Both we and our ancestors have sinned; we have committed iniquity, have done wickedly.
Titus 2:14
He it is who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify for himself a people of his own who are zealous for good deeds.
Words of Grace For Today
There is no shame in admitting one’s own sins, and the sins of one’s ancestors.
To face reality, especially the dark reality of one’s own sins is not easy or common or even possible …
unless first one know that God has, even before time, known we and our ancestors would sin, and God has not ever abandoned us to our sin. God has planned even before time how God would respond to our sins by redeeming us with God’s own son’s life as the model of how to live: sacrificing in order to unconditionally love those least deserving of love, in order that they will know God’s generous and gracious forgiveness.
So we have the story of Jesus, living as one of us, giving his life to teach, heal and guide and in the end to offer himself to be crucified, so that we would see that we need not sacrifice people, we need not scapegoat people, we need not work (futilely and destructively) to free ourselves; God has done all that is required.
We have the story of Jesus’ love for all people, especially the outcasts, the ill and ‘ill-fated’, those forced into and captive to poverty, the corrupt, the arrogant, and even the unjust.
We receive renewed life so that we can be the instruments of Jesus love for those in our time and place.
Thanks be to God, for though we are wretched sinners all, we are God-made saints, called to bring God’s justice and grace to bear on the world we live in.
Thus says the Lord: Keep your voice from weeping, and your eyes from tears; for there is a reward for your work, says the Lord: they shall come back from the land of the enemy.
Luke 18:7
Will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them?
Words of Grace For Today
Words of hope fill scriptures: God will come to the aid of those downtrodden, those driven into poverty, those dealt injustice and abuse, and those ostracized with lies and gaslighting.
These are not events that happen elsewhere or at other times. These evil things done to good people take place in this place and time. Corrupt individuals (some known as the wealthiest community leaders) are recruited by corrupt police to file false reports about situations they create in order to lie and denigrate good people. Corrupt police lie about what they have reported to them in order to make good people look guilty. Corrupt pastors cooperate in creating false reports about honest, innocent and good people in order to gain favour with corrupt church and community leaders. Corrupt lawyers pretend to defend the innocent, though they do just enough to make it look like a plausible defence while leaving room for false convictions of their innocent clients, from whom they take tens of thousands of dollars in fees – all to ‘throw them under the bus’, the financial ruin part and parcel of the means used to ruin innocent, honest people.
Even though the evidence does not make out the charges, corrupt judges abound in the courts, and testimony that exonerates the accused is removed from the transcripts (as judges are allowed to edit the court transcripts), and even then testimony is falsified in their judgments at crucial points in order to make convictions possible.
In a word, barbarism rules! Here and now barbarism rules!
Because the courts command armed police and sheriffs and the entire penal system, which is staffed for the most part by bullies and more than a few totally corrupt guards and staff, most people either are naively and intentionally unaware of the injustices done to so many innocent people. Or people who are fully aware of the injustice, keep quiet so as not to attract attention to themselves, hoping not to be the next victim of the barbarism.
…
God’s chosen people have no such choice.
And God does not abandon God’s chosen people. God comes to our rescue soon and very soon. God brings us out of the land of this barbarism and establishes justice here and now for all people, by the work of God’s chosen, the many good, honest, and outspoken people who dedicate their lives to bringing justice and truth to bear on this barbarism that corrupts not just individuals, but the very foundation of civilization.
Soon and very soon.
Yes, soon and very soon, those who are so corrupt, who habitually undermine true justice, our enemies will be exposed and removed, so that God’s will may be done among us, through us.
The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the Lord is clear, enlightening the eyes.
2 Timothy 3:16
All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.
Words of Grace For Today
The Words recorded in scripture are long since recognized as instructive, inspired by God (though not written by anyone other than humans interpreting what God inspires), and providing health for the body, mind, and soul.
There is an idea that we can train ourselves in righteousness reflected in the words from the letter to Timothy.
Ah, yes, the age old turn of grace into something we must accomplish ourselves, even if it is only possible after God saves us.
What good does it do for us to think that after baptism we are more capable of being ‘trained’ to be righteous and do righteousness.
