Sunset – Page 31

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – December 18

Friday, December 18, 2020

Repent?

Is this the Way? Is this God’s Way for Us?

Is this the Way of Christ:

to the Cross to Give All Life Abundant?

Hosea 4:1

Hear the word of the Lord, O people of Israel; for the Lord has an indictment against the inhabitants of the land. There is no faithfulness or loyalty, and no knowledge of God in the land.

Matthew 3:2

‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.’

Words of Grace For Today

Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.

Repent is to turn around, to proceed in the other direction, in the other manner, to proceed with the Grace of God instead of pounding one’s head against the wall of the Devil’s empty promises in vain trying to make something of life, something that cannot be made … it can only be received …

And God offers it freely.

Beethoven would be 250 years old this year. Overcoming all temptations to decay into decomposition humour, he still connects people with their own powerful and profound emotions and with through these emotions to other people. His 5^th and 9^th symphonies pound down in all the force of life in bar after bar of melody circling to a full climactic ending, that is both a relief to reach and leaves one wanting more. His pastorale melodies encircle the fog of the early morning’s kiss on the lake and bespeak the yearning that connects us all in the hope of being loved and being able to love purely, simply, profoundly. ZDF provides a tour of the world to places and people touched to the core by Beethoven’s music; Bonn, Osaka, Medellín, Ruhrgebiet, Brisbane, Rsumeb (Namibia), Queensland, Chennai (India.)

Music like Beethoven’s reaches deep into us, moves us, heals us, connects us to other people, creates empathy in us for others, and miraculously sets the world right … if for only a short moment.

This is one way in which the Kingdom of God has come near. It is one way in which God reaches into our hearts and calls us to repent, and moves us to proceed in a manner more fitting the wonders that God created us to be and to know in this tragic and beautiful existence we all know.

Where there is no faithfulness or loyalty, and no knowledge of God in the land (which is everywhere in every generation) let music probe deep into our hearts, minds, and lives so that we may repent and proceed in a new (ancient) direction of walking humbly with our God, sharing the Good News (the old, old story of Jesus and God’s love), and always working for justice for all people.

For this Christ came. This we prepare to celebrate, quietly, at our core, with the midnight darkness of our lives sparkling as our candles of remembering, thanks, celebration, and hope, held by people of all sizes, colours, creeds, and experiences pierce through the darkness.

Light one, two, three, [four] candles to wait for Messiah, let the light banish darkness ….

Advent Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – December 17

Thursday, December 17, 2020

In the Darkness, a Mere Reflection of

the Brilliance of the Light, Promised

That Gives Hope to All Creation!

Jeremiah 31:17

There is hope for your future, says the Lord: your children shall come back to their own country.

Revelation 3:20

Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me.

Words of Grace For Today

Trump will try to present Congress with alternative Electoral College votes, making history with his continued and unprecedented efforts to undermine the democratic election process in the US; and millions voted for him and still support him!

Courts (too many) abuse their authority, declaring lies to be facts, innocent people guilty, legitimate claims to be bogus and lawyers’ lies to be truths; and millions are pleased with the injustice that preserves their way of life. Good, honest men, mostly, spend time in jail and have their reputations ruined. Psychological assessments are made of the good, honest men by corrupt and dishonest ‘experts’ (well paid for their false reports), even when the men have had a life of psychological supervision, testing, and review as they’ve provided counselling to countless people. On appeal the judges simply rubber stamp the injustice, and use legal process to further ruin good, honest, innocent men, eating up their disappeared financial resources, while hiding the truth about the judges’ own lies about the evidence given in court.

RCMP (way too many) focus on good men, help women coordinate false reports over years, invite uninvolved bystanders to create false reports, make false arrests, lay false charges, bully the prisoners, and laugh with corrupt community ‘leaders’ at the fun of ruining good, honest, men, fathers to children who now will be raised by single mothers.

The mothers (far and away too many, for one is already too many) are sick, each in their own way, encouraged by church and community ‘leaders’ to lie, to reward the children for lying in court, to play the victim, as they perpetrate their emotional violence against the men in their lives, just because they can, or because to be honest would mean having to share sizable assets with their men, but killing the men or ruining them in court they get to keep all the assets for themselves. And the children learn that nothing matters except money. Truth, honesty, integrity all must be sacrificed in order to accumulate more and more money. Which perpetuates the cycle of real crimes, and real lies, and real murders into the next, and the next and the next generations.

