Category: Sunset

Why Lord, Why?!!

Wednesday, July 14, 2021

Lord, Why When the Light is Right in Front of Us

Do We Still Seek the Darkness?

Isaiah 61:1

The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners.

Galatians 5:1

For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.

Words of Grace For Today

God, why …?

God why is it so hot!

Sweat pours down my back and arms and all over dripping all my work in stinky wet.

My jeans stick to my legs as I try to move. My shirt tugs back at all my efforts to move. It’s hard to get anything done, and when I do I feel like someone has wrung me out like a sopping wet towel and left me still soaking and stinking.

Ok, God, I can get used to the heat, it’s not easy but I’m adapting to it, but

God why are there so many miserable mosquitoes ready to bite me at all hours and at dawn and dusk they swarm so thick it’s hard not to inhale more than a few just walking a few feet from the door. When they bite it hurts, and then goes away, just to come back with a terrible itch that simply will not go away and will not be ignored! What’s that about anyway. If I try to ignore them and merely wash the itch away with ammonia in the glass cleaner, that sort of works until I get itchy all over inside my eyes, my nose, my throat and my ears and I start to have a severe allergic reaction that starts to take my breath away. Really, does it have to be so bad all summer long!? I have to wear long jeans and long sleeves, thick socks and a hat with flaps down my neck and over my ears soaked in DEET to keep them away. Then every night I have to wash all that DEET exposure away before I sleep which takes water which is expensive to haul here to have to wash with. Fortunately I have friends who have loaned me the things needed to shower each night and haul water often enough from town that I can shower on the hot days before sleeping.

So God I guess I can get used to the mosquitoes, but God, I mean really: does there have to be so many black gnats that dive bomb into my face, my eyes and ears and take little chunks away as prizes for their kamikaze efforts, which because they are so many they usually survive better than I. I end up breathing them into my lungs at least once a day. I have to constantly wave my hand in front of my face to keep them away, which sort of works and they only seem to be out in certain places while I am mowing grass. So it’s not all the time, thankfully.

So God I guess I have figured out how to survive even the kamikaze gnats.

But God why are there so many wasps, not just ready to bite me when I try to work on the tarps that shelter me from the cold in winter. They did sting me, hard sending shock waves through my body and brain freezing out all other thoughts or impulses except to run. Not just once, but twice, and they hurt unbearably for hours, then itched and ached for days. The memory returned fresh each time I stepped outside and the sound of a wasp buzz reached my ears. I live in fear everyday of being smashed into panic again. I cannot have that. I cannot work. I have to huddle in fear inside.

That just cannot be. So I’ve made a suit to protect me from head to toe, even a piece of screen left over from repairs to guard my face, all duct taped together with no gaps at all. I’ve read on the internet that dish soap will suffocate wasps. I cannot find any prepared wasp control/killer spray, so I’ve filled a spray bottle with a water soap mix and I’ve destroyed the nest on the tarps, and three in the woods so close they wasps swarm around the camper each day.

So God I guess I’ve figured out how to deal with the fear created by being stung by wasps, and in the fall they will all dies off. Next spring I know what to do to keep them from creating nest here again. It’s simple if I am ready.

But God I really don’t know what to do with the people that gaslight me, that scapegoat me, that bear false witness against me, and the judges that lie about the evidence before them in order to convict me and deny me true justice. How can a society survive such barbarism anyway. It’s like the truth does not count for anything and whatever someone makes up for the courts and whatever the courts want to make up for themselves will be taken in the worse possible way for me, and I’ll pay and pay and pay until I have nothing left and still I’ll be driven into debt, further and further and further, and made to give up even the most common decent truths about myself. I have had to celebrate the Eucharist each day to remember that you too were betrayed and scapegoated and convicted and … well you were crucified. I have not been killed. I have found your blessings in each day in the most profound and simple things, like having enough to eat, and a good cup of coffee with fresh milk in it in the morning, and having medications I need, and having reason and opportunity to work hard to survive, and write and dream and use photography to speak about the wonders of your creation.

So God, I guess I have gotten used to evil all around in the most trusted, honoured places in society in this adopted country of mine. I have to remember how much you forgive me, so that I can remember that you may forgive these people as well, though now I cannot say their sins are forgiven, for they have not admitted they did and still do this same thing to others, and it is horrendous for the children. So I have bound their sins so that they might fear that they will answer to you, though with you I hope for a double victory, now that they provide justice based on truth, and that they join your people in celebrating all your gifts, encouraging others to do the same.

But Lord, it’s so hot, there’s so many mosquitoes and gnats and wasps and so many enemies of goodness, kindness, truth, and love. How can I deal with all of them all the time.

