Perspective – Page 10

The Sacrifice OR The Promise.

Tuesday, November 9, 2021

Like new leaves in Spring,

God restores us to new life,

not as slaves, Doch

as Children and Saints.

Psalm 51:19

Then you will delight in right sacrifices, in burnt-offerings and whole burnt-offerings; then bulls will be offered on your altar.

Luke 15:21

Then the son said, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.”

Words of Grace For Today

Getting it right before God.

Oh, how we have tried through the generations.

We’ve tried sacrificing our own children, but more often someone else’s.

We’ve tried sacrificing our own goats and lambs, but more often someone else’s.

We’ve tried sacrificing our own cattle, but more often someone else’s.

We’ve tried sacrificing our own birds, but more often someone else’s.

We’ve tried sacrificing ourselves, like the so called prodigal son, who really is only prodigal in his waste of life’s limited resources. This son comes and confesses his sins to his father, hoping to get work as a servant or slave, for then at least he will eat well enough to survive. His ‘prodigal’ waste has left him so broke and dishonoured that he cannot even get work that pays enough to provide himself food, even when he feeds other people’s pigs food that is more than he has to eat.

And it’s all wrong, oh we get it wrong.

God uses Abraham to declare that NO God does not want Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, not at all.

God uses someone anonymous in history to teach us that God does not want blood sacrifices (or maybe we just got lazy, for this sacrifice is messy and quite wasteful.)

God uses Jesus to teach us that we should not sacrifice other’s well being to make up for out own sins, in other words we should not scapegoat others in order to relieve the stress and conflict in our own lives.

Jesus uses the prodigal son and so many other parables and characters to teach us that we first can hear God’s promises to forgive us and restore us as living saints doing God’s grace for all people, and then we can confess our sins, expecting not to be made slaves or servants. Doch God rather restores us to live as God’s own children.

This God promises us, and tries to teaches us, and forgives us, and tries to restore us to full life … and still we try to make it through life like the prodigiously wasteful son, burning through the limited resources of life available to us and when things go wrong we still scapegoat others, destroy others, and try to make others pay for our own failings.

Well, some or maybe most of us that is. Some of us are blessed to have figured out how not to scapegoat others, or maybe we never learned.

The rest … ah what misery they create for others and themselves!

God have mercy on us, and keep these people far, far, far from us again this day.

God have mercy.

God have mercy on us, and teach these people soon of your promises, forgiveness, and Grace.

God have mercy on us all.

This is What Life Looks Like

Sunday, November 7, 2021

A chimney pipe plugged with creosote: (who can explain evil?)

This is What Life Looks Like

When We Have No Hope.

…

The same chimney pipe after it’s unplugged: (that’s the work of the saints.)

This is What Life Looks Like

When God Gives Us Hope.

It’s Dark in Here,

But Christ’s Light Guides Us Home.

Isaiah 59:21

As for me, this is my covenant with them, says the Lord: my spirit that is upon you, and my words that I have put in your mouth, shall not depart out of your mouth, or out of the mouths of your children, or out of the mouths of your children’s children, says the Lord, from now on and for ever.

Romans 15:4

For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, so that by steadfastness and by the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope.

Words of Grace For Today

Hope.

Hope is that wonderful thing.

Hope is that wonderful thing that builds on the past that has become the present, and finds the future.

Hope is that wonderful thing that takes what is in front of us, projects it into the future, and comes up celebrating all the possibilities that God places in front of us.

God does as much as God knows we need: God makes a covenant with us, a one sided covenant where God does everything including making the covenant and making it something that gives us life!

God places God’s Spirit in and on us, and all around us, and places God’s Word in our mouths in such a way as it will never leave us, not us, nor our children, nor our children’s children, and on to the end of all time.

God’s Word is that all in our yesterdays, all our in todays, and all in our tomorrows will be well.

Since God says it has been, since God says it is, and since God says it will be, no matter what comes our way, no matter what challenges we face, no matter who tries to do us in, all is well with us and with all things we encounter.

This is what God has written.

This is what God has spoken.

This is what God has given us so that by steadfastness and by the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope.

