Category: Sunset

Generous Grace and Mercy

Tuesday, May 18, 2021

When We Wander Away

God’s Light Guides Us to the Path

to Do God’s Grace and Mercy for Others

Psalm 111:4

He has gained renown by his wonderful deeds; the Lord is gracious and merciful.

Luke 24:30-31

When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight.

Words of Grace For Today

There are so many things that people do to others that are so hideous one can hardly believe we humans are capable of such things. There are so many things that people do to others that no one ever finds out about. Some are so evil that every effort is made to conceal them from all time. Others are so marvellous, and yet no one gets to celebrate that at least every once in a while a human being is actually capable of doing something to others that is a gracious and merciful … and generous … as God is with us all.

We can sit to eat with someone and not know what evil things that person has done. They have concealed them well enough from us.

We can sit to eat with someone and not know what great things that person has done. Somehow we do not put two and two together.

Fifty five year old Joe had never married. He was not gay, or mean, or uninteresting, or poor. Nor was he wealthy, addicted to chemicals or work or anything at all. He was just plain, not aggressive, not driven. He was an introvert so life alone did not bother him at all. He was well educated and still he found work as he could doing this and that, never for much more than a simple living. He loved the outdoors, not shooting at it or fishing food from it, just to be in it. He hiked mountains to find solitude. He took photos of some magnificent things in nature, moving and still, large and so small though he rarely shared them with anyone.

When Maggie met him climbing a mountain taking photos of a pair of eagles playing in the sky they hit it off right away. They shared a love of being in nature, enjoying the solitude, finding beauty in unexpected corners. They spent months out in nature together, and it did not matter to either that he was 15 years older than she … they fell in love. Despite her children from her deceased husband and her parents not approving at all, they were married.

Her parents had been looking for a home of their own for decades. Maggie, as the only child, knew exactly their mantra of what they wanted: a three bedroom house, with a garden and shed out back for her mom to grow a garden of vegetables and flowers. A garage large enough for their small car and a boat on a trailer for her father to use fishing. A few months after the wedding, which her parents did not go to, one of their oft-contacted-realtors called them. They’d found the perfect house for them. They thought for sure they could not afford it, but the realtor said that it was listed at a rather unbelievable price for a fast sale, and they could afford it. They bought it and moved in within the week.

Maggie’s twin daughter and son each had their eye on different colleges, but neither could afford it. They applied and were accepted. Both were offered financial packages that made it possible for them. So off they went to their dream studies.

Then Maggie was diagnosed with cancer; she battled it with Joe at her side. Her children and her parents came once early on and then stayed away, showing their judgment against Joe. Within a month she died, the pain only somewhat mitigated by the large morphine doses.

Her children and her parents openly blamed Joe, though there was little reality in it. They were angry, looking for someone to blame. Joe was devastated to have lost his only love in his life.

Three years after her death Joe invited Maggie’s parents and twins over for a coffee at his simple house. When they sat to drink tea and coffee, Joe asked about the garden and the boat, and about the twin’s studies. It was not until they had finished their coffees and teas, along with homemade cake and ginger snaps that they realized the details of Joe’s questions could only be asked by someone who knew so much more than they had told Maggie about even before their marriage. It was minutes later as they said good bye and walked to their cars that it became clear: Joe and Maggie together had made the parent’s house and the twins studies possible.

As the parents and children had condemned the two, they had responded with grace and generosity to give them their dreams … and they had only discovered it years later after Maggie’s death … and after they had blamed Joe for Maggie’s death.

God does not let us go on and on without recognizing the wonder of God’s deeds of grace and mercy for us. So after Jesus has spent the day with the disciples teaching them everything (and they do not recognize him because he has died) when Jesus was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him.

By God’s grace and mercy we know all that God needs us to know of his wondrous deeds.

The question of our lives each day is this:

What are we going to do, since God equips us to be the doers of such generous grace and mercy?

God Rocks! God Rules Everywhere!

Friday, May 14, 2021

God’s Glory Shines Everywhere!