So I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep

and if I die before I wake, least I won’t wonder how much is still at stake

for the dance of life is more than a dance, gracefully, graciously partaken in.

It is also a feast and celebration with you, God, with all your people, in thanks for all you’ve suffered to do good things for us all.

So I guess I can wait for the cold, when the sweat will not run freely, the mosquitoes will be done for another year, the gnats will disappear and I can breathe easy, and the evil people are kept at bay by the cold and snow.

But God why does it have to be so cold and stormy, and why does there have to be so much snow.

I mean I like to have my peace and be able to ski ….

So Lord I pray, give me your peace, in the sleep of the righteous and pure, graciously so made a saint of your light by your own choice and by grace through faith alone.

Another simple normal summer day.

When does autumn start to arrive?

But Lord, why do the bears start to come around in the fall …..?

…

Lord, whatever it is that holds me captive, free me. Whatever it is that blinds me, give me sight. Whatever it is that robs me of joy while serving you and sharing the good news of your Grace with others, take this from me so that

because you give me life

I can be one of the saints who bring good news to the oppressed, who bind up the broken-hearted, who proclaim liberty to the captives and release to the prisoners.

Help me live in the freedom you have so preciously bought for me; help me not return to the slavery that I know so well and feels so comfortable … until it binds me so close to evil that life starts to shrivel right out of me leaving me alone with my fears.

Selah, Words of Thanks For It is Needed

Tuesday, July 13, 2021

We see the light so clearly

in the world around us that is so dark.

Psalm 3:3-4

But you, O Lord, are a shield around me, my glory, and the one who lifts up my head. I cry aloud to the Lord, and God answers me from God’s holy hill. Selah

Luke 1:49

The Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is God’s name.

Words of Grace For Today

God is our shield, our glory, the one who lifts up our heads. We cry aloud to the Lord and God answers us.

God, the Mighty One, has done great things for us.

God’s great work for us give us great hope and sustenance each day.

This is good, for the assurance that God does good things for us begins with a simple word ‘but’, which indicates that it is not so with others.

Others do other with us so that we need God as a shield around us!

Don’t we all know it … if we are paying attention.

Because God hears us, cares for us, shields us, walks with us, and forgives, redeems, and renews us … because God gives us all we need for life …

Therefore we receive all that God has for us, share it with all we can, pursue a life of kindness, and sing thanks with Selah!

Us-Them, We(eds), or All Together.

Sunday, July 11, 2021

Whether we see others as ‘weeds’ in our lawn of life

God sees us each as precious and

God shines Light on each of us,

the light of love and life.

Isaiah 56:7

These I will bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer; their burnt-offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.

Colossians 3:11

In that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all!

Words of Grace For Today

We humans keep building walls, us and them.

God keeps telling us and showing us that God is for all people, without any us or them.

Christ is all and in all … and for all peoples!

…

Christ is even for me, and for you, sinners though we be, God has claimed us a God’s children and made us saints, able to share God’s light with all people …

without any ‘us’ or ‘them’

or

walls

or

judgments

or

condemnations,

…

…

just

Grace for all.

It’s a wonderful dance of love, this life is (at least as God intends for us, and makes possible for us to live it.)

Ready or not here it comes, one day at a time, one hour at a time, one minute at a time … one decision at a time.

Set a place for Elijah, keep an eye for the poor at your gate, invite in the homeless …

This is God’s day, and out day to give everything back to God, one decision in one minute at a time.

Giving Thanks to God ….. not to godlets.

Saturday, July 10, 2021

Life is A Maze

an Amazing Maze of Wonders,

Gifts from God.

God is All Amazing.

No need to make small godlets.

Psalm 106:1

Praise the Lord! O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures for ever.

Colossians 3:17

Whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

Words of Grace For Today

Giving God thanks surely involves using our voices and God’s name, though when we use God’s name constantly in our communication with other people it is a grand misuse of God’s name, grace, and steadfast love.

Truly, in word and deed, doing everything in the name of our Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God is so much more than mere words of thanks, or constant mention of God’s name.

Giving God thanks is an attitude towards life that brings us to reflect God’s grace towards others.

It is to give of one’s self so that others will live, whether they accept and practice faith in Jesus Christ, or not, for all people are God’s creatures, God’s precious people, people God forgives.

Giving God thanks is to extend to all others the same grace that God first has given (and continually gives) to us.

More often than not it is to do it anonymously, so our names are not known or remembered, so that our God’s name is not known or remembered … rather that God’s grace towards us is experienced as God’s grace towards other people. We certainly are not to bring people to worship or adore us for our good deeds and gracious words. We certainly are not sent out into the world to bring people to worship a ‘small god’, a godlet of any kind even one they name Jesus.