And hope is that wonderful thing that undoes all that the Devil could possibly do to us, today and in all our tomorrows.

Being Real

Saturday, November 6, 2021

God’s Grandeur

In the Sky

And

In Our Hearts!

Psalm 94:18

When I thought, ‘My foot is slipping’, your steadfast love, O Lord, held me up.

Luke 22:32

But I have prayed for you that your own faith may not fail; and you, when once you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.

Words of Grace For Today

At Jesus’ last supper he speaks to all about who is the greatest and then to Peter, Peter (as usual the arrogant man he was) denied he would deny Jesus, and Jesus tells him of his denial before the cock crows three times.

Jesus does not start with Peter’s failings, for they are legend and well recorded in the Gospels. Jesus starts telling Peter that he will turn back to God (after turning away).

So it is God tells us first of how God will save us, before God fills us in on how terribly we will fail God, deny God, turn against God and God’s people!

Only God’s love, in the face of our sinfulness, deceit, and destruction of God’s children, can possibly move us to confess our sins and to return to follow Jesus, pure and sinless only by the power of the Holy Spirit.

So we begin each day, each worship service, each sermon, each prayer by first recognizing God’s love that saves and our desperate need to be saved from our sins.

Then we proceed to celebrate the grand creation that God places us in and the calling we receive: to celebrate God’s love by being God’s love for all people.

Reality, as History and God’s Word Teach Us

Friday, November 5, 2021

Dark Is Dark

Always Dark

Always Filled with the Light of Christ

even as Aurora Borealis

Isaiah 5:20, 23

Ah, you who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter! … Ah, you … who acquit the guilty for a bribe, and deprive the innocent of their rights!

1 Peter 2:21-22

For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in his steps. ‘He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth.’

Words of Grace For Today

How is it that given all the literature about the corrupt nature of humans, their deceit, greed, scheming, and wilful destruction of other people … how is it that I lived so many years thinking that we had evolved beyond this and that people were basically honest, kind and good?

There are people who are so and I lived as one of them, assuming that all people live so, or those who did not were a minor exception deviating just for the moment under some temptation or variance of life that dragged them down to a darkness that cannot be survived except were one to be rescued.

How is it that I lived so long assuming that other pastors, bishops, church leaders and people friendly to me were basically good, and not basically corrupt at the core, taking advantage of anyone and any situation possible to advance their own greed, lusts, covetousness, and to fill the void in their pathetic souls?

But I did. Thanks be to God?

A more complete extract from Isaiah tells of the consequences to the corruption so rampant: Ah, you who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter! … Ah, you … who acquit the guilty for a bribe, and deprive the innocent of their rights!

Therefore, as the tongue of fire devours the stubble, and as dry grass sinks down in the flame, so their root will become rotten, and their blossom go up like dust; for they have rejected the instruction … and have despised the word of the Holy One of Israel.

There it is: it is so often a story lived out and told, retold and preserved that we can learn from it … and yet we simply do not! The corrupt continue their corruption and those naive like me continue to live naive until some corrupt, mentally ill, pathological liars use me yet again and scoff at me as if I were the one, and not they, who were so corrupt (as not to supposedly recognize the reality they make up where light is dark, dark light, bitter is sweet and sweet is bitter – which is a definition of hell).

How are we to live then?

The answer is simple and impossible:

We are to live as Jesus the Christ lived: follow in his steps. ‘He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth.’ … For to this we have been called, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example … of how to live!

Pure and blameless, no sin, no deceit at all. Perhaps those of us so wired as not to be able to be deceitful can approach having no deceit (which is seen as some kind of abnormality! by the world.) DOCH there is not one of us who can be pure and sinless!

So what are we to do!?!

We can only rely on the Grace of God to use Jesus’ record in place of ours when we are judged. Knowing that God exercises exactly this Grace for us, not just at the end judgment but every day, we are free to choose …

And we are then freed to be able to choose … not to deceive others, not to turn reality inside out, not to destroy others, and even not to sin!

We are able to do these not on our own, but only as the Holy Spirit enables us to choose and to do these. We get no credit for living this way. We can only give God thanks and …

We GET to choose to exercise this same Grace for others.