Psalm 103:19

The Lord has established his throne in the heavens, and his kingdom rules over all.

Revelation 19:6-7

Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the sound of many waters and like the sound of mighty thunder-peals, crying out, ‘Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready.’

Words of Grace For Today

When the evil of those who are entrusted to be just and honest and good reaches arbitrarily into so many lives, destroying the old and the young alike, then we have pause to wonder:

Is God at all listening, watching, caring at all?!

Our travails are no greater than many humans have experienced through history. Truth is they are not as great as so many. We read the witness left by those who suffered so much more than we do today.

The witnesses through the generations are clear, wondrous and sure:

God has established God’s throne in the heavens, and God’s kingdom rules over all.

There will be many days that Evil will drive us to doubt God’s love, God’s promises and God’s deliverance. On those days, in those moments, the witnesses that have gone before us bring us back to trust the power of God, the Almighty, the All-Knowing, and the All-Loving.

We can join the chorus crying: ‘Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory!’

We, too, give witness for the generations that follow us, that God has given God’s heart to us in love, with a love that created us, rescues us, and sustains us!

No matter what comes our way with hearts filled with wonder we know that God has given us all lives of great challenge, love, and adventure!

Security , Real Security!

Wednesday, May 12, 2021

Royal Purple

Secures All That is Good!

Psalm 91:1-2

You who live in the shelter of the Most High, who abide in the shadow of the Almighty, will say to the Lord, ‘My refuge and my fortress; my God, in whom I trust.’

1 John 5:14

This is the boldness we have in him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.

Words of Grace For Today

The greatest danger in life is fear, which drives us to instinctive responses, and schemes to secure our own lives and our own futures.

Seeking such security is a futile effort, and it always will be.

Only God can provide us such security.

What we can do is give every once of energy and life we have received in providing life abundant for other people, all other people, not just our chosen few!

Trusting that God hears our pleas, God abides in us, and we abide in the shadow of the Almighty brings us to live with a boldness that is the beginning of worshipping God, serving God, and loving all other people as God loves us.

We know where our refuge and my fortress is; God is with us, no matter what.

We can face every danger, every evil, every challenge with grace-filled hearts, breath to spare, and grateful generosity. We can be generous with all God has entrusted to us, as God is generous with us.

What a life! What an adventure!

Destroy, … or … Jesus’ Story De-story’d

Sunday, May 9, 2021

How Often We Try to Change

God’s Story for Us

Into Something More to Our Liking

And We Destroy (de-storying) Ourselves!

Deuteronomy 33:27

He subdues the ancient gods, shatters the forces of old; he drove out the enemy before you, and said, ‘Destroy!’

Luke 1:50

His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation.

Words of Grace For Today

Lord have mercy on us!

The people, led by Joshua, move across the Jordan into the Promised Land. They are going to take it, occupy it, and claim it as their God given right. They have something of a claim to some of the land, for this is where Abraham and Sarah raised first Ishmael and then Isaac, and their grandchildren, Jacob and Esau, and after them the great grandchildren including Joseph. The 2nd generation of those who ran from Pharaoh’s slavery to be delivered into the Wilderness are all there is left, for those that were delivered from Pharaoh’s chariots and army through the Red Sea, turned against God at Sinai, made a godlet, an idol of their own gold in the form of a calf, and worshipped it.

Now, the story is told that God has subdued the ancient gods, shattered the forces of old, driven out the enemy before them and called on them to ‘Destroy.’

For the Love of God, how can we mess up God’s story for us so badly.

And then Luke continues in the same vein, for it is not a seldom embraced idea that somehow ‘we’ are good or at least ‘chosen’ and ‘blessed by God’ and they (or all others) are bad and not chosen and not blessed, and here as it reads are destroyed.

First off we ought to notice with open minds that the ancient gods are not subdued. They and their supports in force have risen up in the form of ‘new age’ religions.

Second off we ought to notice that God has not driven off the enemy before us. The enemy is still here, doing great damage to so many people. Further, the greatest enemy is not those that work against us; it is ourselves working against God who give power to evil from others and from within ourselves. We end up worshipping that ‘golden calf’ of our own making from our own ‘gold’. We turn from God as fast and thoroughly as any of God’s people ever have!