Paul’s comments on this (as opposed to pseudo-Paul, or letters written after Paul’s style), and Martin Luther’s are instructive: on our own we cannot do anything to make ourselves righteous before God, only God can bring us to righteousness. No matter how much we discipline ourselves, instruct ourselves, strive to change ourselves … there simply is no hope in or good result from such efforts. In fact they serve to blind us to the reality of who we are and who God is to us and who God makes us. We are, and always remain, sinners. Any effort to pretend it is otherwise only detracts from our faith, our trust in God, our hope in God’s Grace for us.
Grace.
Grace alone.
Then are we to simply allow ourselves to be as depraved and debauched as we can or would wont to be? Are we to focus on all that is sin and attempt to multiply our sins without end?
There is no good end to that, of course, as we destroy people and creation around us, and even ourselves.
As we acknowledge that we are sinners and will always remain sinners, and that only by Grace can God make us to be anything else, and in fact God makes us saints, holy people who reflect God’s Grace, Truth, and Love … THEN
Then we can choose to put aside sin (as best we can), and allow God’s Grace to flow through us, infusing our thoughts, words, and deeds with God’s free and unconditional love for all people.
Then we may just be the reflectors of God’s righteousness. BUT we fall into the Devil’s snare if and when we try to claim that we, made to reflect God’s Grace by God’s Grace alone working in us, have somehow accomplished this sainthood on our own merits (or even in part on our own merits.)
Scripture inspires us as God-made saints to reflect God’s Grace, and to confess daily or more often that we sin and cannot free ourselves … or even do anything good … except by God’s Grace working in and through us.
Scripture inspires us. That is it creates in us an awareness of God’s presence in, with, and through us. Scripture does not make us more or other than we are. Neither does scripture reflect God’s own thoughts. Scripture remains the result of sinful humans, interpreting and reflecting God’s presence in their imperfect lives.
Not perfect: neither us humans, nor the scriptures we produce by God’s inspiration. But they are the best it gets, kind of like us. We are the best it gets, until God works through us, and then we still are the best it gets.
Which as God’s Grace works in us can be awfully awesome and wondrous … which can also be the scariest and the most comforting experience we will ever have. The scariest it is because it exposes with great clarity the raw sin and evil in us that we otherwise would hide from and deny. The most comforting it is because that raw sin and evil (so horrid as it is) is dealt with by God and it needs no further effort on our part to be set to rest in our pasts.
So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.
1 Corinthians 11:11-12
Nevertheless, in the Lord woman is not independent of man or man independent of woman. For just as woman came from man, so man comes through woman; but all things come from God.
Words of Grace For Today
Humans are not totally depraved. We are capable of doing good things, and even loving truly. That requires that God gave us freedom to choose to love … which means we also can choose to do evil things and even things that destroy love with hate. We like to think well of ourselves, that we most often choose to do good, to love truly all that God has given us. Most of us think better of ourselves than is the reality. Part of thinking better of ourselves is that we all look at each situation and try to not find blame with ourselves, but with others. We most easily choose a stranger or someone who is different than us to blame for terrible things we cannot find the cause of, so that we are not blamed for them.
All of us do this blaming. Through all human history because men and woman are identifiably different from each other, the other gender has always been a too common ‘other’ to blame for our own shortcomings. It is so common yet we want to avoid acknowledging it that we have names for it that mislead us from seeing what we are doing to each other. We call it the ‘battle of the sexes’ or the ‘age old competition between men and women.’ It is in fact our sin of blaming others for our own sin at work.
This is not how God created us to be. God created us to live at peace with each other, with equal respect for each other, and with appreciation for each others gifts given by God as gifts for all to benefit from. God intended us also in couples to live in love with each other.
To live, loving others, to live in love with one other person, and to be at peace with one’s own sin, is the most rewarding, purpose giving manner to live; it is how God created us, male and female, to live with each other.
It is the perverted and truly depraved who believe and live as if ‘others’ are all terrible and they and those like them are without fault. It is a terrible thing when men abuse women and with disrespect and lies take away their voice, their honour, and their dignity. It is no fix for this, as is too often done today, when women rise up to abuse men and with disrespect and lies take away their voice, their honour, and their dignity.