We GET to be the agents of God’s Grace for others.

We GET to be the ones who set others free from their past sins and to live by Grace.

We GET to leave the judging to God, in God’s time, in God’s way.

And We GET to rejoice that God has given us eyes to see evil in and all around us, and to respond with the only response that can change the world back to light being light, dark being dark, bitter being bitter, and sweet being sweet.

We GET to live in God’s reality, in God’s kingdom, by Grace alone.

Dressed for the Day

Thursday, November 4, 2021

A New Day at 6:41

May Look Like All the Brokenness Left from All Our Yesterdays

Doch

God, Robes All the Saints,

In New and Righteous Garments,

So That We Rejoice in God’s Grace That We Get to Share

With Everyone

Isaiah 61:10

I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my whole being shall exult in my God; for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation, he has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself with a garland, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.

Acts 8:39

When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away; the eunuch saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing.

Words of Grace For Today

As she’d gotten older, year by year, month by month, even week by week, Jill had spent more and more time getting ready for the day. What started as a simple wash and run in her 20’s, by the time she was 50 was a thorough wash, application of 5 different ‘cleansing’ and ‘preserving’ soaps and lotions, followed by a ten minute exercise routine, then three different pills (a medication for GERDS, a vitamin for women 50+, and a glucosamine for arthritis), a breakfast with Omega3 and antioxidants, and a careful dressing for the day to ensure she did not leave something showing that should not be showing, and then when she was in her 60’s each year there was another thing added to the routine, and the medications at night were added and taken away, exercises, added or increased and removed, then added again, then replaced with others, and the arthritis demanded more and more medications (or additives to food, and the simple glucosamine was now a cocktail of additives that relieved the pain for a few hours, and dressing was always painful. Her wardrobe had to change depending on whether she could get her arms into a sweater, or she needed a button or zipper up front, or whether she could bend her legs and hips enough to get into something proper looking or she had to lay down to edge her way into something quite loose and comfortable, but a bit ghastly looking.

When she read the passage from Isaiah she thought about how her clothing had changed, and how getting dressed had become a major production in the last few months, worse than ever before. What a spectacular image: God has clothed me with the garments of salvation, God has covered me with the robe of righteousness.

Were getting dressed so easy and simple. Just let God do it. If that were her morning routine then she’d wear her ‘birthday suit’ everyday all day long, and that was not a pretty site anymore if it ever had been.

Still this assurance that God robed her in righteousness struck her to the core, and she involuntarily gave God thanks. Then noticing Isaiah’s words again, she realized that these ancient words from so many generations ago reported the same reaction in the writer. Because of the grace of God the writer greatly rejoiced in the Lord, my whole being exulted in my God.

Sometimes it was the simple ancient words that connect us to all the saints, those who have gone before us, those living now on earth, and all those yet to come in the generations of the future. What we experience, knowing we share so much with all the saints of all time, is what the eunuch experienced after Philip baptized him: as he joined the saints through baptism, and after Philip was there with him no more, he went on his way rejoicing.

So also this day, Jill thought, we saints, all of us, have so many reasons to rejoice, but none is more earth shaking and life altering than that God chooses us and clothes us in garments of salvation, in robes of righteousness.

A World of Deep Darkness … Lit Brightly by Christ

Monday, November 1, 2021

The Darkness and Cold Will Come Soon.

…

So Prepare With Hard Work

and

Trust the Light of Christ

to Guide and Heal Us.

Isaiah 9:2

The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness— on them light has shined.

John 16:24

Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, so that your joy may be complete.

Words of Grace For Today

November is the month when the short days, long nights reach their 4 month long dark winter, lack of light, phase. As one who suffers a slight attitude problem with extended darkness (slight SADS) I prepare well, plan to be in the daylight as much as possible, and save for gasoline to run the generator to supply electricity for the many lights set to stun the living daylights back into me. I often unscrew a few bulbs from the set of 8 that shine from each end of my warm space (warm if the furnace is burning hot enough!)