Third off we ought to notice that humans have used God as an excuse to ‘destroy’ since the beginning of time. The story of Jesus, the old, old story of Jesus and God’s love does not include destroying our enemies. It teaches us that we, like God does for us and all people, are called to love, forgive, and hope that God can save our enemies, as God has saved us.

Lastly we ought to notice that God’s mercy, in so much of Jesus’ story this is made blatantly obvious, extends not to just a chosen few, not to just those who fear and trust God, but to all people, even our worst enemies! God’s mercy extends to all people, from generation to generation.

Those who God has saved, as we are, received abundant life. That is not a life of comfort and abundance. It is life lived, no matter our circumstances, blessed with God’s truth, with God’s Promise, and with the call to extend Grace and life abundant to as many people as we possibly can in our ‘3 score, ten’ that we breathe.

Lord have mercy on us, all!

Love vs Slings and Arrows

Saturday, May 8, 2021

‘Seen My Love, Lately?’

Psalm 44:26

Rise up, come to our help. Redeem us for the sake of your steadfast love.

Luke 17:21

Nor will they say, “Look, here it is!” or “There it is!” For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you.

Words of Grace For Today

As the slings and arrows fly at us, we are desperate for God to save us, not only from the things piercing the air so near us, some not passing us by. We need to be saved from ourselves. One only needs to recognize how we have dealt with the beauty of creation around, in and among us to know that we really do screw things up good. Or bad as it were.

So we require God’s salvation, and we cry ‘Rise up, come to our help. Redeem us for the sake of your steadfast love,’for it is not on our own merit that we can possibly hope God will redeem us. We need God’s grace provided to us; we are solely dependent on God’s steadfast love as the reason God would save us.

So God provides all we need.

Further we need not look. We need not seek somewhere else. For the kingdom of God is here among us!

Great that it is, a life dependent on God’s Grace, on God’s steadfast love only.

…

until we collectively and individually screw it up so royally again and the slings and arrows of others’ misplaced anger start piercing the air around and toward us.

So we cry to God to save us

…

again and again we repeat this, and God, for the sake only of God’s steadfast love, continues to save us.

What a love!

Wise Choices OR the Usual?

Friday, May 7, 2021

No Matter How Nice It Appears,

When We Choose to Walk Away from God,

We Walk on Thin Ice.

We Choose Thin Ice

Too Often

Psalm 25:5

Lead me in your truth, and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation; for you I wait all day long.

1 John 5:15

If we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have obtained the requests made of him.

Words of Grace For Today

There are so many choices we must make each day or make by trying to not make the choices; they catch us no matter.

The wiser we get, hopefully before we get too old, the more we notice how little we know of everything we need to know. We see how desperately we need help.

So we learn to plead to God for help: lead us in your truth, and teach us.

Where else are we to ask for what we need?

Where else in this world of corruption from top to bottom are we to find truth, about us, about others, and about God?

We know when we ask God, God will provide what we need.

This is God’s promise, which we can trust.

There is no more we need from life than what God provides, for it give us everything worth waiting for; God’s truth that is irrefutable.

Trusting God’s truth gives us life in the face of so many lies about ourselves, about others, about what God is and is not.

Trusting God’s truth gives us life, life abundant.

‘Victorious’ vs the meek>

Wednesday, May 5, 2021

God Created All That Is.

God Judges Everyone for Everything.

…

We all win.

Jeremiah 27:5

It is I who by my great power and my outstretched arm have made the earth, with the people and animals that are on the earth, and I give it to whomsoever I please.

Matthew 5:5

Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

Words of Grace For Today

We work so hard to survive.

And when that is accomplished or given to us by our station at birth or by sheer insane luck, stupidity, or corruption we humans always look to have more from life. We measure it in what is ours! not theirs.

Yet God created this earth not for us to divide it up among ourselves. God created it good, sufficient for all, held together by love, renewed by Grace, and sanctified to be wondrous – including us!