It is the mentally ill who blame others, to the extreme, for all their own sins to avoid all culpability, no matter how clear it is that they themselves are truly at fault.
God created people to be able to love.
To sustain the species, as with many other species, God created us male and female. This is a blessing. This does not mean that every man was created to procreated with a woman in love with her so that the children would grow up in a family built on love, or that every woman was created to procreate with a man in love with him so that the children would grow up in a family built on love.
By design, when the population flourishes and procreation is not in the best interests of the species or the planet, some men were created to love only other men, some women to love only women, and many more men and women were created to love either the opposite or the same gender. When the pressures of overpopulation increase, and the luxuries of civilization increase, human history shows that those who choose the same gender as their partners increases … by design, so that the population may decrease. Somehow, so eager to blame others who are different, and so eager to be able to condemn others who are different from us (or so much the same as us, filled with shame condemning them instead of ourselves,) we fail to appreciate that God provides ways for us to love and live fully and for the population to decrease to where the planet can survive us humans.
So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.
God created us in God’s image, capable of love. It is in loving that life has meaning. It is in loving others that we are made able to give all that we are so that others can live, and live abundantly. It is in loving that we can share God’s greatest blessing: to love unconditionally.
You shall not profane my holy name, that I may be sanctified among the people of Israel: I am the Lord; I sanctify you.
1 Peter 1:15
As he who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct.
Words of Grace For Today
Profane and holy, these two ways of thinking, talking, acting describe our lives.
Sigi grew up in a ‘normal’ farm family on the prairies, within view of the grand Rockies. Watching her family work to raise crops and cattle each year she was no stranger to the cost of illnesses, and the benefits of health. She was a bright young girl, brighter than most around her. She saw the discord in her parents’ lives between what they said they believed in and worked at and how they lived their lives. As a young teen, as teenagers are wont to, she resolved to not make the mistakes that her parents made.
Beginning with her own health she believed firmly as her parents did that her body was a gift from God, and also since her baptism, a visible presence of God’s Grace for all to encounter, and for her to benefit from by giving abundant life to others. Her parents said they believed their lives were gifts from God, including their bodies, and then they ate foods that were not healthy. The allowed their bodies to become fat and out of shape, even though they worked hard and were strong, they were not fit. In time the illnesses they allowed into their bodies would show themselves.
At first, when Sigi resolved to keep her body fit, she loudly critiqued her parents, shaming them as best she could. She developed habits that she knew were healthy. Sigi ate only food she knew was healthy for her, only the foods that she needed to be and stay healthy. She exercised everyday and through the week had a routine of various exercises that kept her whole body fit. It was a painful year that her parents endured while she ingrained her habits into her life. She allowed her critique to spread to others in the family, and then to others in the community.
When her father had his first heart attack, she was brought up short. She stopped critiquing her parents, and others. She was bright enough to realize that her critique on her father was a contribution, even if small, to his stress and therefore to his heart attack. She started to realize that being healthy was more than just being physically healthy. So she began a life-long struggle to find, develop, and maintain a healthy mind and a healthy soul.
Six decades later, in her early 70’s Sigi was still struggling with this same struggle. She had seen her father survive 4 heart attacks, many years of good return on the farm, and the two decades of large swings from profitable to huge losses. In the deep trough of the third great loss her father suffered his last heart attack. The farm was repossessed. Her mother moved to town to a small apartment she rented. Her mother’s dementia advanced suddenly in that small apartment and she died within the year.
By then Sigi was married, had a career as a psychologist, had her own three children, and had suffered their teenage years as her parents had suffered hers.
Sigi still struggled to find health in her own thinking, in the deepest corners of her mind, in the darkest valleys of her soul. Her habits were all healthy. She was still physically fit, though her body ached from arthritis, occasionally so bad she could barely move. She attended church. She meditated daily. She prayed for her family, for her church, community, country, and the whole world. She prayed for people around the world. She donated a tithe to her church, and gave even more to aide for people in terrible catastrophes around the world. She practised good, sustainable, and environmentally friendly ways of being on earth: She drove a small, economical car, installed good insulation on her small home along with a solar panel array that provided most of her electricity needs, and composted and reused most of her waste. She had bicycled most everywhere until her arthritis hampered that, and still during the summer she managed to do most of her grocery shopping using her bicycle, now a bike with an electric assist motor to help her up the small hills and rises between home and the store.