Before I heard about and understood the effect of the lack of sunlight on my mind, I loved to joke about the darkness, and about the light at the end of the tunnel. … I still do, though now the humour is a bit darker, since I know ‘the light at the end of the tunnel’ is most likely a freight train of Covid19 delayed goods, running late and fast and long and heavy, coming this way … and we’ve got no where to go to get out of the tunnel, so throwing ourselves between the tracks on the dirty ties, and keeping our heads down is probably the best way to survive what’s coming at us. Except keeping our heads down pretty much means giving up on life until the train leaves us in the tunnel in the dark, marching, marching, marching over the ties to get out of the tunnel. The advice fits well: when you find yourself having/having-been marched into hell, keep moving until you are out!

This is only a caricature of the deep shtako that so many people through history and in so many places have found themselves. It is the deep darkness that Isaiah and many others speak about. It is the darkness that can be forced upon us by our reaction to the dark seasons, by other people’s intent to destroy and de-story us, and by the cascading and accumulating effects of sins massed into evil that simply consumes all life in its wake.

We need the promise that Isaiah and so many others have provided: on them and on us a great light has shined. Even in the darkness consuming us and those around us, there is a light that shines, a great light that shines in every darkness, a light that exposes and overcomes all darkness: every lie, every deceit, every greedy theft, and even death. It is the light of Christ.

This light provides us simple respite from the darkness: we ask. Jesus delivers. We live in the light and are the saints who reflect Christ’s light to all around us.

November is the month when the short days, long nights reach their 4 month long dark winter, lack of light, phase. There is a light that overcomes all darkness, and we are God-made saints who get to reflect that light in the darkness to all people around.

Christ has dealt with all our past sins. Christ has overcome all the past evil and darkness. Christ has prepared us and all the saints for every coming darkness no matter how dark it gets.

That’s a promise to live out today! Work hard for the coming winter. Prepare well. And always trust Christ to be with with us, no matter what comes!

What Measure?

Friday, October 29, 2021

How do we measure

all we see

and experience

and know?

What is the colour of the sunset?

It’s true measure is only Grace.

1 Chronicles 29:11

Yours, O Lord, are the greatness, the power, the glory, the victory, and the majesty; for all that is in the heavens and on the earth is yours; yours is the kingdom, O Lord, and you are exalted as head above all.

Hebrews 4:16

Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

Words of Grace For Today

How do we measure all that we measure?

How do we measure what angle the sun is at, so that the solar panels produce most efficiently through all the year (helping reduce our carbon footprint for everyone’s benefit, especially future generations), or so that we know when to wake up to be outside before dawn breaks to take photos of the magnificence of creation (to share and inspire others, who cannot see this beauty in person, to celebrate God’s blessings), or so that we know when to start our work for the most efficient use of our bodies’ capabilities since the warmth of the sun protects against injury and further degeneration of ‘this limited resource’ we each have?

How do we measure the wealth that we possess, or the wealth that others have, or the wealth that governments control (and waste through bungling and favouritism and fraud), or the wealth that is needed to deal with the challenges we personally, or collectively (in our local area, our country, or together in this whole wide world), face this day and can anticipate we will face in the coming days, weeks, months and decades (of climate change, breakdown of global supply lines, on-going pandemics)?

How do we measure the needs of our stomachs, our minds, our hearts, and our spirits?

We can choose many different ‘yard sticks’: our or other’s bank accounts as our/their worthiness of living and living in comfort; scientific facts and theories that inform us of creation and how it ‘works’; the needs (real and addiction created or imagined) we feel each day or each minute allowing them to dictate what we do to satisfy our ‘hungers’.

There is no measure that will give us life other than placing the universe or rather our perspective of it in order at the very beginning of each of our considerations:

As Martin Luther wrote in the Catechisms again and again: We are to love and fear God so that ….

It is in that fear and love as the beginning point that all other measures make sense of life being blessed for us and for all other people.

There will be no end of need, dire need, on our part; our stomachs, our minds, our hearts, and our spirits all have needs that need be met for life to continue well for us. There is no end of evil and sin that permeates the world, disrupting the meeting of those needs for us and for all people. There is no end of hungry stomachs, minds, hearts and spirits; desperately hunger grips more of us than not at any moment!

