Sunset – Page 35

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – October 22

Thursday, October 22, 2020

As Sure as the Lake Will Freeze Over in Fall,

So Will the Season of Christ’s Light Come.

Let it be soon, God.

Psalm 39:6

Surely everyone goes about like a shadow. Surely they are in turmoil for nothing; they heap up, and do not know who will gather.

2 Timothy 1:10

This grace [which saves us and gives us a holy calling] was given to us in Christ Jesus before the ages began, but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Saviour Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.

Words of Grace For Today

The world’s way of living is to try to make something from nothing, to have more for oneself. It is a turmoil like no other, yet no one can know who will get to gather in the rewards for all our striving to make something for nothing. Few of us reap the rewards of our efforts. Some reap the rewards of many others, and claim it is their right. It is not. Most of us give up great effort and see no reward at all.

Only those who labour for Christ are rewarded for their efforts, not with the heaps gathered in by others or by themselves. Rather we who labour for Christ receive first the reward for Jesus’ sacrifice, and then we live dedicated to following Christ’s will for us and others.

This is a holy calling. We no longer lives as a shadow, as part human, part darkness, outlined only by a brighter light. We live as the beings God created us to be, full, embodied, clearly seen in the light, solid even in the darkness of any kind, especially that of evil.

When one toils in order to have enough to provide the basics of life to oneself and one’s family, one can see no end of toil. For there is never enough for oneself and one’s own. When one toils in order to have the basics of life for oneself and one’s own … and for all those around in need, then there is always enough … enough for life that is worth living.

Yesterday I stopped at Walmart to pick up the four grocery items I need to deal with GERDS, for which I hope I have enough money since the gift card I was given had less than a dollar on it.

Done the first isle following the assigned directions to maintain physical distancing, I came face to face with two grocery carts. I stopped and waited for the people behind the carts to place in the rather full carts what they were looking for on the shelves. Then the proceeded to come further down the isle the wrong way towards me. I asked them to turn around, that they were going the wrong way. The first of the two carts instead turned to the side of the isle to try to force his way past me. I turned my cart to the side two inches to close the gap and he rammed my cart. I asked again.

With cursing the two cart drivers turned around, and a third man with them, starting verbally abusing me, threatening me to find me in the parking lot. As I continued with my shopping he continued to yell abuse at me from the next isle, from 20 and 50 feet away. I looked for staff. There were none to be found.

I headed for the checkouts, and while I was trying to deal with the 0 value gift card, the verbal abuse and threats started up again as the group joined the que to the checkouts. I yelled for security, afraid for my life, that this guy might actually follow me out into the parking lot!

Security came, or was it the manager. He was questioned. My credit card transaction was held up as they pulled my id. Finally I was allowed to exit the entrance doors to distance me from this guy.

If I could toil for this guy and the guy in a vehicle going 110kph passed me on my bicycle on the right, on the shoulder of highway 55, … If I could toil for these guys to not be idiots, not put my life at risk with their frustration that things are not going their way, how would that look?

I’m at a loss what to do for idiots, and many more others of so many kinds, who breach the social contract we have, which holds the barbaric nature of humanity at bay with such a thin veneer of civility. That thin veneer suffers attacks everyday, and its amazing that it still holds. If we are not careful, if we are not all careful, it will dissolve all too soon.

Then toiling for the basics of life will be an impossibility for us all, idiots, liars, deceivers, even for former holders of great authority, and also for us saints with a holy calling.

Pray that the Light of Christ will shine soon into the darkness that has descended on these lands and on these people,s here and across the globe, so notable as it is just south of the border.

The Light will expose the evil done, burning it up like chaff, as it finally abolishes death and brings life and immortality to light through the gospel.

Soon and Very Soon, we pray; Come and Deliver us, all. We are ALL in this together.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – October 21

Wednesday, October 21, 2020

When Everything Appears to be Dead,

and We Are at Our Wits Ends …

1 Kings 19:5-8

Then Elijah lay down under the broom tree and fell asleep. Suddenly an angel touched him and said to him, ‘Get up and eat.’ He looked, and there at his head was a cake baked on hot stones, and a jar of water. He ate and drank, and lay down again. The angel of the Lord came a second time, touched him, and said, ‘Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you.’ He got up, and ate and drank; then he went in the strength of that food for forty days and forty nights to Horeb the mount of God.

2 Corinthians 4:7

We have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us.