There is hope for your future, says the Lord: your children shall come back to their own country.

Jeremiah’s words, written in a completely different context, meet today’s corruption of the children and stand firm as God’s promise: True JUSTICE will be done. Our children will return and learn to honour, themselves, their ancestors, and their God. Our children will learn to fear and love God in all things, above all things. Our children will learn to be kind to all people. Our children will learn to tell the old, old story of Jesus and his love, and know that it is what makes them able to breathe, and allows them to be that Word for all other people.

We are those children, each day, tempted to hear from the corruptions of the world in all its guises, to place value on things that wither like leaves and grass. To us all Jesus calls out especially this Advent season which is so different than those for us before:

Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me.

No one will celebrate Christmas alone, for Christ sits to eat with us, sits to pray with us, sits to motivate us to reach out to family and friends … and especially the strangers in our midst who are all alone.

Perhaps this Christmas, Christ will win the hearts of some of those corrupt politicians and their supporters, judges, some of those RCMP, some of those community ‘leaders’, some of those women … and there will be a double victory for many as injustices are righted AND we celebrate that these people live honourable lives, serving Christ, with integrity seeking truth and the best interests of children and parents … and our future, first, and conducting themselves accordingly … according to a life that is daily guided by repentance, forgiveness, and God’s unconditional Grace and love.

How we will celebrate then!

Since this is God’s promise already to us all, we have much to celebrate this Christmas, much to prepare for this Advent.

Covid 19 places all sorts of challenges before us, and the Holy Spirit guides holy people to seize on them as opportunities to renew our trust in God, and in God alone.

Snow falls, inch by inch, fresh every 12 hours or so. The sun hides above the clouds. The days are short, here 7.5 hours of daylight. Next week they start to get longer, though only by a minute a day taking a whole month to add an hour of daylight. Then the sun will shine on the snow, bright and brilliant, just as Christ’s Light already shines in every darkness, every darkness of the past, or the present and of the future.

Light One, Two, Three candles to watch for Messiah, let the light banish darkness ….

Ahh, the brilliance of the Light (for so many!)

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – December 14

Monday, December 14, 2020

God Promises and Delivers

Homes For All People

Righteous Homes,

not Windblown Shacks and Outhouses

Isaiah 26:9

My soul yearns for you in the night, my spirit within me earnestly seeks you. For when your judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness.

2 Corinthians 9:10

He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness.

Words of Grace For Today

As the vaccine is promised ...

Like in every generation before we yearn and hope, sometimes beyond hope. Yet sometimes in despair we give up that last strand of hope …

In the dark of the night, when monsters rear their ugly head occupying all the challenges of our days which we thought we could deal with well enough and those monsters eat at the foundation of the order of our lives amid the chaos …

There is always the darkness, the evil that threatens us.

Whether or not we see or listen or know, God promises to judge all with real justice and grace, out of which will come righteousness for all … whether we experience this righteousness or not God’s promises are the only promises that are sure!

God promises to walk with us, giving seeds that we can sow and harvests abundant that we can gather in, increasing in and around us God’s righteousness – for Christ is come.

God’s Son came, and will come again, to make clear God’s will towards us, namely that God loves us and judges us with mercy and truth. Jesus will judge all for everything they have done.

How can righteousness come out of the evil of all humans, which is so destructive, pervasive and enduring? Jesus offers us his record, pure and sinless, and on that record we are judged. Our records, our sins, the evil we have done to others, and the destruction we have wrought on creation … all this is erased as if it never occurred in all of time at all. So we emerge, all of us, righteous.

We do not get to wait for Christ’s judgment until after we die. Christ judges every day, every hour. Christ renews us as righteous every moment. We still remain sinners, yet always are we fully God-made saints.

So we yearn …

We yearn for judgment …

We yearn deep in our bones for judgment, so that we are made righteous, and those that do us evil will be rescued from their sins and we with them.

Advent is the time we relearn to trust God’s promises, and we live this abundant life waiting, alert, holding to the Promise that draws us onward, and draws from us righteousness we did not know we were capable of.

We are the harvest. We are the labourers in the harvest. The harvest is ready, each day. The harvest is so abundant it cannot be stored in all the earth or even the universe. Such is God’s promise to walk with us and bring us to live life abundantly!