Knowing that God rules over all though our best efforts, our best measures, our best science, our best collaborations, and our greatest wealth will be demanded of us to meet the hunger that grips all people. None of that will do much good, though, if we try to go it alone, and working with others requires something of us that we can barely generate on our own: cooperation with those so different than us. Before we begin then we needs must therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

Grace, that is God’s attitude towards us and all people that has the power to overcome all challenges we will ever face. It can be our attitude on God’s behalf towards all people that we work with and for whom we work each day, ourselves, families and friends, our neighbours, strangers and aliens far from us, and even our enemies. God’s grace is sufficient for all people. And God equips us God-made saints to be those who spread it liberally everywhere, to all people.

As the sun continues it’s dance with the darkness and the moon do-si-do-s around the earth, all motion of bodies celestial and corporeal, all minds great and small, all hearts generous and restrained, all spirits of every colour … all motion of everything is a dance of Grace, a dance of Grace started by God at creation and continued each day as God creates new time and reality for us all.

Save Us From the Time of Trial …

Monday, October 25, 2021

If You Lie All The Time

Then It’s Impossible to Tell

Yourself

from

Your Shadow.

Psalm 83:2-3

Even now your enemies are in tumult; those who hate you have raised their heads. They lay crafty plans against your people; they consult together against those you protect.

Matthew 6:13

Do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one.

Words of Grace For Today

A murder mystery, fiction, true fiction, begins:

Everybody lies.
Cops lie. Lawyers lie. Witnesses lie. The victims lie.
A trial is a contest of lies. And everybody in the courtroom knows this. The judge knows this. ….
[Everyone] take their seats … and agree to be lied to.
Michael Connelly’s The Brass Verdict

I’m not sure if I had known this truth that it would have mattered one iota. I certainly did not know that everyone expected everyone else to lie.

I certainly did not lie, not at all, not at all.

That put me at a huge disadvantage, and that is the way this sad world works, the way people work with each other. It is part of what I have never understood about people, who speak lies, and expect others to lie, and are just fine with all that comes of it. I certainly cannot understand cops, lawyers, witnesses, and judges who choose to lie. I cannot understand how they can so lie as to put innocent people like myself in jail for crimes they certainly did not commit, while other crimes are committed against them by their lying accusers.

As for me, I certainly did not lie, not at all, not at all.

That puts me at a huge advantage, for I know what is and is not. I live in the reality of this world. This in the end is not sad at all, not at all, not at all.

If the price of being honest and kind is that I must be homeless, then I would always choose to be kind, though the choice is not mine to be honest, and I will live well as a homeless person.

So my enemies do not care if they lie. I certainly would care if I lied.

I know that by not lying I do not make myself better than others, the others who lie. I do know that I really have no choice … and those that lie do have a choice. I do not understand how they can make that choice, and that is their burden and what a burden it is.

That is not the greatest burden we can bear, the burden that we cannot survive, not on our own.

The trial that we pray God will save us from, is the trail where the Devil plays freely with us, and only God can save us from the Devil’s clutches.

Seems to me though, if one lives in lies always, then one is got one foot on the greased slide into the Devil’s clutches and the other foot is somewhere, but you cannot ever be sure where it is since it’s been so long since you lived in the truth.

All the other enemies we face are nothing compared to the Devil, and none of them, the Devil included, is anything compared to God.

God walks with me. As for them, I cannot be sure. As for you, you should know that yourself, or pray hard and long so that God will show you. Living homeless is common among all humans of all times, but life is no place to find oneself alone.

No matter what comes, enemy, lies, trials of all kinds, I know God walks with me.

Thanks be to God.

We ARE In The Same Boat

Thursday, October 21, 2021

Our Shared Boat,

Christ

Has Space for All,

Light for All,

Hope for All.

Ruth 1:16

But Ruth said, ‘Do not press me to leave you or to turn back from following you! Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God.

Galatians 3:28

There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.

Words of Grace For Today

Often said of Covid-19 pandemic is that we are all in the same boat on this one. Everyone needs to get vaccinated in order for any of us to be safe. That means everyone in the world.