Words of Grace For Today

Elijah is on the run, for his life. He has killed the prophets of Baal. In response Jezebel is out for revenge. So Elijah is on the run for his life.

Elijah is distraught and prays that God will let him die, for he has become no better than his ancestors who killed to try to make the world a better place … which never works. In the wilderness he lays down under a solitary broom tree.

An angel visits him while he is sleeping, and feeds him, twice, so that when Elijah wakes he has strength for the days ahead. For God has many things for Elijah to do before Elijah’s days on earth are completed.

There are days in most people’s lives where one has to think that exterminating that person or those people will somehow help the world be a better place. God save us from ever allowing those reactions to evil to be more than fleeting. God has other plans for evil people. God chooses to save them by forgiving them, redeeming them, and making them holy, agents of God’s will on earth. This is the double victory that Martin Luther King Jr. preached about attaining through non-violent protests.

Sweet such victory is, indeed.

It is nothing less than we could wish for all evil people. We would, especially I would, want God’s timetable to be moved up a bit, all the way to NOW, so that these evil people, doing these evil things, do not end up ruining us (too late for that for me) and eventually killing us (that’s sitting not too far on the horizon for me, just past a few -30 days after the medicine runs out and I cannot afford to get it refilled, the pain from GERDS disrupts every day functioning and cancer follows soon thereafter, if the reckless, angry drivers do not run me over on my bike as I peddle 25 km to town to get food, if my ex’s lawyer or the RCMP or even the Courts do not come up with yet another way to try to get me killed – never to do it directly, but to set it up so that someone else does the dirty work for them.)

Maybe my time on earth is up and God does not have any more work for this saint to accomplish. I rather think and hope not. Sweet rest it will be, when that day comes, but I think and hope it is not for many years yet … even though circumstances and enemies seem to want it otherwise … and soon.

Ah, that the human was not so susceptible to doing evil to others, and I could count on goodness, kindness and protection from the woman who pursued me, said she loved me, wanted me to provide for the children and for her, and promised to marry me; or from those who work to ‘protect and serve’ whose job it is to protect people from others’ crimes and lies; or at least from the Courts who are tasked with protecting the thin veneer of civilization from attack by criminals, deceivers, and liars. But no, not these or many, many others.

Only God’s miracles can save me from the evil from them directed at me … determined as they are to bear false witness against me to create a false story that I were a criminal, that I have not honoured the Courts, that I were not a good parent, that I were not an honest and kind person. Only God can save me, so come God, take your double victory soon, before it is too late.

What fragile vessels God created us to be. We humans think we are so important, so capable, so righteously rulers of our own destiny. In the universe God created we are but small, so limited, so incapable of ruling or creating destinies at all. We are so capable of wreaking havoc on others and the universe, but when it comes to good we wish well and do little to nothing.

Only God through Grace can bring us to do anything significant and good in the universe.

Thankfully God does just that: God saves us and them by forgiving us and them, redeeming us and them, and making us and them holy, agents of God’s will on earth.

When we think we have nothing more good to give, God sends angels of many kinds, in human form, or as other holy people, to feed us the bread of life, to give us the living water to drink. So strengthened we are able to continue God’s work in the days we have on this earth.

What a wondrous life it is, doing God’s will.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – October 16

Friday, October 16, 2020

Don’t Go Batty

Trust God to keep you strong, to walk with you, to protect you.

Psalm 121:4

God, who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.

1 Corinthians 1:8

God will also strengthen you to the end, so that you may be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Words of Grace For Today

The challenges of providing for the necessities of physical life are quite daunting at times.

Air is not complicated here in Alberta, yet.

Water … well clean water is a matter of collecting it from the city water dispensing site, cubit metres at a time, not that expensive, except for the cost of getting there and hauling it ‘home’. When it’s below freezing there are significant challenges if keeping it from freezing before one can use it, nearly impossible challenges for me. Or one can buy it much more expensive, filtered by reverse osmosis 5 gallon jugs at a time, and pay to get there and haul it home. Or one can collect rainwater and filter it oneself and sanitize it. Or one can use contaminated lake water … putting one’s own health at risk. Or in the winter one can collect snow and melt it, and boil it, trying to assure oneself that it has not been contaminated by some animal or whatever. Still water is possible. Canada has more fresh water than any other place on earth. Fortunate we are.