When her husband, Vern, had died of a massive stroke when he was only 58, something in Sigi just broke down, and left her unable to find any peace or purpose or health or hope.
Then so many years later, as if by a miracle everything changed again for her (like it had when she was just a teenager realizing that her parents said they believed one thing and lived completely differently). She was listening to a sermon, a simple sermon, not even a very good sermon, she heard words that she’d heard many times before: that Jesus saved us by Grace alone, not by our merits. It hit her like thunder breaking through an invisible lightening bolt and exploding in her like fireworks.
She had worked all her life to be healthy, to honour God with her body, mind, and soul, as she was a visible being of God’s presence on earth for her and others. What she had struggled against all this time was that she just could not make herself completely healthy, not healthy enough; not in her body, not in her mind, and certainly not in her soul. Her failures were as visible as her successes to anyone who knew her well could tell you. Her demands to be healthy had ruined relationship after romantic relationship before she met Vern, and many friendships as well throughout her life.
She realized that she could no more earn God’s blessings by trying to be completely holy, any more than her father could stop his heart attacks, her mother her dementia, Vern his stroke … and on went the list of other’s illnesses, reminding her of her own illnesses and the suffering she had caused so many people with her ‘holier than thou’ attitude.
Sigi regained a sense of purpose in life through more than a year of searching to understand this revelation, that she was saved by grace alone though she did not and could not deserve it, and that she was to be that same grace for others.
She realized that only by Grace could she ever reflect the holiness that God wished for her, only by Grace could she turn to God who was always with her, as the holy companion God promised to be.
She realized that her efforts to be completely holy were as all human efforts done as one’s own, as profane as anything she’d ever witnessed in her life.
Only by allowing God to make her holy, though she deserved it not one bit, could she be holy at all, and only then could her life be a visible witness to God’s holy presence with all people. It was all by Grace, that wonderful thing that God was for all people: giving freely without cost, given with ease to make one at ease, moving one through time with the beauty of a dancer, of a butterfly appearing from nowhere, moving through the heart wrenching challenges and losses of life as if pulled onward towards the goodness of life for others.
Sigi lived her final 2 decades, trusting that Grace was for her and for other people. She moved gently, kindly, sharing God’s unconditional love with all. She still struggled to be healthy in body, mind, and soul, but her struggle was not on her own. She allowed herself to fail, forgiving herself as God had already. She even enjoyed ice cream for the first time in her life, without a guilty conscience, trusting that this enjoyment was also part of a good abundant life. Profane she realized was unavoidable, though one ought not jump into it headfirst if one didn’t have to! Holy she humbly realized in new ways each day was all gift, a blessed gift of God’s Grace, a gift God offered to each sinful person.
Do not take the word of truth utterly out of my mouth, for my hope is in your ordinances.
2 Timothy 4:3-4
For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths.
Words of Grace For Today
The time is coming, or it has arrived already, when society will fail, because “The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.”
Of course this was said by Socrates who lived from 470 to 399 BC, more than just a few generations ago … and it has been true in many generations (among the privileged of the world) ever since.
The time is coming ….
In every generation about many and various failings of humans it is repeatedly said (as if it were said for the first time) For the time is coming when people will [and then fill in the sinful thing of humans since the beginning of time.]
Some people of all generations have always refused to put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they have accumulated for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, and have turned away from listening to the truth and wandered away to myths.
The truth has always been knowable if one would humbly listen to God’s Word, provided to us in many and various ways, and most clearly in the old, old story of Jesus and his love.
