the vineyard, to bring in the harvest, and make the wine. That’s us, dirt, children, and workers.

The Strength of Our Rose

Sunday, July 25, 2021

The Treasure of Our Lives

Is Christ’s Strength

Made from Our Weakness.

Psalm 82:3

Give justice to the weak and the orphan; maintain the right of the lowly and the destitute.

1 John 3:18

Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.

Words of Grace For Today

The life of Christ’s disciples, some would say, is to be of peace and quiet, reflection and quiet prayer, and solace and disengagement from the turmoil of life.

Jesus and the early disciples had something quite different to say about how Jesus’ followers can live and are called to live. There’s lots that we have read and heard how to make life so much better for ourselves and for our own.

The centre of Christ’s way for us is simple and clear: we live blessed by Christ, so that we can be the same blessings for others.

Christ calls us, among other things, to love, not only in word but in truth and action, to give justice to the weak and the orphan, to preserve the right of the lowly and the destitute.

It will take much from us, if we ever speak untruth or avoid good action, or we do not give justice to and to preserve the rights of the weak, the orphan, the lowly, and the destitute.

So Christ calls us to an integrity as servants of the one who lay down his life that we might live free from the bondage to evil. Christ calls us to give to those who are outcast, who are orphaned, who are the weakest, who are kept low, and who are destitute … or who are in need of what Christ offers, abundant life.

The rose of our lives lies in our weaknesses that Christ uses to bring life to others, so we always remain, warts and all, fully engaged in life and for others.

De-story-ing OR God’s Story

Saturday, July 24, 2021

The Blood Red Sun Sets

Through the Smoke

Telling Us, If We Listen

That There Is a Cost

As We Try to Breathe

For Ignoring Climate Change Warnings for Decades

Genesis 50:21

Have no fear; I myself will provide for you and your little ones.

Ephesians 4:29

Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear.

Words of Grace For Today

There is too much to fear these days:

The Covid19 delta variant and other more transmissible and deadly variants that will come out of unvaccinated populations where Covid still runs rampant threaten us all.

Climate change disasters like crop failures, disasters for the farmers and for the people who depend on that food (at a cost that can be afforded), floods that destroy homes, businesses, industries, and kill people (putting the future habitability of so much land in doubt), fires that destroy homes, businesses and forestry industries and kill people (putting the future habitability of so much land in doubt, and drive even higher the cost of building lumber – so that it is out of reach for so many people), and wildfires that put so much smoke in every direction into the air that for thousands of miles people have trouble breathing.

Barbaric fabrication of reality (by spouses and children, police and pastors, lawyers and judges) in order to gain a fast diminishing advantage (money, power, and/or status) over good and honest people, falsifying science results or ignoring science’s best results (by politicians who lead us into destroying the very things that we need to live on earth, and by Covidiots and others who put every life at risk with their unsupported insistence that they can be right with their foolishness), and the accumulation of power by people who have driven fear into huge portions of our populations so that they are willing to surrender their freedoms in exchange for false promises that their fears will be dealt with. Instead more and more of their freedoms are taken and hate based decisions by despots destroy the lives of many good people. All which disconnects us from reality, the basic reality that God walks with us, and blesses us with many things in order that we can share them with all other people.

How are we to respond to these very real causes of fear in and among us?

First we listen as we have listened for years, for decades, and for generations to God’s promises.

Have no fear; I myself will provide for you and your little ones.

Second we learn how and practise daily to be the people who live past fear in the Grace that God provides, so that we can share that Grace with others.

We let no evil talk come out of our mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that our words may give grace to those who hear.

If that sounds simple, it is, and it is impossible for us. Doch with God all things are possible and God calls us to live exactly this way. Living beyond fear, filled with Grace and sharing Grace with others, with our words and our actions, is exactly how God created us to live in the world.

There is too much to fear these days, just as there always has been for every generation. We can get lost in that fear, destroying (and de-story-ing) ourselves and others in the process … OR

We can remember and live in the story that God has for us: God makes us saints who share the Light of Christ with the whole world and all the people in it.

We cannot help but to fear and destroy and de-story ourselves and others.