Food is an ongoing challenge. Growing it is not an option when one has not home or land or ability to ensure one is able to garden in any specific spot for at least a season. Buying it is necessary, but it costs money, which is in very short supply, though not non-existent. The food bank supplements what one can buy, and food is possible, most of the time, so far.

Clothing … is good, fortunately I have enough left from days of having a reasonable income, which is good since second hand stores exist, though they are limited in what they have. Or it is hours and hours away to get to the city where the available clothes are a wider selection. So far, so good, though.

Shelter is a daunting challenge that consumes more than 3/4 my time. In the end, so far, I have shelter from the rain, the snow, the wind, and the cold.

I am fortunate. I still live better than the majority of people alive on earth today, a mere fact of being born in North America and been able to work most of my adult life.

The real challenges that I cannot deal with myself, are other people’s wishes to have me dead, to arrange that that is likely, or to be willing to risk that they hit me when passing me at 110 kph on the right, on the shoulder, as I bicycle to and from town, working like mad to avoid the plentiful potholes that would wreck a rim or at least send me flying to the pavement.

Evil is hard to deal with. It’s always been incomprehensible to me, why some people are so cruel, lie so much, and cheat, or exercise their authority with malfeasance or sadistic processes.

With the daily physical needs of life, God is always there.

With dealing with the power of evil in everyday, God is always there.

The huge challenges of life are the last two necessities, meaningful labour, and love (to love others and to be loved by others.) These are not so much something one can acquire without the cooperation of the community in which one lives, or at least some people in it. When the most powerful people wish me dead … well these are nearly impossible.

When dealing with the power of evil so blatantly exercised by powerful people every day against me, God is always there. Sometimes God saves me from the effects of evil. Other times God simply weeps and suffers with me.

Still God neither slumbers nor abandons me.

As for God strengthening me (or any one for that matter) so that we are ever blameless … that never can happen. God strengthen me and strengthens each of us. We are able to remain gracious … with ourselves and with others, even our enemies who wish us dead. But we cannot on our own ever achieve blamelessness.

God must continue to forgive us each moment. Only by Grace are we now acceptable to God. In the end only by Grace (i.e. that Jesus’ record stands in for our botched, dirty and stained record) do we ever hope to still be acceptable to God.

God does not abandon us, nor does God sleep or slumber. God is on watch and walks with us.

Thanks be to God! For only by Grace do we live. Only by Grace do I live each day.

What about for you?! Do you think you make it through even a day or an hour on your own? Or are you also, by Grace, thankful for each breath?!

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – October 11

Sunday, October 11, 2020

See the Light of God

Reflected in the Lake

and in Us

Proverbs 20:12

The hearing ear and the seeing eye – the Lord has made them both.

Matthew 13:16

But blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear.

Words of Grace For Today

Life!

What a wondrous thing we are given.

To participate in it fully, we see and hear, with eyes and ears given to us by God.

It’s blessed to be in this wondrous life, fully in it. To be able to hear and see God’s reality, even as the idiots spin some fake world, some fake history, some fake life ….

Seeing and hearing God’s reality despite so many lies about life is blessed.

And God gives life and sight and hearing to us.

So see! So hear!

And share the Word of God, that gives us breath, and love … and the ability to hope, and hoping we can imagine what is not yet …

and thus imagining, we can be Christ’s hands, feet, and voice for everyone to see and hear how God loves us unconditionally, all of us!

And seeing that, hearing that Word, it makes it possible for us to love others, all others, unconditionally.

What a wondrous life!

That’s everything for which we can give God thanks!

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – October 10

Saturday, October 10, 2020

The Wonders of Creation

The Power that Created it

The Grace that Saves it

Psalm 33:9

For he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm.

Mark 4:39

He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, ‘Peace! Be still!’ Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm.

Words of Grace For Today

God Creates with a Word.

Kings’, emperors’, and pharaohs’ power was such that they need only speak and others would make it happen for them! No one dared to disobey.

God speaks and the nothingness of the not-yet-universe becomes something, something firm, solid, and existing. That’s infinitely more power than the most powerful ruler.

The people of Jesus’ time saw the world much differently than we do today. A firmament, a dome and separator, stood in the sky. On our side of it the world existed. On the other side of it was the chaos of not-creation, the nothingness that God created the world out of. The chaos was, as best one could translate it in terms available today, anti-matter, or anti-existence.

