So shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.
Acts 4:29-30
Lord, look at their threats, and grant to your servants to speak your word with all boldness, while you stretch out your hand to heal, and signs and wonders are performed through the name of your holy servant Jesus.
Words of Grace For Today
There is much that we humans try to accomplish, sometimes with success. Sometimes we fail spectacularly.
God accomplishes everything God chooses to accomplish: God need only speak a word and it is accomplished.
We face a world that is broken, terribly so. God’s Word offers us true hope in the midst of the profound brokenness of the world around us, and as we are honest we recognize and confess the profound brokenness begins in each of us, in each of our ‘me’.
Only in the face of knowing the horrendous brokenness of us and the world do we know God’s power in God’s Word.
The disciples have been imprisoned and interrogated by the rulers, elders, and scribes; and then are released. Knowing their lives are always at risk by those in power they gather with the followers of Jesus to pray. Under real threats of persecution and death they pray that they may speak with all boldness of the wonders of God’s love demonstrated to them so clearly by Jesus’ life, healing, forgiving. Under threat they know that they will have opportunity to speak (and make a difference) even as God stretches out God’s hand (usually in the form of a saint’s hand) and as they are able to extend Jesus’ power to heal those who are ill, taken down by the evil that strangles life in this world.
Under threat they pray that they will be able to speak, and that their words will be used by God, as part of God’s Word, which goes out and always returns successfully … always returns having accomplished what it was intended to bring about.
To pray that we may contribute to the success of the Word of God is a bold prayer!
This we pray today, again; and tomorrow, and another tomorrow again … and again.
(including the miracles of such vaccines as never before possible?)
OR
Complaining and demanding yet more miracles
amid a pandemic?
Psalm 145:10
All your works shall give thanks to you, O Lord, and all your faithful shall bless you.
Hebrews 6:7
[We can be like] ground that drinks up the rain falling on it repeatedly, and that produces a crop useful to those for whom it is cultivated [for this is to receive] a blessing from God.
Words of Grace For Today
Is it gratitude that defines us?
Are we like ground, thirsting and tilled and producing nourishment for many?
Who is it that we are this day?
The Morning After, the morning of redemption:
So what does this morning offer to us, to you, to me?
The light shines bright in the mild air across the cold undisturbed curves of snow marking the goodness of winter this day, if even for too short a time.
Where does the light shine in you, in me, in us?
…
Coming out of the city yesterday, on that wretched 1 mile stretch of gravel that the city has never paved like the roads next to it and the MD roads out into the country (who is being disfavoured with this anomaly?) I was peddling nicely along, tired and warming up for the hours it would take to get ‘home’. The flashlight on the front provided a good beam, strobing to save power, and the snow had collected in strips or rather been run off in strips down the road. It was bumpy, washboard … a real pain in the butt and jolted my whole tired body. I kept seeking out a smoother path, finally even on the side just outside the last clear strip. I did not make it to the snow. Instead turning the wheel demonstrated that that ‘cleared’ strip was not just cleared, it was run over and over and over until it was a shiny slick ice way. The front wheel lost all grip on the ice as I turned to the right. It slid left, the bike handle bars, seat and packs on the back rack went right, gravity took hold and I was on my back and right buttocks before the goose could crap or squawk. My back did not like it a bit. Fortunately I’d just taken food with a Tordol to ensure my back did not give me problems and from experience it lessons the arthritis pain on the trip on the bike there and back.
I lay there a bit, lights red and brilliant white strobing in the dark near the ground, then rolled over to test if I were still functionally one piece if not at peace with the cursed universe. The left doubled mittens came off to dust off the snow, light and sticking everywhere.
I stood, more dusting off as a car whisked by without stopping to inquire about the strobes reflecting off the ice and snow.
Then, with miles to go, I pulled up the bike, turned each wheel and the pedals each a turn to ensure they were not damaged, and set off walking towards the west, smoke plumes far to the north and west, wheeling the bike back and forth between the snow and ice strips trying to find sure footing for myself and for the wheels. Most of a mile later, on the pavement I tested the grip. It seemed sure enough. So with the cabins ahead to the right I mounted the ‘old steed’ and powered by my tired legs set off on the all too familiar route of gradual rises that require walking and the grades where I can wheel free, forward and down just a bit. At the creek, steeper down I was more than wary, and stifled the gravity pull, more for the oncoming traffic that filled the lane ahead than for myself – for I was too tired to remember I ought not want to put cheek or anything else to the ground at great speed. Fortune was the first time I was barely moving, still in first gear, trying to find a path forward through the rough ground below.
Onward the night went, progressively faster and slower, approaching me and passing me by at varying speeds, with smells of leaking gas and oil, the plumes changing direction and the night sky moving against the ground lights, the airport strobe, and the reflections off the smoke plumes so far distant, the nearest just beyond my destination of warmth, shelter … All the while knowing the toughest mile is always the last pulling the bike through the snow after the road ends when I am left to more pedestrian advances through the snow toward … rest.
This morning …
After a late night of letting my overheated muscles cool to normal and my mind to find it’s rest, I woke twice to stoke in the dark, and then once again as the dawn barely started to push the dark west, each time not wanting to rise, but it needed be. Until finally I woke to bright light beyond the coverings, and slowly pulled the cobwebs back with more light and then a walk outside, and on to the late morning routine of Eucharistie und Frühstück, thankful for the fire that provides boiling water for coffee, and writing.