We are not in the same boat, though. We are all dumped out onto the ocean, that is true. The problem is some of us are in private luxury yachts burning diesel to manoeuvre with chefs preparing 3 meals a day with coffee, snacks, and an open bar tea at all hours, others are in luxury sail boats eating gourmet foods, some of us are in smaller boats on survival rations handed out by our governments, and many, many people are hanging on flotsam praying for their very lives.

Naomi is an elderly widow in a foreign country whose two sons have also died. She is leaving to find her way back to her homeland, in hopes of living out her remaining years there. Ruth, one of her widowed daughters-in-law will not abandon her even though Naomi directs the two daughters-in-law to return to their mothers to seek new husbands there.

Ruth promises, even in this hopeless, bleak culmination of time and events, to stay with Naomi, to adopt her homeland, her people, and her God. There is not much hope in any of that, now is there. Not at that time when women had no standing or property or ability to be gainfully employed (with notable exceptions). So Ruth accompanies Naomi and together the two make history, enough that the Bible contains the Book of Ruth.

What would the world look like if we were not so able to abandon all those people hanging on to flotsam in the pandemic of Covid-19?

What would it take for us truly to be united as one kind of people, on privilege of people, on status and wealth of people?

God would have to come and forgive us all our sins, making us equally acceptable before God, based solely on God’s Grace. Then God would have to send us forgiven people out into this wonderful and terribly broken and overcrowded creation to extend that same equal and unconditional forgiveness and love to each other. We would finally be united as beggar-sinners, blessed by God’s own generosity towards us all.

And this God demonstrated with Jesus’ story is exactly what God did do for us all.

So we are united as one under Christ, without distinction, without class or privilege or wealth differences. When it counts we are all in the same boat … with Christ making our way across the dead sea of our sins and past evils that still hold us in bondage.

When it counts we are all in the same boat … the trouble is we continue to sin, and cannot stop ourselves, so that some are climbing out of our shared boat with Jesus into their private luxury yachts, others are tossing people out of Jesus’ boat into the open ocean to die, and yet others are jumping ‘free’ because they cannot stand the thought that they are at best beggars for God’s mercies.

When it counts those of us who are saved by Christ and follow Christ … we are all in the same boat … and we work hard as we are, knowing we are God-made saints, and simultaneously still sinners, yet inspired by the Holy Spirit to be God’s love and grace for those around us.

We certainly are in the same boat and the rations are not fancy. The seating is crowded. Yet we are still afloat … by Grace alone.

Thanks be to God.

Odor or Audor

Wednesday, October 20, 2021

Moonlight.

Even in the Dark

God Provides Light for Us

Genesis 8:21

When the Lord smelt the pleasing odour, the Lord said in his heart, ‘I will never again curse the ground because of humankind, for the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth; nor will I ever again destroy every living creature as I have done.

Titus 2:11-12

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all, training us to renounce impiety and worldly passions, and in the present age to live lives that are self-controlled, upright, and godly.

Words of Grace For Today

The inclination of our hearts is evil from our youth.

What happens next is … well … our history of destroying one another in the most creative and repetitive ways.

Kind of a mess.

So God decides to fix it all and start over. Come waters all and flood the evil people to death. God plans to start over … so Noah, the righteous man and his family, along with two of every kind of animal on earth are loaded into an ark, that will float out the flood. Noah and company find dry land when the waters recede and they give a wonderful aroma wafting offering as thanks to God.

God is pleased, and promises never to flood away the evil inclinations of all the human hearts, ever again. (Thank God for that, and for Noah for reminding God that we might be worth the bother.)

Bother is what God does, and God sends Jesus to demonstrate clearly the inclination of God’s heart is to be gracious and provide salvation to us all.

A huge bother, costing Jesus his life, though it does actually provide the greatest salvation for us that we could ever imagine.

Worldly passions and all kinds of all impiety do not hold a candle in comparison to God’s gracious gift of salvation for us.

A little gratitude can fill our lives and spill over to many people around us. It’s not the trickle down theory, leaving those under the trickle with less than those on top. It is the overfull blessing that is equally generous to all.

God provides everything we need: promises we can count on, and generosity we can share with everyone.