The point of all that is that this same chaos-anti-matter-anti-creation came up in the oceans. The water, the deep, was the same thing that was beyond the firmament, which was clear because when the firmament leaked it rained. When one ventured forth on the sea, one was courageous indeed, for one came into contact with anti-creation.

When storms rose up on the sea, the anger of God or simply the chaos of not-creation rose up to consume everything in it’s way. The disciples in the boat with Jesus feared not only the storm that could wash them out of the boat and send it and them into the deep. The disciples feared the power of chaos, the power of not-creation, or antimatter that could swallow up them, their boat and who knew what all else. Anyone caught in a flood will have stories of this fear. It is part of our human DNA.

Jesus is not afraid!

Human that he is fully, he is also fully God. He proves it. He speaks and the chaos of anti-creation is stilled. He commands all of creation and all of not-creation.

Now that is someone we want on our side.

But that cannot and never does happen.

Instead God brings us on to God’s side, and Jesus pays the price to make that possible, and the Holy Spirit moves in and through us to get the work of God to come out of us, in spite of us remaining sinners. Wonders never cease with God working us for the goodness of creation.

Which is good, because Evil never ceases to flow from our sins destroying the goodness of life for us and those around us, and those that come after us for generations.

Next time you see it rain, or the waves rise from the water of a lake or ocean, imagine the truth that those before us knew: this is the chaos out of which God created, which can consume us back to not-creation.

Thanks be to God, the waves are down, the sky up, and the rain is sufficient but not too much. It’s a balance, that involves us as well, if we wish to cooperate with God’s good creation.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – October 9

Friday, October 9, 2020

Birch Still Standing.

Though someone is cutting them down left right and centre

as we are

these still stand

as we will always!

Isaiah 49:4

I have laboured in vain, I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity; yet surely my cause is with the Lord, and my reward with my God.

1 Corinthians 15:58

Therefore, my beloved, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord, because you know that in the Lord your labour is not in vain.

Words of Grace For Today

In this world the life of honesty and honour, of sacrificial and unconditional love, and of grace and hope is not rewarded by many. It is by many, even in the Courts, attacked and condemned with blood sport, lies and games with one’s life.

It is too often that striving to reflect the life the prophets called us to, to Jesus’ Way of being in the world, often leads us to the same end as he met: lies, injustice, cruelty, torture, and even death.

Met with this profound malfeasance we are readily able to say with Isaiah: We have laboured in vain, we have spent our strength for nothing and vanity. The work of the Devil meets our efforts to live graciously in response to God’s gift of life abundant. Seemingly the Devil wins every time.

Truth is otherwise. The Devil, all his works, and the people that do his deeds against us and so many others only show how lost and condemned those people are who follow his ways. They pronounce with lies that we are criminal, that we are vexatious, that we are unreliable. Their pronouncements do not reflect who we are, what we have done and not done. Their pronouncements reflect how corrupt they and all the liars are that bear false witness against good people like us.

They use their positions of power to create their own illogical, unreal bubble of existence. They dismiss scientists and science, logic and the laws of physics and other sciences (like gravity and toxicity), and the power of truth, love and hope. In their place they construct a world that serves their own greed, corrupt power, and decadent hedonism.

The devil’s miracle is that so many people accept this fantastical construction of ir-reality as if it were real, true, and valid. They construct religions of destruction of their enemies.

We hold to our faith in God who is all-powerful, Creator, and all-knowing. Our God is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. By Grace alone (not by our merit) God forgives us our sin, adopts us as children, and empowers us to be the voice, hands, and feet of God’s own Son, Jesus, who gave his life to redeem us. Our faith does not condemn others. That is in God’s hands, and God’s alone. Our faith gives life, and promises life eternal to those who believe and accept the redemption worked out for them each day, each minute.

Therefore we are steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord, because we know that in the Lord our labour is not in vain.

Covid 19 has nothing on the destructive power of the Devil, his works and the people who do his deeds. By Grace we shall live with God walking with us and suffering with us everything done to us, even through all these trying times. Even if our bodies die, we shall live for God cannot be defeated, nor can we be separated from God.

Breathe as we are still able. These are blessed lives God accompanies us through.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – October 8

Thursday, October 8, 2020

Driftwood, Tossed by Winds and Waves, As are We

Foggy Morning

Don’t Let a Little Fog

Keep You from Noticing and Participating in

The Beauty of Creation

Joshua 24:22

Then Joshua said to the people, ‘You are witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen the Lord, to serve him.’ And they said, ‘We are witnesses.’