No Covid 19 pandemic can rob us of this abundant life. Not even when our usual Christmas habits are not possible this year while we remain safe for ourselves, for our loved ones, and for all our neighbours.

Life is still abundant. Perhaps just because we must rethink what is essentially Christmas, our celebrations in the future will regain a significance we have not previously known.

Whether or not we see or listen or know, God promises and delivers life over abundant for all!

Let us make it so for all people, also this Christmas!

Take Advent to truly prepare.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – December 11

Saturday, December 12, 2020

Life Goes On

no matter the challenges evil places in our way,

More Sure Than the Return of the Fishers

on the Ice.

Psalm 41:5

My enemies wonder in malice when I will die, and [when] my name [will] perish.

James 5:15

The prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise them up; and anyone who has committed sins will be forgiven.

Words of Grace For Today

If one has led an honourable life, then enemies are in no short supply, for there is no shortage of humans who hate goodness in others and who seek its destruction, hoping for a good person to die.

Perhaps it is that in comparison they come up so short, or perhaps it is that goodness and honesty get in the way of their evil schemes to secure more and more for themselves on the backs of other people.

Whatever the reason, many enemies gather about, fearful for the truth I sustain, and can disclose; they wonder when I will die, how long can I possibly last, bombarded with Gaslighting and false convictions and evil rulings and financial ruin.

They have had power over so many, and for years it took more than I had available to see their evil effect on me as a statement not about myself, but about them. It is odd and familiar that evil focused on a good person drives that person to wonder what he or she has done wrong to deserve such abuse. Now, by Grace alone, for years I have realized the true statement made by their attacks on me.

I am still the same person I was before, the same good person, the same forgiven sinner, the same God-made saint … and more so, for all the trappings of life that I used to presume were mine to enjoy have been stolen from me. What is left are the essentials of life. I work hard to ensure I have some of them. Others are a given still, and I am grateful for them. Others I am fully dependent on the generosity of others. Hard work, God given, and people shared: these make up the contributions to the essentials for life.

Eternal life, though, is long since secured as only it can be: by Grace alone.

Covid 19 is a real threat. But hardly as great a threat as evil scheming people, dead set on bringing destruction, ruin and early death to all that is mine. Yet not Covid 19, not evil scheming people, nor anything else can separate me (or you) from God’s love and promise of eternal life given and sealed in baptism.

Advent is the time of precious blue hope, time to prepare for Christ, time to see Christmas celebrations anew: God’s Grace in action … for all people.

In the Darkness there is Christ’ never failing Light.

Light one, two, (three), (four) candles to watch for the Messiah ….

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – December 11

Friday, December 11, 2020

Signs

of God’s Wonders

Are as clear as the cracks in the ice.

Daniel 6:27

He delivers and rescues, he works signs and wonders in heaven and on earth; for he has saved Daniel from the power of the lions.

Hebrews 13:8

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and for ever.

Words of Grace For Today

Lions are not common in Alberta.

Alligators and wolves and elephants of the 2 legged variety abound, but no lions. It’s more difficult to be saved from the 2 legged variety than even from lions.

God steps in to save Daniel, and God works to save us, too. God delivers and rescues, works signs and wonders. The greatest wonder is the love God demonstrates for all people in becoming one us, to save us all. Grace comes

Jesus changes not a bit, not at all. Always gracious, forgiving, healing, and renewing. For all people.

The work of God never ends, never changes, and always gives us life and breath. Against those that would do us harm, God has no end of work and signs to make clear to us, that is God’s never ending wonder.

Signs and wonders fill the days and the nights of all our lives, for us all to see, and for us to give God thanks.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace December 8

Tuesday, December 8, 2020

Heading Out West

Joel 2:1

Blow the trumpet in Zion; sound the alarm on my holy mountain! Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble, for the day of the Lord is coming, it is near.

2 Peter 3:13

But, in accordance with his promise, we wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home.

Words of Grace For Today

They said go west young man.

So I went …

…

north instead.

And

Decades later I’m still going, and waiting,

for a home with the righteous.

If only I could find one of them,

Everyone here is a sinner,

Then I hear the trumpet blow

and see the Lord is coming

bringing

a new heaven and earth and a new home for all these wretched sinners made saints by Grace

Grace alone.