There are enough people worshipping a godlet of some kind or another, and too often they call that godlet ‘Jesus’. It certainly is not.

The past president of Tanzania is one very visible example: Covid 19 hit and shut down country after country in Africa with restrictions and precautions. What did this ‘Lutheran Christian’ do? He prayed. Certainly good. Then he announced to the country that his ‘godlet’ ‘Jesus’ had cured all Tanzanians of Covid 19. There was to be no mention of any respiratory illness as Covid 19, though there were thousands of cases everywhere. His godlet Jesus caused the avoidable death and long term disability through Covid 19 (and long Covid 19) of thousands of Tanzanians. That kind of godlet, no matter what it is called, is certainly not the Jesus of Nazareth, Son of God, healer of our every ill, the creator, redeemer and sanctifier of the universe and all people in it.

Small gods, godlets, are made up every day by so many people looking for a way through life’s challenges.

God walks with us, seeing all we do, and still God’s steadfast love endures for ever for us and all people.

Because God is gracious to us, therefore we can be gracious with all the deadly covidiots out there, and all the abusers, and all those with power who abuse it, and all those who thought (and those that still think) residential schools were acceptable, … and all the enemies of life abundant for all.

Treating the enemies of life abundant for all is how we give thanks to God, for God’s grace worked first for us.

…

Happy 90th Birthday Celebration Dort!

Very sorry we cannot cross the border to be there to celebrate with you.

A Time and Place

Thursday, July 8, 2021

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Everything has it’s time.

The living water of Christ that spans the globe in the oceans,

Breaks in on us (at the right time and place)

and Gives Us Life

For this we give thanks.

Psalm 48:10

Your name, O God, like your praise, reaches to the ends of the earth. Your right hand is filled with victory.

Acts 3:1

One day Peter and John were going up to the temple at the hour of prayer, at three o’clock in the afternoon.

Words of Grace For Today

When Jim, George and Helen, Wayne, and Frank went on a canoe trip, they were not fully prepared for what they would encounter. (Pretty normal for most of life for most of us.) Three days out a storm threatened a great deal of rain. They made camp on an island, not as far as they had planned to be that day, with one day before their return.

They set their tents rotating out to kitchen duties, to prepare supper, a pot of hearty soup. Chilled as they were when George and Helen started out they called on their southwestern US residence and added a bit of extra pepper as they fried the meat for the soup, knowing it would take off the chill.

Jim relieved them so they could set up their tent, nicely trenched as they knew it needed to be to provide a dry night’s rest. Chilled as he was from the afternoon paddling in the rain he added a bit of extra pepper to the soup in addition to the vegetables he chopped up and added to the meat.

Wayne, his tent set up and nicely trenched, returned with more firewood and took over from Jim, stoking the fire and warming himself as he went. He stirred the soup, more a stew by now, and added some minute rice, and a little extra pepper to take the chill off the wet evening.

Frank arrived, tent setup but not trenched, since he’d gotten the last available spot and the rocks and roots were not about to be trenched.

He added a bit of pepper to the stew to take the chill off and then as everyone gathered divide out the stew to each person, with only a small bit left in the pot, all covered with dark spots of something.

…

With gusto they all started to dig in, hungry after a long day paddling and a wet afternoon, as the rain continued to fall … having no effect on the heat created in their mouths and stomachs by ‘just a little extra’ pepper in the stew.

…

There is a right time, a right measure, for everything.

Prayer has it’s time: always.

God has God’s place: everywhere.

Everything else is better in moderation.

Being God’s Message

Wednesday, July 7, 2021

One cloud alone

reflects God’s light

at sunset.

As Two Clouds

‘walk’ the sky ‘hand in hand’,

So we walk in God’s light

with others in love,

as God walks with us.

Psalm 79:9

Help us, O God of our salvation, for the glory of your name; deliver us, and forgive our sins, for your name’s sake.

1 John 4:10

In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.

Words of Grace For Today

The beginning of every moment, every event, every situation, every life, every day … of every every is God’s Love.

God’s Love that created a universe with life in it, and us as life self-aware in among the many forms of life,

God’s Love that gave us freedom to love, and therefore freedom to not-love (that is: to sin),

God’s Love that holds the universe together (whether it’s String Theory or particles and strings, it’s all God’s Love),

God’s Love that holds life together, even our lives, giving us our daily needs, including meaningful labour and the ability to love and be loved,

God’s Love that gives us God’s answer to our sins: forgiveness and renewed life,

God’s Love that walks with us each moment of each day, even when we walk ourselves into the hell of the Evil One’s influence (as God’s Love keeps us walking right out the other side of hell back into life abundant),

God’s Love … it is the every every of our lives.