The danger in life is that one not only refuses to acknowledge that disaster has been part of human history since forever, but one builds up habits of denying reality (when reality is something one does not want to deal with.) The danger of this refusal is that one chooses to remain ignorant about what history can teach us, and ignorant one acts stupidly and often dangerously for oneself and those effected by one’s actions (which can be those distant in place and in time!) The danger of denying reality when one does not want to deal with it is that one ‘allows the lion’ to consume one’s family and oneself, and more significantly, one loses the ability to see God’s reality: that God created everything and everyone, oneself included. With that one loses the ability to know anything real of God, and anything real about oneself. One is truly lost in the clutches of the Devil’s hell on earth.
One is then not only a danger to oneself, but to everyone!
So we pray: Do not take the word of truth utterly out of our mouths, for our hope is in your Word. Save us from seeking comfort for our itchy ears in myths and falsehoods. According to your promises to us, guide us and use us as vessels of your truth and grace which brings life to all people.
My enemies turned back, they stumbled and perished before you.
Ephesians 1:3
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.
Words of Grace For Today
There are wonderful words to be able to speak about the challenges of life and the enemies that would do us in, such as:
My enemies turned back, they stumbled and perished before you.
Or even less concrete, though much more valuable:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.
We need more than enemies that stumble and perish, we need more than the physical results of force that cost our enemies their lives. We need … well we need God on our side, or rather we need some hope that we can be seen by God to be on God’s size. Well, more than seen … we need to know that God has us on God’s side.
What we know, in our honest moments, is that there is no way on this blessed earth that we even know how to be on God’s side all the time, or even sometimes for more than a moment or two, if that.
So how can we even hope that God will ensure we are on God’s side?
We have only God’s word, God’s promises, and Jesus’ story, which is as much as we will get, and
…
more than we need.
God walks with us. We are not doing what God wants us to do all the time. God ensures we do God’s will as much as God can guide us to do so, sometimes in spite of us or what seems to be by accident by us. God certainly does get wondrous works out of us saints.
The greatest work begins as we confess and give God thanks that Jesus has brought God’s grace to bear on us. This great work is oft repeated, as many times as we stray from God’s will for us, which is so many times we cannot count them even those in one of our days. This work is completed when we show God’s grace to others so that they may know God as the One who walks with them, graciously bringing them to abundant life.
When we do that we know once again without a doubt that God
has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places,
and God has blessed us in Christ with every creaturely blessing in the concrete earthly places that God gives us to walk in and through for our days in God’s blessed creation.
The world is after all God’s and God blesses us to live in it, to life abundantly in it, as God’s Grace-made saints.
Let the prophet who has a dream tell the dream, but let the one who has my word speak my word faithfully. What has straw in common with wheat? says the Lord.
1 Corinthians 2:4-5
My speech and my proclamation were not with plausible words of wisdom, but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God.
Words of Grace For Today
God speaks to us in many and various ways.
Prophets reported their dreams, many waking dreams, that they knew were God speaking to them. They warned the people (usually the kings and rulers, but also the common folk) of the sin and evil of their ways and God’s response of ruin and exile. They encouraged the people in ruin and exile to have courage, for God would not leave them abandoned. The warned kings and rulers of God’s people and their enemies of the destruction that would come because of their foolish, proud, arrogant, and stubborn ways of trying to find their own way without or against God!
These words remain as they have been collected and recorded. They are warnings, cautions, and encouragements still for us today.
Even so these words, from dreams and prophetic wisdom given by God, most always work from the power of might that can destroy one’s enemies.
There were many false prophets, people who spoke their dreams as if they were from God, and the dreams and the prophets were not from God at all. Even when the words were wise, or wise of a sort, they were not from God.
Jeremiah compares these false prophets to the straw that is left after the wheat is harvested. They do not bear good fruit, though until the harvest they support the good fruit of grain that feeds the people.
Straw is nothing like wheat in its value and ability to sustain life. Straw is laid down to absorb the excrement and urine from animals in a barn or barn yard. Wheat is ground to make food for people or maybe mash for young animals or as a nutritious supplement for animals. Wheat feeds. Straw once used is set out to rot or to be burned.
So the words of false prophets, even those alive today, are worth little but to absorb crap, and attract crap they do until the dung heap in politics and on the internet starts to rot and stink to high heaven.
Precious are the words from God, as wheat is precious. They give life.