Doch by God’s Grace we are saved and can be part of God’s work of saving everyone of all time.

Not so small a deal, when we think about it and remember how much God has done for us through the generations.

Forgetful Us

Thursday, July 22, 2021

We remember the Joy

of the Light freeing us from winter’s grip.

Help us remember

God’s freeing us from evil’s grip

each day.

Deuteronomy 6:11-12

When the Lord your God has brought you into the land that he swore to your ancestors, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give you—a land with fine, large cities that you did not build, houses filled with all sorts of goods that you did not fill, hewn cisterns that you did not hew, vineyards and olive groves that you did not plant—and when you have eaten your fill, take care that you do not forget the Lord, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.

1 John 3:17

How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?

Words of Grace For Today

Today’s world is in upheaval again and for sure still: Covid 19 has taken it’s toll on the world economy and specific countries’ economies, including ours.

Prices for food are up markedly. Prices for fuel are up markedly. Lumber prices are doubled and doubled and tripled again. Prices for goods, if you can find them, are up markedly. Saved money (not able to be out spending it) is burning holes in people’s pockets (not mine) so that demand is up, supply has been cut and the result is shortages and leaps in prices. Thems with lots of money can get what they want while the rest of us get less of what we need.

We do not remember being slaves.

We are still slaves …

slaves to global economies that drive us to behave in markedly unwell ways, unwell for ourselves and to the great detriment of so many other people alive on earth …

so much so that we must ask along with the writer of 1 John, How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help? For we have, collectively well forgotten the Lord who would bring us up out of the house of slavery.

The measure of our forgetfulness is easy to see: how many poor among us live without even the basics of life to survive, yet alone flourish?

How we have forgotten the Lord,

for among us

so many people survive or barely survive or don’t survive long without clean water

so many people survive or barely survive or don’t survive long without nourishing food

so many people survive or barely survive or don’t survive long without sufficient clothing

so many people survive or barely survive or don’t survive long without housing or shelter

so many people survive or barely survive or don’t survive long without meaningful labour

so many people survive or barely survive or don’t survive long without being able to love or be loved.

We have the means to provide for everyone in Canada, and for everyone in the whole world, but instead we have forgotten the Lord and we luxuriate in

an overabundance of clean water

good (and not so healthy but sweet and salty snack and luxury) food

huge multiple houses for only a few people (houses that could provide homes for ten times the people).

Our meaningless labours are left to others to sweat out their life long

and

love is made impossible by our demands on people, families, and even children who are not ‘our kind’.

We pray:

Lord help us to remember.

Lord help us to remember

the freedom you offer us each day, the slavery that encases us and makes us blind and deaf to other’s real needs, the gifts you have given us that we have not earned or deserved, our ability to and joy in sharing your gifts with those who need them most.

Free us from our blind prejudices and hate-based, made-up ‘faith’.

Free us from our gluttonous abuse of the earth’s resources that others’ need to survive.

Free us from our unfounded self-righteousness by which we condemn others.

Free us to live by giving life to others.

Lord help us to remember.

Lord help us to remember

You and Your works for us.

Lord help us to remember

Your bounty of gifts given to us as your provision for us as stewards, stewards charged with sharing them all with those most in need.

The Fullness of This Time

Monday, July 19, 2021

So Much Challenges Us

and Would Separate Us From the Light of Christ.

Christ is with Us Always,

Sending Us to Be Little-Christs for All Others.

Psalm 32:1

Happy are those whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.

Colossians 1:14

He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

Words of Grace For Today

We would like to think and say: happy are they who do not sin …

but there is no one who can not sin, and it would be a hopeless, despairing statement to try to maintain.

We all sin.

We all turn from God.

We all turn against God and all that is good for our own and everyone else’s lives.

…

The only hope for us is that our transgressions are forgiven and our sins covered.

This Jesus does for us.

…

We get to celebrate,

Give God thanks,

and

be Christ’s hands and voice to forgive and cover other people’s sins.

Life is full

everyday,

full of challenges

full of reasons to give thanks

full of good things to be and do for others.

Precious to Whom?