Colossians 2:18

Do not let anyone disqualify you, insisting on self-abasement and worship of angels, dwelling on visions, puffed up without cause by a human way of thinking.

Words of Grace For Today

You have chosen … and are witnesses against yourselves … to serve the Lord!

Do not let anyone disqualify you, insisting on practices of piety that are claimed to bring you a good relationship with God and salvation.

There are always challenges in life. Covid 19 is one serious one that everyone shares … and everyone suffers from everyone else’s stupidity in not being one who protects against it. It is the community maker or breaker kind of virus. We cannot as much protect ourselves as we can protect others. We must rely on others to protect us. One person cannot protect anyone or any group. The weakest, stupidest link in the chain causes the infection to spread. And many weak links allow the virus to spread like wildfire in a dry, tinder-laden forest.

Covid 19 protection demands of us practices, not unlike piety (for one has to be consistent, one might say ‘religious’, about keeping vigilant with these practices). These practices for other people’s protection must be engaged in to save us all.

While we each can and must do things to protect ourselves, they are not enough by themselves. We each require many other people to engage in the protection practices to keep us safe. We never know who it may be that we need to be consistent and diligent for us to be safe.

We are not in control of our own safety, our own ability to survive this pandemic. It is in other peoples’ hands.

We are less in control of our relationship with God. Anyone who claims we control our own salvation with our choices is an utter fool, trying to entice us down a path of human effort to become godlets for ourselves. Only God can save us from our sin. At most we can strive to respond, and hope that occasionally the Holy Spirit will pull from us the miracle of us actually doing something for God in this world!

We can choose to serve God. We can be witnesses against and for ourselves. It is good to so respond and choose and strive to serve God. As far as our relationship with God and our salvation go, it counts for next to nothing, because we never can be consistent in serving God alone! We continually break away from and work against God. We are, all our lives long, captive to sin. Only God can save us.

That said, God does save us, through the sacrifice of Jesus, the Christ. And by the power of the Holy Spirit God promises to pull out of us miracles, miracles that we, pitiful us, can actually do God’s will on this earth, at least occasionally.

Strive we must. Striving has it’s own rewards, not unlike hard exercise to provide the basics of life for ourselves, our loved ones, and for others, especially our enemies and the needy, the stranger, and the homeless.

It’s another day. Another night. Every day has its opportunities and beauty. Every night its beauty and rest for recovery. Hard work is before us. May the Holy Spirit use it to accomplish God’s will also among us!

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – October 7

Wednesday, October 7, 2020

Everything, Everyone

will bow to the Light of God.

Ezekiel 18:23

Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked, says the Lord God, and not rather that they should turn from their ways and live?

John 12:46

I have come as light into the world, so that everyone who believes in me should not remain in the darkness.

Words of Grace For Today

There is an immense amount of corruption and evil in the world, starting right here at home in Alberta.

It is easy to think someone needs to eradicate those responsible, somehow or other; to cut the legs right out from underneath them, to stop them from doing what they are doing; and for us to pray that God ends their evil by removing them from the face of the earth.

God works in different ways than eradicating evil. God rescues the person doing the evil, saves them from their own evil self, their own evil intention and corruption. That way there is no need for another evil death.

Instead there is a double victory: first that the evil stops being done to us. Second, that the person ceases to be evil.

That sounds terrific, though we humans tend to like revenge, so we hang on to the possibility that if the evil doing people do not repent, then perhaps God will remove them after all.

There are people who regularly are bullies, cruel bullies, who threaten other people’s lives as often as they can, and since they have, their whole live long, lied and cheated to get power they have lots of power to threaten and more, to kill other people … and not even be charged with murder.

God knows what they do.

God chooses to rescue them.

Most of us are not so evil. Our sins are run of the mill, which does not make us any better in God’s eyes, it’s just we do not commit crimes. If we are convicted of a crime it’s a false conviction. Some measures of the world would consider us really good, honest, trustworthy, and productive citizens. Still we sin against God. So from God’s perspective we are just as evil as those who falsely convict, bully, threaten, and kill people from their positions of power, safe from prosecution.

Thank God for God’s Grace, for we are all rescued from our sins.

It’s just we certainly wish the cruel bullies that kill us with immunity would be stopped, if not today, then already yesterday.

God can you help us with that? Please.

Jesus commands us to love our enemies, so we do.