Just like me.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – December 6

Sunday, December 6, 2020

Second Sunday of Advent

Saint Nicholas Day, Remembering the Bringer of Gifts

Like Tracks in the Snow Disappearing Toward the Light,

The Signs and Wonders of God’s Work for Us All

Are All Around Us.

Daniel 4:2

The signs and wonders that the Most High God has worked for me I am pleased to recount.

1 John 1:2

This life [the word of life that Jesus brings to us] was revealed, and we have seen it and testify to it, and declare to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us.

Words of Grace For Today

Signs and wonders … the word of life revealed, eternal life even today for us.

These are everywhere to be encountered, seen, heard, touched, inwardly experienced.

The sun rises in the cold morning, light spreading and pushing back the darkness until a clear burst of light is visible through the trees near the horizon. The Light of the world is here, as a blessed sign that God is with us.

The periodic drone of fisher’s ice augers rumbles like bumble bees across the snow covered lake and through the trees. There are fish in this lake, stocked as it is, which provide food for many, except in the shoulder seasons when the ice forms or melts and is not safe enough to support a fisher. When the water is open boats bring fishers to all corners and bays of this lake. Then the ice is solid, on foot, by quad and side-by-side and snowmobile, or by truck, fishers spread across the lake to harvest for their families sustenance, signs of God’s blessings unceasingly flowing for us all.

After more than seven years with various people seeking my destruction, death and/or exile based on lies and greed, and a mental illness perverted view of life, fuelled by misandry and hate-based, perverted faith, I wake each morning, here, alive, accepting my life as blessed, though I am financially so far in debt I will likely never emerge, though my reputation among corrupt people of power will likely never be restored, though I work desperately hard to survive the challenges of living rough: cold requires lots of work but it is constant and properly conquered with care; moisture, heat, and bugs are the most difficult, fickle, and most dangerous. Each day I still breath is a gift from God, a sign of the wonders God works sustaining my life though it is under constant attack by so many, and so powerful.

This is eternal life, for today. (Yes, eternal life has already begun. We do not wait until after death!) For the Word of life, Jesus Christ, has come, is here, and will return.

Advent, these precious few days of blue hope, suspending us in waiting, holding us alert in watching, guiding us with Light into the darkness of winter … Advent is filled with signs and wonders of God working for us. We only need take a breath, pause, reflect, … and notice all that God does for us each day.

This day there are millions of people who through terrible injustice and cruelty do not have clean air, clean water, nourishing food, adequate clothing, sufficient shelter. Many, many people will die this day across the face of the earth … and it need not be so.

So many more millions have those basics of life, but lack the other two that keep us give us resilience to face the challenges and evil that would rob us of our hearts, minds and strength: meaningful labour and love (both being able to love others and to be loved by others).

Facing Covid 19 and our feeble efforts to slow it’s progress through the populations, if we do not have an ever-renewing reserve of resilience, we can lose our hearts, minds and strength to face each day. We can instead forego all precautions and put others at great risk, we can gather as if we thought that would help (participating in a super-spreader event, killing and maiming many downstream), or we can join the insane protests with no masks or physical distance (also participating in a super-spreader event, killing and maiming many downstream).

What will we do this day, if seemingly small, to reach out with the Word of life, to all? What will we do reaching out to others, for therein we build our own resilience?

The Word of Life works signs and wonders for us all.

Stay alert, lest we do not notice, or hear, or see Christ in our midst, calling us to be Christ’s signs and wonders for us all.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – December 5

Saturday, December 5, 2020

Dark Advent

Blue Hope

Psalm 68:6-7

God gives the desolate a home to live in; he leads out the prisoners to prosperity, but the rebellious live in a parched land. O God, when you went out before your people, when you marched through the wilderness, Selah

Mark 1:32-34

That evening, at sunset, they brought to him all who were sick or possessed with demons. And the whole city was gathered around the door. And he cured many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons; and he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him.

Words of Grace For Today

Stories contain our identity. We ignore and lose our ancestors’ stories at our own peril, for then we not only find ourselves foreigners in our own land, we separate ourselves from reality: we think and behave as if we could separate ourselves from God.

… O God, when you went out before your people, when you marched through the wilderness, Selah.

These simple words remind us of God’s rescue of God’s people, out of slavery in Egypt, through the wilderness, into the Promised Land.