Sunday, July 18, 2021

In the Heat of (Climate Change Ever More Extreme) Summer

God Remembers Us

And the Many Paths Our Machines Have Made

In the Cool of Winter.

‘Chill’

God Recommends We

‘Chill.’

2 Samuel 7:22

Therefore you are great, O Lord God; for there is no one like you, and there is no God besides you, according to all that we have heard with our ears.

Revelation 1:17-18

When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. But he placed his right hand on me, saying, ‘Do not be afraid; I am the first and the last, and the living one. I was dead, and see, I am alive for ever and ever; and I have the keys of Death and of Hades.

Words of Grace For Today

In this rough and wild world of self-interested cheats and liars all, it is good to know one’s friends well and to have friends in high places, very high places.

No better friend than God, for there is no one like God, no god besides God, whether we’ve heard it or not!

The trouble with human friends is that when they get to be in high places, they cannot be trusted not to turn on you for their own interests of staying in high places, or demanding dirty little favours of you to help them stay in high places.

God does no such thing. We need not fear that God will turn on us, or turn us into petty criminals doing God’s dirty work so that God can remain God. God has no such concerns, for God has not stepped up higher than is God’s place (like some friends do, and all people in high places have done!)

God does no such thing. Instead God assures us we need not fear God’s Power and Might. God has turned that all powerful, all-mightyful reality toward resolving all that would destroy us.

God chose to be born as one of us, weak and vulnerable to corrupt powers that pretend to be more than they are, just as many of our judges and police and politicians do today. God suffered a terrible death at their hands, and defied their ‘power’ and the real power of death and evil itself! All so that we can live free of such fears, of petty powers and of real destructive powers of evil and even of death itself.

That’s what a real good friend in the very high places (and the low places and everywhere in between) does for us.

We must be some extraordinary precious!

Breathe in that reality!

We are precious to the Ultimate Most Powerful One!

What a life!

What are we going to do with it, that’s the question for each of us each day!

God and God’s People Always …

Friday, July 16, 2021

One May Expect Goodness to Simply Be There Tomorrow

But the Dark Clouds on the Horizon

Bear the Truth of Evil’s Power

It is Always at Work

God still Always

Wins

Psalm 142:6

Give heed to my cry, for I am brought very low. Save me from my persecutors, for they are too strong for me.

Luke 20:38

Now God is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive.

Words of Grace For Today

When I think of those who have persecuted and falsely prosecuted me, I think of what Martin Luther King Jr. called God’s double victory. Both that our persecutors and evil prosecutors will stop doing the evil they do against us, that God’s justice will be done; and that our persecutors and evil prosecutors will be won over to serve God and live abundantly. Which leads me to think that if God has not ended them yet, and they still continue the evil the do so easily, often and effectively, then it is because God still believes in them. God still believes that they could be converted from enemies of God into children of God.

That’s quite a transformation for my enemies, who are too strong for me! It is almost beyond imagination that those who delighted so in planning their persecution of me (who are recorded in their glee speaking to each other) and told me that they did it just because they could, and who so easily lied and twisted reality into a Kafkaesque nightmare, a twilight zone of their own making … it is hard to imagine that these people could confess, repent (turn about towards doing good), and serve God alone.

Yet this is God’s promise for us all: that God is abounding in steadfast love, slow to anger, and that all people (no matter when or what we or they have done) are still alive!

It is comfort to know that God protects us, no matter how low we are brought by evil, no matter if we think there is no lower we can be forced. God certainly does not protect us from the effects of our enemies sins, nor protect us so that we remain alive on this earth even. God protects us, walks with us, and promises us that we will never be dead to God!

If God is for us so much so that to God we will always be alive, there is nothing that can destroy us or make us fear the power of evil more than we trust the promises of God.

Yet we pray Give heed to our cries, for we are brought very low. Save us from our persecutors, for they are too strong for us.

God sends help in the most extraordinary and unexpected ways, through the most surprising people. Watch it all with eyes wide, hearts open, and minds a-boggling; yet there is God at work!

Now it’s our turn to be the surprise of God’s good works giving life abundant to others, overcoming the work of evil that destroys.