God loves us not for our sakes as if we somehow became more valuable and the purpose of the universe just because God loves us. Rather God loves us for God’s name’s sake, for God’s message about God to be seen and heard by all people through God’s grace acted out for us in forgiveness.

God forgives us and we receive life again. The rest of all humans, those long since have lived on earth, those that live now, and those that will live, receive a clear message about God: God loves people. God loves us. And God loves them!

We get to screw our lives, because we are going to anyway, and because we become the raw material for God’s communication to all humans: God’s clear message that God loves us, and that God’s Love is the beginning of all, it is the every of all, and it is the end of all in all (the purpose and the result and the finality – the end of all time for each human as well as that for all humans.)

Until then we are privileged to be the message of God’s Love for all people: that we are forgiven and renewed, and that we can live for others, as Jesus lived for others, that all people may have life, and life abundant!

So it is that we enjoy the reprieve from the record-breaking, sweltering heat of climate change that sat over us last week with the cool more common in autumn.

So it is that we prepare for the next days of heat, hopefully not record-breaking.

So it is that we learn to enjoy winter all that much more, and especially autumn, after the bugs are gone and before everything freezes requiring more wood for a modicum of warmth inside.

So it is that we enjoy having an ‘inside’ that can be heated against the cold outside.

So it is that we enjoy everything about life, and find pure joy in a breath of fresh air, a stormy day, and a calm morning sunrise … as we wait for our last sunset that comes to harvest every mortal creature … knowing God’s Love walks with us each precious day and will walk with us also then.

Until that day our purpose is to be the message for all humans, that God loves us all!

In this is love, not that we loved God but that God loved us and sent God’s only Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.

Hallowed Love

Monday, July 5, 2021

There is no way we are perfect!

Forgiven we can do wonders

for each other.

Exodus 20:7

You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses his name.

Luke 11:2

He said to them, ‘When you pray, say: Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come.’

Words of Grace For Today

How can we live a perfectly righteous life, enjoying everything in creation as we and it was intended to be enjoyed?

The ten commandments are a basic framework of how to live well in community in God’s creation.

The first thing is to get things right about God: to know God, to speak well of God, to speak well to God. God is not just another thing in creation. Nor is God just another being in creation. Nor is God just another special entity beyond creation. God is Creator of us and all that is! God is the only entity beyond creation.

God is not disengaged from us or from creation. God is far more than creation and yet God is always with us in creation. God is intimately involved with every little detail of our lives and every thread of creation’s time.

God is also for us.

God is interested in us getting the best out of life that life has to offer.

In a word more powerful than we will ever be able to know: God love us.

God wants us to know God, and respect God.

God wants us to be for all of creation.

God wants us to respect creation and other people.

In a word more powerful than we will ever be able to know: God wants us to love God, and all of God’s creation, and all of God’s people.

That would make for a perfectly righteous life for us and everyone.

How far we fall from that ideal!

In fact, God does not acquit us on any charge as we live so much of our lives against God, against creation and against each other!

God judges us guilty, deserving of death!

And then God forgives us! Again, and again, and again, and on and on and on all our lives!

How can we respond?

Well we could try not to misuse God’s name, for starters, and thereby teaching ourselves to respect God, which is the beginning of love.

There is so much more that we can do, with marginal success, except one thing we can do nearly perfect all the time. We can pray.

We can pray as Jesus taught us, including that we can pray that God’s name be hallowed and that God’s Rule will come – though it is come near and will come completely one day whether we pray or not. Praying for it to come helps us to remember that we are able to act towards others with love since God’s Rule is already here.

As an aside since it is a huge issue today (again as many times in history): God does not have gender and God has all genders. It is our referring to God solely as having only one gender that skews our ability to see each other with love. It is our refusal to refer to God with any one gender (to say God does not have that gender) that skews our ability to see each other with love.

Historically Christians have referred to God as male, a reflection of a mistaken idea worked out against us all that males are more human, more like God, more powerful than females. Huge mistake.

The efforts to correct this are often as hate-fuelled and therefore so skewed as to make love impossible.

It’s time we prayed that God’s Rule would come now for us on these issues, so that we are freed to address God as mother, as parent, as Abba, and with all other labels of gender, so that we see that all genders are a reflection of God’s goodness and love for us all in creation!

Heat, Spirit, and Cooler Days!