The bold seem to win the most at this inane game of possessing what cannot be possessed, love, land, security, hope and the future.

Jeremiah and Jesus puts it clearly that God is the creator and the one who gives the earth to stewards, and those stewards are not the bold and victorious in our inane human games we have reduced life to.

The meek will inherit the earth.

After we are done ruining it, the victorious will not want it. They will move on to other planets, other challenges, other inane games that they can use to ‘prove’ they are significant.

Only God determines who is significant and for what we are significant.

Have you any clear idea for what we are significant?

Or who is significant to God?

What does the old, old story of Jesus and his love teach us about for what we are significant and who is included in this ‘we’?

…

Right, all are included (even the deluded ‘victorious’) for we are significant at all to God, solely because …

Because God chooses to love us!

Another Day

Tuesday, May 4, 2021

A Shadow of One’s Self;

God Strengthens the Whole.

Set for another day!

Psalm 138:3

On the day I called, you answered me, you increased my strength of soul.

Romans 10:12

For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him.

Words of Grace For Today

Love is true,

Hope is strong.

Set for another day.

…

The eagle soars above,

the loons sing across the water.

Set for another day.

…

The water jug is full;

the bucket toilet emptied.

Set for another day.

…

Enemies have had their way,

God promises they are moot.

Set for another day.

…

The night brings freezing,

The day brings warmth.

Set for another day.

…

The soup has beans,

the milk stays cool.

Set for another day.

…

The visitors stay far,

the deer graze near.

Set for another day.

…

The wood is gathered,

the wood is split.

Set for another day.

…

The world does not want to know

that I breathe only by Grace, still

Set for another day.

…

The wind blows sleet

the sun hides above thick storm clouds, still

Set for another day.

…

The story is told;

no one listens, still

Set for another day.

…

I called on God.

God answered with true love.

Set for another day.

…

Love is true

Hope is strong.

Set for another day.

Limits Are Nothing Compared to God’s Delight

Monday, May 3, 2021

Dark Above

Dark Below

Danger on the Horizon

...

Yet God Is My Stay,

Each Day.

2 Samuel 22:19-20

They came upon me in the day of my calamity, but the Lord was my stay. He brought me out into a broad place; he delivered me, because he delighted in me.

Matthew 9:9

As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, ‘Follow me.’ And he got up and followed him.

Words of Grace For Today

The life I live is limited by many restrictions. While so many others feel the restrictions to protect us all from Covid 19 (or sort of at least), years before Covid 19 the reality of abject poverty, a ruined reputation, and injustice profound kept my horizons down to surviving one day, one week, one month, one season interrupted by desperate, life threatening needs.

As at no other time in my life, though some have come nearly as close, I have known that God walks with me,

and

that I am blessed with a life abundant.

I, with so many other humans through history, know well these words as my/our own:

They came upon me in the day of my calamity, but the Lord was my stay. He brought me out into a broad place; he delivered me, because he delighted in me.

Perhaps you do, too?

This I have known as well, that God has called me, perhaps not like Jesus calling Matthew away from a life as a hated tax collector, but to be one who shares God’s Grace with as many people as I am able.

As I have followed Jesus, knowing that God delights in me, I have given my all each day as I was able. I have delighted in God’s claim on me, and the promise that God will walk with me no matter what, and that there is nothing that can separate me from the Love of God. For God has claimed me, a sinner of my own making, and made me a saint of God’s own making. In that everyone has hope. If God can save me, attacked as I am by foes yet each day, surely God can save anyone.

God created this earth, and us in it … and when it was done God said, “It is Good!”

So we can be good this day, too. Why not! If not now, when?!

May Day Morning Reflections

Sunday, May 2, 2021

A Little Spring Ice

Is Sprung from the Water

by a ‘Little’ Wind

Deuteronomy 32:46-47

Take to heart all the words that I am giving in witness against you today; give them as a command to your children, so that they may diligently observe all the words of this law. This is no trifling matter for you, but rather your very life; through it you may live long in the land that you are crossing over the Jordan to possess.