… the whole city was gathered around the door. [Jesus] cured many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons….

These simple words remind us of Jesus’ ministry on earth, teaching, healing illnesses, casting out demons, and of the people’s flocking to listen to and be healed by Jesus.

Our God has claimed us as people, rescued us from slavery and brought us, as God had promised, into a land flowing with milk and honey. God’s Son Jesus came, taught and healed us, and cast out demons.

We understand disease, and healing. Casting out demons is not part of our worldview today, not part of our science based ordering of chaos into an understandable, ordered view of the world that can be manipulated with technology to give us ‘control’ and ‘comforts’ and ‘advancements’. Nothing is wrong with a scientific view of the universe. On the contrary science is possible (and was possible as the historical record shows) only because we believe God created an order to the universe. Science is not able to encompass all of the universe. ‘Casting out demons’ is an example. It could be clearly exemplified by what possesses Donald Trump, who with a constant flow of lies tries, unfortunately successfully in the minds of some likewise possessed people, to create a fiction about life that is not based at all in reality, just so that he can ‘succeed’.

That kind of possession is all too common: lie, lie, and lie again until one believes one’s own lies, others believe your lies, and they add more lies to confirm the resulting fiction as if it were based in any reality.

Remembering the stories of our ancestors we need not disconnect ourselves from reality. We need not hide in a bubble of like-thinking, skewed-thinking people. We can encounter all ideas and thoughts, evaluate all with our ancestors’ stories as a guide to what is real and what is fantasy or diseased or ‘demon’. Our present and future are anchored in the real past: this is God’s creation and we are God’s creatures, God’s people.

Engaging with all people, we can remain true to God’s wish for us: that we love all people unconditionally. Surrounded by, restricted by, and endangered by everything Covid 19 brings upon us, we need not panic, go bananas, or rebel with protests demanding that it is all a hoax, no matter how much we wish it were. Anchored in our ancestors’ stories of their journeys with God at their side, we can trust that God is at our side. Our hearts need not be troubled. We know that God gives the desolate a home to live in; God leads out the prisoners to prosperity, but the rebellious live in a parched land.

God gives us a calm assurance that God’s blessing still flow unceasingly over us.

With the Psalmist we can sigh with the precious blue hope of Advent: Selah!

Facing Covic 19: Daily Words of Grace – December 3

Thursday, December 3, 2020

We focus on what we do not have,

which makes us think we need to strive to be better, more, something else.

God focuses us on what we have

to share.

Deuteronomy 16:17

All shall give as they are able, according to the blessing of the Lord your God that he has given you.

2 Corinthians 8:12

For if the eagerness is there, the gift is acceptable according to what one has – not according to what one does not have.

Words of Grace For Today

The world, with simplistic lessons, teaches us that IF we want to survive or IF we want to maintain our standard of living or IF we want to protect our riches, power or fame … or IF we want in any way to guarantee our own lives to be as we want them,

THEN we must take care of ourselves, hang on to whatever we have or can get by any means, and protect ourselves from others who will always try to get (by whatever means) from us what we have.

This is not how God created us to live. It is not how humans survive. It is not how civilizations provide protection from barbarism. This is how the devil works to steal life from us. This is what kills humans. This is how the thin veneer of civilized society is shredded by barbarism from within.

God created us in God’s likeness, not just our faces, or bodies, or anything else external about us. God created us like God, in that we live well when we graciously and generously share all we have with everyone we can.

Giving, not taking, is how we live abundantly. It is how we live as Christ’s voice, hands, and feet on this earth. It is how we live blessed.

Eventually 100% of us humans die. It’s not a matter of if, but of when, and how. Death is not the goal of life, nor (since God promises us eternal life through Jesus Christ’ record in place of ours on our judgment day) is it the end or terminus of life.

God gives us our lives, so that we can imitate Christ: giving to all, all we have to give; seeking justice for all, until we have nothing more with which to seek; loving unconditionally all, until we have nothing left, no breathe of life, with which to love.

Whether giving leaves us more vulnerable to death, whether pressing for justice leaves us more vulnerable to death, whether forgiving our enemies and loving everyone unconditionally leaves us more vulnerable to death – all this is simply not significant, ultimately. Our actions of giving, seeking justice, and loving unconditionally are exactly what God has done for us, given us, blessed us with.