How can we know the difference? Sometimes it is a challenge and we are duped into believing false words of false hope … that drive us further from hope!
The difference is in the power in the words. The power of might that can destroy is not the power of God’s word. The power of God’s word is what God does with our lack of might, our lack of character, our lack of integrity, our lack of goodness, our lack of faith, our weakness of the most miserable kinds.
The power of God’s word is that it addresses our weaknesses and failings with grace, with mercy and kindness, with forgiveness and renewed life. God’s power is made known in how God gives abundant life to even the greatest sinners and the most horrible people. God’s power is made known in the sacrifice that God makes, giving the life of his own son over to the power that would destroy life. God makes this sacrifice in order to communicate to us (in Jesus’ story) God’s love for us, and the lengths that God goes to in order to offer us grace, and acceptance, and renewed life, and a home with all the saints of all time.
Welcome home! This is where the treasure of the fruit of the vine, the kernel of wheat, and the heart of love and hope is made real by God’s love for us. This is where there is food enough for all and a feast for every soul no matter how bruised or beaten. This is where everyone is actually welcome. It’s not just an empty phrase of a congregation looking for like-minded self-righteous people to fill the pews and pay the bills, but hating and condemning those who are different.
Whoever you are … this home is built not with power and might, cement and wood, furniture and cupboards. This home is built on the power of God’s mercy, grace and enduring kindness.
But Moses said to the people, ‘Do not be afraid, stand firm, and see the deliverance that the Lord will accomplish for you today; for the Egyptians whom you see today you shall never see again.
Hebrews 10:23
Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful.
Words of Grace For Today
As we do repeatedly when threats arise against us, the people following Moses into Freedom, led by God no less, repeatedly complain that it would have been better if they had not up’d and left their ‘safe’ slavery in Egypt to follow Moses into the Wilderness, just to die.
This time Pharaoh’s army has caught up to them as the have crossed the Red Sea. They exit the path through the water to stand on the opposite shore, the ‘gateway’ into the wilderness. At the same time the horses and chariots and men of Pharaoh’s army, spears and swords ever ready, enter the same path through the waters.
Moses promises them that they should hold fast. They will never again see these soldiers, these Egyptians ever again. God has delivered them and it is not for nothing.
God is gracious and faithful. The people then watch as Moses takes his staff and the waters, which were pulled back to create their path to freedom, are let free to fall back in their course. The horses, chariots, and men are swamped and drowned in the returning waters. They will never be seen again by anyone.
God keeps God’s promises.
Later they people will run out of water. They will complain and say that it would have been better to live full lives in slavery rather than die of thirst. God remains always gracious and faithful. Moses will strike a rock with his staff and water will flow from it, the people will drink their fill, and they will move further into the wilderness.
Then they will run out of food. They will complain and say that it would have been better to live full lives in slavery rather than die of thirst. God remains always gracious and faithful. Quail rain from the sky at night for them to eat meat. In the morning the dew will leave a thin layer of bread, enough for one day (or two if the next day is the Sabbath.)
Then, while Moses is up Mount Sinai, they will run out of patience. They will turn to Aaron, give him all their gold and the will worship the calf made from it. God has provided for them in every way, and God will not leave the people to die in the wilderness that day. God remains gracious and faith even when the people are not. Moses smashes the tablets that the ten commandments are written into. The golden calf is melted away. Moses will go up the mountain to get a second copy of the ten commandments. (It will take a bit more than a good photocopier or printer-scanner to produce them, inscribed in stone as they are.) When Moses will come back down, the people now will return to worship God, who is gracious. As a consequence not one of the people alive that day at Mt. Sinai will cross the Jordan into the Promised Land. Their descendants will, but not them.
God is gracious and faithful and just.
So God is with us as we repeatedly complain and turn from worshipping God.
Freed from slavery to sin, we too often face challenges and think that we ought to return to be slaves of sin. God has other plans. Jesus continually forgives and renews us sinners so that we can also at the same time be God’s faithful people, the saints who share God’s grace with all people. We are the people who share the whole story of Jesus and his love, the old, old story. We are the people who do this only because God graciously makes us able, because God first loves us so that we can love all other people. Even our enemies who catch up to us just as we set foot in the freedom of the wilderness. It does not require much since we will never see them again;
God is faithful and gracious and just.
Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful.
Many are the torments of the wicked, but steadfast love surrounds those who trust in the Lord.
Romans 5:5
Hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.
Words of Grace For Today
When Arnold had finished with Tina, having sent her to jail for crimes that she did not commit, he still suffered the terror jags. With all his lies about Tina he had created, or rather constructed, a wholly fictional character, which he’d applied to Tina and presented to the church, the courts, and even the children. That character had very little that was true about Tina. Almost all of the terrible things in that character came from Arnold’s own sins and crimes many of which haunted him out of his terrible past. The church, community, and courts, able to know very well that it was only fiction about Tina, had accepted the fiction nonetheless as true about Tina. They continued to do so even as it was more and more clear that they had added their own lies in order to convict, ostracize and ban Tina. Their increasingly worse sins were bound, to be judged by God. They church and judges continued to protest that they had done nothing wrong. It was impossible to have them accept the terrible truth about what they had done, thus they were in God’s hands. Every denial of the truth set them further and further apart from reality, from a healthy life, from the goodness of creation, from all of God’s blessings, from God’s love, and from all hope.
Tina, forced by poverty to live homeless in the wilderness, with help from friends that loaned her enough to get by on each year, lived in the middle of the goodness of creation beside a small lake. There reality was an unavoidable part of every day. Life threatening cold in the winter, and mosquitoes, wasps, and heat in the summer did not allow for any denials about reality. Wood needed to be collected, cut, split and burned to create a warm and safe space in winter. In the summer grass needed to be cut to minimize the mosquito population, wasps deterred or nests destroyed to allow use of the small and very old borrowed camper, and shade needed to be sought and created around that camper in order to mitigate the searing heat that made midday activities dangerous to impossible. Surrounded by the peace of nature, for the most part left alone by other people as a holy mystic, and required or at least able to exercise sufficiently most every day Tina’s health recovered from the terrible cost of suffering Arnold’s abuse, the gaslighting joined in on by the police, community, churches and the courts, and the life threatening ‘medical’ treatment provided by some doctors and nurses.
Tina saw the goodness of creation in the ebb and flow of the seasons as the lake sang and then moaned in bass tones as it froze and then quietly thawed and in a day or two was cleared of ice by a strong wind, the birth of new robin chicks and the care the parents provided the one that too soon glided out of the overfilled nest, the arrival of fawn’s and beaver pups, the fruit of the various berries in their own seasons, and then the welcomed night freezings that cleared the air of all mosquitoes and wasps, the ground of all ants and pine beetles, and the arrival of snow deep enough to ski far beyond where one could walk in a day.
With nothing but her clothing still sufficient for each season, a tent and good sleeping bag, and a bicycle, Tina counted her blessings as friends and family loaned her, gave her, and provided for her more than enough to survive on; she lived and thrived and wrote and took photos … and every morning gave God thanks. Life was reduced to the basics and it had not been so good for a long time. She saw God’s blessings each day, poured out on her and she shared them with the few people she saw during each week.
In spite of everything, all the terrible lies told about her, all the challenges she faced nearly every day to live, Tina knew like no other time in her life that God sustained her and that she had every reason to hope … for hope had not disappointed her at all.
She was able to trust God fully (well almost), and she counted on God’s love surrounding her, pouring over her, flowing freely to the few people she spoke with each day. She knew better than at any other time in her life that the Holy Spirit guided her, that Jesus was present all around her, and that God created and sustained her in everything.
Arnold chose to force his success in life at everyone else’s cost. Tina was only one of his victims. And he paid dearly, daily with the terror jags that disabled him, with the fear of any criticism, with the profound self-doubt that haunted him along with his unshakable knowing the truth of his own terrible treatment of Tina and so many other people. His past haunted him. He knew someday it would catch up with him, one way or another.
Tina lived blessed, not perfect though forgiven, and free … all a gift from God that she knew she did not deserve, and which would never be taken from her, not by all her enemies nor even by all the evil in the world.