Even as they actively seek to kill us with their threats, bullying and cruel exercise of their power.

God, save the children from learning from this that they also must lie and cheat to have enough power to be the ones who threaten, bully, and treat others cruelly, even killing them, in order to keep it from being done to them.

When we are lost in the darkness, God rescues us. This we trust. God’s Grace is what the Light of Christ brings us to be able to always see, for ourselves, for our loved ones, and even for our enemies. Threatening, bullying and being cruel to others, even to their death, has no part in us after Jesus rescues and brings us into the light.

What will you be this day? Are you one to teach children sacrificial love, even of one’s enemies, is the key to life as God’s creatures? Or do you teach children that cheating and lying are the only way to become one who threatens, bullies and kills others … all in order that it not be done to them. The price, of course for cheating and lying to get through life, is the terror of guilt that never stops. The price for living sacrificial love will inevitably and eventually be that one loses one’s life to save others.

Who are we? We are children of God!

Who are you?

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – October 6

Tuesday, October 6, 2020

Cold

Covid 19 does not die in the cold

It just lays dormant, waiting

to warm up and infect more people

Cold

means more caution is needed!

Ezekiel 39:29

I will never again hide my face from them, when I pour out my spirit upon the house of Israel, says the Lord God.

1 Corinthians 12:4-7

Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.

Words of Grace For Today

During Covid 19, like many times before though for some much more intensely, we need to be careful for each other.

The kind of care is not to avoid some great big monster of a villain, who invades our lives and leaves tracks and vivid images of the him/herself in our memories.

This villain is a teeny, tiny virus that can get us mildly sick and contagious, or very ill so that we feel we are dying, to killing us … and what many seem to forget is even if one survives, this little virus can leave it’s surviving victims’ health compromised for the rest of their lives. The compromise can be as little as an irritation to deal with, to major health issues that alter how one can live through a normal day.

We cannot know, if we are in an proximity of other people (and very few of us live anywhere NOT in close proximity to others through a normal week), if we or someone else is infected and contagious, or what air space is filled with contaminated microdroplets containing the virus, or what surface has the virus waiting for contact to infect us. And we cannot know for sure when we are leaving the virus behind for others to be infected from us.

Stupid is the infected President who waves to people from the balcony, takes of his mask, and turns to be in close proximity to a number of his staff … and they test positive a few days later!

Stupid is a lot of what people do nowadays!

Stupid and deadly for some people, debilitating for others, inconvenient for others.

God promises not to hide his face from us, again.

So God endures these stupidities with us.

God has given us all many gifts of great varieties, and to all of us God has given the Holy Spirit for the common good. Each and every one of us has received the gifts to not have to be stupid about Covid 19.

We may be sick and tired of the limits and restrictions. Still we can and must comply with health restrictions and recommendations to keep each other safe.

It’s better to be sick and tired of the limits, than to be sick and tired, out of breath, and incapable of living fully for the rest of our lives, simply because we or someone that came close to us, decided to be stupid about being sick and tired.

God, save us from stupid! Especially from those who have authority and means to provide for our safety (individually and collectively) … and they do not.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – October 5

Monday, October 5, 2020

Wind Blows, Wave Splash.

Do you have ears to hear?

Ezekiel 3:10

He said to me: Mortal, all my words that I shall speak to you, receive in your heart and hear with your ears.

Hebrews 2:1

Therefore we must pay greater attention to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away from it.

Words of Grace For Today

Our ears hear so much. The internet offers even more to hear than even 40 years ago we could imagine we could ever hear in one lifetime!

The question of our lives, over-filled with sounds and information is: What do we choose to listen to?

Music can inspire our hearts and minds to greater good … or evil.

Words can move us from complacency to action for good … or evil.

We must choose which is which, and which we wish to participate in with our ears, our minds, and our hearts.

Jesus gives us a commandment, to love the Lord our God with all our heart, mind and strength; and to love one another, especially our enemies.

Can we choose to listen to Jesus’ Word each day anew, with ears attentive, minds focused, and our hearts receptive? We can, by the Grace of God through the Holy Spirit empowering us; though on our own we certainly cannot, and when we think that we can on our own then we surely error in choosing to listen to and work for Evil.

The Word of Jesus provides us living water, daily bread, and all we need to move into the future, fully aware that we move from past to present as God’s children, blessed to be blessings to others.

A wonder reveals itself in us each day.