Giving is not an exercise in trying to not hit a tree as we ski down the hills of life. Focusing on the trees we are surely going to crash into one or more. Giving is not an exercise measured by what we cannot give or do not want to give up. Giving is an exercise measured by what God has given us … until we have given away every last drop of life, breathe, hope, and love that God has given us.

While we may think, having learned the simplistic lessons of life from the world around us, that it is foolish to give everything away, to seek true justice at all costs, and to love (especially our enemies) unconditionally though it robs us of hope, this is simply, truthfully all wrong. God did not create humans to live in a zero-summed life. Much of creation around us appears to be zero-summed, that is there is a limit to the resources available and we must strive to get our portion … or more!

Doch, God created humans to live as the loaf of bread, and jar of oil, which Elijah shared with the widow and her son: they never diminished but were continually restored to fullness, in order to provide sustenance for all three people, saving their lives through the famine.

God’s blessing pour over us all our lives, overfilling us and everything around us … if we would only see God’s blessings.

Our measure of giving then is not to miss the trees, and try (in vain) to ensure our survival. Our measure of giving is God’s prodigal blessings that never end.

God walks with us, even when we suffer greatly, no matter what we do not have, no matter what injustices are aimed at us, no matter what hate is focused on us.

Giving from a never failing supply of goodness, love and blessings is a great way to live.

Advent is our time to take time to reflect on God’s blessings and promises that we have forgotten or become blind to. Wake up, Be alert. Wait for Christ. Rest assured. Do not be afraid or troubled. Christ is already here, and will come again. Christmas celebrations can wait, until Christmas. We have more than enough to do, to give, to seek, to love, while we wait.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – December 1

Tuesday, December 1, 2020

Living as Guests

in God’s good Creation,

We are all aliens,

We are all inheritors of God’s blessings.

Genesis 26:3

Reside in this land as an alien, and I will be with you, and will bless you; for to you and to your descendants I will give all these lands, and I will fulfill the oath that I swore to your father Abraham.

1 Peter 1:17

If you invoke as Father the one who judges all people impartially according to their deeds, live in reverent fear during the time of your exile.

Words of Grace For Today

Are we aliens, guests on earth, in exile?

So many people on earth today are not able to live in their home land. So many people are exiled by violence or political differences with those that rule with cruelty at home.

They are aliens, in exile, yet we recognize they belong on earth, or at least we sort of recognize them as residents of earth.

In all our lives there are times, like Advent, that are not times for themselves, but times of waiting or of transition, when we anticipate with great expectations that things will be different, better. We anticipate that we will eventually no longer just be aliens, but that this will be our land, our home land, our place and time that God promises us and all people will recognize that it is ours, by God’s Grace alone.

Covid 19 is in a second wave, much worse than the first, still ineptly dealt with by so many governments, like at home in Alberta where the government, ideologically, holds that the economy is more important than the individual lives of the residents in this province. Restrictions are finally set in place weeks too late and multitudes of degrees too slack. Trying to protect the economy the government sacrifices health care for almost everyone, making room for Covid cases in the hospitals. The government sacrifices lives of people who die from the infection. The government sacrifices the long term health of so many people who suffer debilitating organ damage though they survive the virus’s first attack.

The government does this because it’s political base is not in the cities, which are harder hit than the rural areas where it’s support is strongest.

The government does this because it’s political base is the business owners, not the workers. The government does this because it does not value essential workers like doctors and health care workers (who they have fought against to drastically cut their compensation over the last few years.) The government does this because it supports big business and oil industry. The small people, the scientific evidence, the best real path forward is not important. Instead of the best path forward, science and prevention and providing health care for everyone does not matter. What matters is the political moves that can be made in the confusion of Covid 19. Well, we got what the majority chose: a government that is unto itself and lies to maintain it’s power. We’ve got what we deserve.

Thankfully God does not leave it there.

God walks with us, in a foreign land, and in our home land. We are God’s people, all of us God’s creatures.

We may be in exile at home with a government that does not have our interests, yet alone survival, in mind. God will soon enough deliver us. We can wait, patiently, and prepare ourselves to receive God’s Son, as he was born millennia ago, and as he comes each day, and to await for his return.

We can wait to celebrate Christmas until Christmas proper. We can take to heart Advent as the time of waiting in wonder that it is.

Blue with hope, that’s the children of God …

for now, for these four weeks.