John 6:63

It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.

Words of Grace For Today

May Day

God has spoken, commanded, given wisdom so that we may live long in the Promised Land.

God’s Word gives us life, renews our spirit, revives the body, and calls us to live abundantly.

God’s Word created this wondrous world we live in and are working so hard to destroy in order to provide ourselves comforts and luxuries un-dreamed of by most of all our ancestors.

Yet, on this first day of May, God’s Word comes alive, as it often does for those who care to listen, breathe, and respond to the call to live, and live abundantly.

What a marvellous thing to wake up, without having had to have a fire going to keep things from freezing, to light the fire laid last night, and walk about under the trees down to the lake, in the sun and in the shade absorbing warmth in the just above freezing fresh air and the cool breeze from the ice piled on the shore from yesterday’s westerlies.

What a wonder that the air moved as wind is powerful enough to move the weight of the ice against itself and pile it up four and six feet high on to the shore, exposing crystals formed last fall to the open air and camera lens.

What a wonder it is that these tall trees (tall for Alberta at 40+ feet) can stand against gravity and those winds, until they do not. In the recent high winds (the new norm) more than a few have had their tops snapped off falling to the forest floor they are so weighted. Old trees have been knocked clear out of the ground, broken at the root. One green and budding 50+ foot poplar is snapped clean off just above the ground, falling through everything on it’s way to bounce not at all off the ground, around 1000 lbs of tree become dead become wood at the onslaught of one last wind. Other trees in the nearby woods similarly have taken it ‘on the cheek’, or rather ‘off the root’.

It is a glorious morning time, before the noise of the day, of human activity and campers’ abuse of the woods, of oil industry traffic dimming in the distance to be replaced by the dull roar of the plants processing heavy bitumen into heavy oil, thinned enough to pump through pipe networks to gas plants and shipping ports.

For now all is still here near the lake and far into the woods, until the birds sing and flit about, the birds on the ice screech and geese honk, the owl hoots a few last times before the day’s rest. Shadows from the sun reaching past the bare tree trunks reach the grass and leaves on the brown and green grass, striping it with stark lines pointing toward the water.

The one huge pain of this tree budding season lays in wait ready to ambush my body’s immune system, overloading it, scratching at my eyes, piercing my sinus with pain, running fluid into my throat and into my lungs. Allergies will sap more than half my energy as my body fights an invisible, unknown, unassailable opponent for more than the 60th season, giving it everything and losing it all to not even a tie-breaker. Medicine will relieve the losses, day by day, and take days off the end of my life, even now leading to infections in my lungs, bronchitis which robs me of my breath, and occasionally pneumonia laying flat on my back inches from needing a hospital’s oxygen to survive.

This is a glorious morning, with it’s inherent promise of surviving another -30⁰ and colder winter that will still come my way, God willing and ‘the creek not rising’, and it’s twinges in my nostrils and scratches in my eyes that foreshadow the battles to be fought and lost yet again against an invisible, unknown and unnecessary foe.

This is a glorious morning, a blessing provided by God’s unending Grace.

This is a glorious morning, which I will enjoy and be profoundly grateful for, for God has rescued me so that I can survive the lies, the scapegoating, the gaslighting, the false testimonies and affidavits, the injustice, the false convictions, and the cruel rulings that benefit no one, especially not the children.

Breathe.

This is a glorious morning in and by which God continues to bless me.

Breathe.

And prepare for the days’ hard labours, which keep this aging body able to move against arthritis, decay, gaslighting, and cruel injustices.

Breathe.

…

…

…

God has spoken, commanded, given wisdom so that we may live long in the Promised Land.

God’s Word gives us life, renews our spirit, revives the body, and calls us to live abundantly.

God’s Word created this wondrous world we live in and are working so hard to destroy in order to provide ourselves comforts and luxuries un-dreamed of by most of all our ancestors.

Yet, on this first day of May, God’s Word comes alive, as it often does for those who care to listen, breathe, and respond to the call to live, and live abundantly.

Breathe even, and especially, in these times of new normals.