Thursday, July 1, 2021

No Matter the Heat,

No Matter the Evil We Face ,

Or the Doubt We Know,

God’s Promises Are As Sure

As The Coming of Winter

and the Return of Cooler Days.

Hosea 13:4

Yet I have been the Lord your God ever since the land of Egypt; you know no God but me, and besides me there is no saviour.

1 John 4:13-14

By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and do testify that the Father has sent his Son as the Saviour of the world.

Words of Grace For Today

If only all in the world would only know our God as generously gracious, loving and merciful, and always walking with us, all of us.

If only we could know our God so, and remember that … every day, no matter what.

We can know that God is with us, for even in our darkest hour, the story of Jesus saving the world and us in it can always convince us anew that God is with us and for us, just as God worked to save God’s people from slavery in Egypt, from the wilderness, and from all the temptations of the Evil One.

Spirit and spirit, God meets us as we are and as God is: always fully spirited, always able to follow in Jesus’ way, giving good words and God’s good promises to all.

Whose Story Do Our Lives Tell?

Tuesday, June 29, 2021

It’s hot!

It’s so hot that I put out six eggs, cheese, and spices

by the outside propane stove.

Then I went inside to get the iron skillet for making scrambled eggs

and they were hard boiled before I could crack them

and the cheese was burned to charcoal.

The spices were still good.

We are to be like the hot spices for life!

2 Samuel 14:14

We must all die; we are like water spilled on the ground, which cannot be gathered up. But God will not take away a life; he will devise plans so as not to keep an outcast banished for ever from his presence.

Luke 5:30-31

The Pharisees and their scribes were complaining to his disciples, saying, ‘Why do you eat and drink with tax-collectors and sinners?’ Jesus answered, ‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick [do]!

Words of Grace For Today

The secret to life really is to recognize how screwed up everyone is, how far from God’s good books we all behave and remove ourselves. We like to cast others out, out of God’s house, out of civilized company, out of our lives. In fact the ones who do the casting out are usually the ones most deserving of being cast out. They not only are so screwed up and so far from behaving justly, lovingly, and with gratitude for God’s gifts; they also deny they are anything but perfect or maybe just slightly flawed.

GUFFAW

The other part of the secret to life is to recognize that nothing can help us, especially not ourselves, and not even chocolate or coffee or scotch (or any variation on those themes.) Nothing can help us except God. Knowing God, fearing and loving God, frees us to recognize that God WANTS us! God works all kinds of miracles to convince us that God actually forgives us! God freely and generously gives us forgiven, redeemed, and renewed life, again and again and again and … without end.

God wants us to know God walks with us always.

God does not banish us. Other people pretend they can, but God remains by our side. When we get tossed onto the garbage heap of life and even tossed out into the darkness of hell itself, God walks with us, and keeps us walking right out of that darkness back into life abundant.

Jesus came not to care for those who thought they were healthy. Jesus came to show us that we were all sick, and that Jesus was ever ready to heal us of our every illness.

Death will come to us all. That will end the injustice done by many. Still God does not abandon us, nor give us our enemies’ deaths as the only hope for a better life. Already today God gathers us into Paradise with all the saints in light, if we will only see and recognize all that God does for us! At our deaths God keeps walking by our sides and gathers us still into Paradise with all the saints in light, who have accompanied us on our sojourn each day, hoping for us, hoping that we will also be the saints who share Jesus’ wonderful healing presence and promise with those the world casts out, and those who cast others out.

God continually devises plans so as not to keep an outcast banished for ever; God sends Jesus the physician of the universe to all who are sick; God sends us to heal the sick in heart, spirit, and body with Jesus’ Word and Jesus’ story.

Child’s Play? Rather a Parent’s Pleasure!

Monday, June 28, 2021

We Are More Than Mere Reflections

Wondrous as They Are.

We Are Children!

Malachi 3:17

They shall be mine, says the Lord of hosts, my special possession on the day when I act, and I will spare them as parents spare their children who serve them.

Ephesians 1:5

He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will.

Words of Grace For Today

To be a child, not an orphan, means one belongs to those who are very alive, a parent or more parents.

If one’s parent(s) are good parent(s) the future is always filled with promise and hope.

When God adopts us as children our parent is the best parent, and our futures are filled with more promise and hope than we will ever realize.

Each day, no matter the challenges beyond comparison or even joys that seem to free us from any need for God or darkness for which we cannot find words nor coherent thoughts … each day because God claims us as children, we need not fear anything, not anything at all. We can be assured that in all things God walks with us. God claims us as special children, children that God spares from the destruction of the Evil One.

This is God’s good pleasure, that we can live free from the destruction to which the Evil One would subject us.

We can count our blessings.