A morning of redemption from the monotony through yesterday’s exercise and today’s recovery.
So I ask again, mostly of you:
So what does this morning offer to us, to you, to me?
The light shines bright in the mild air across the cold undisturbed curves of snow marking the goodness of winter this day, if even for too short a time.
Where does the light shine in you, in me, in us?
Are we filled with praise and gratitude for all God’s generous gifts to us all?
Do we drink in those gifts, and give back to those most in need, the benefits of our being so blessed?
We are as fragile as grass in the deep freeze of winter snows.
And more precious than platinum to God.
Genesis 32:11
Deliver me, please, from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau, for I am afraid of him; he may come and kill us all, the mothers with the children.
Luke 19:9
Then Jesus said to him, ‘Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham.’
Words of Grace For Today
Jacob, the trickster, who stole the birthright and inheritance from his brother, cries to God. Jacob is rightfully afraid that his brother has every right to respond and not kindly. That he will kill everyone in Jacob’s family is a possibility.
So Jacob cries for God to deliver him from his rightful punishment.
If any of us think we are in a different situation before God, we are real fools. Think again.
No one is righteous before God. All of us deserve punishment for our sins. All of us ought to humbly cry to God for deliverance, deliverance from our enemies that we do not deserve.
…
God responds to Jacob’s cry.
God responds to our cries.
God responds, graciously, mercifully, lovingly forgiving us and delivering us … maybe not from our enemies, but from the Devil and from us losing our souls (heart, mind, body in one whole big loss of our lives).
For we too, by faith in God’s Son, Jesus the Christ, so marked with this faith as a gift given to us freely by God, are also counted among the children of Abraham, God’s own people.
Humble pie.
Desperate pleas!
Gracious Deliverance!
We are in this together: this life, this pandemic, these challenges, … all of it.
God’s creation is a wonderful place to live and share life abundant with others.
Is not my word like fire, says the Lord, and like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces?
Luke 12:49
I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!
Words of Grace For Today
In the dead-cold of winter (so mild before this week, but no longer at all mild at -36⁰C) a bit of fire is a welcome thing. Vented, directed, contained with plenty of snow at shovel length to put out anything that approaches too much fire, the heat of fire meets the bleeping cold air and provides a livable space.
Most people in homes enjoy the balance of fire against cold as a product of natural gas ignited in a furnace with the heat distributed to the rest of the home by electricity (either an air fan or a water pump.)
There are cautionary tales to be told or rather seen: the house that one day is an example of a grand house on a hill in the woods, and the next a scarred roof line behind an untouched facade, which on closer viewing displays the chimney standing on it’s own with the building around it on the side and back of what used to be a house, missing and what is visible is jagged and charred. A chimney fire it seems consumed a home, hopefully without loss of life. The 5th wheel RV appears setup along side the remains of the house for the remainder of the winter, spring and summer, with the dogs running outside as they usually had.
Fire.
Or
One sees on the news videos of thick smoke and vehicles making their collective and slow exit out of Fort McMurray as wildfires wipe out huge areas of the city.
Or
One sees the photos of a railroad accident fire that has burst and melted rail cars and rails themselves.
It could be that the purpose of your life is only to serve as a warning to others. Not every life can be a success, just like not every vessel can be seaworthy. But there’s no shame in being one spectacular shipwreck.
God’s Word is like all that, taking what is evil in the world, what is evil and sinful in us, and burning it up like chaff ….
Ah, what a fire that will be!
God’s Word always is a two edged sword, cutting away evil, also from us, among us, and from within each of us!
The Word of God cleanses with fire, and what a fire it is already in us!
The Word of God cuts away and burns away our sin and evil, and cleanses us, pure and righteous! By Grace we live through the cleansing fire.
God provides more than an RV replacement for a home. God provides us a home in the New Jerusalem, the City of God, the New Creation.
For some of us so connected to nature in our existence God provides that we need not move into a city; God provides a home in the wilds of nature’s wonders and beauty.
God’s cleansing fire that Jesus brings is destructive, powerful and wonderfully just. We pray it will be kindled soon among us. We pray the hammer of God will break apart Evil from within us and from among us, so that all will have homes, all will have food, all will have a good life, an abundant life!
Then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being.
3 John 1:2
Beloved, I pray that all may go well with you and that you may be in good health, just as it is well with your soul.
Words of Grace For Today
Whether we speak of ourselves made up of body and soul, or we see ourselves as one unified whole of various characteristics interconnected and interdependent, we know …
that historically people have spoken of humans as made up of bodies (flesh, blood, muscles, bones, organs) and souls (spirit, Geist, reason and emotion, sentience) … and …
that historically people have spoken of humans one interconnected, interdependent whole, connected not only to ourselves, but to all other humans and creatures and all of creation, not only in this time, but throughout all time.
In the creation story from Genesis 2 God animates the dust that forms a human with God’s breath (Spirit!) so that the dust lives.
We ought remain humble; we are but dust. We can be so wrongly arrogant; we are God’s Spirit. We ought be so humble; all that we are dust and Spirit are gifts from God, and we exist only because of God, continue only according to God’s Grace, and are promised eternal life only because God so chooses to love us. We can do nothing to earn any of this.
We are not little gods because God breathes Spirit into us. We are mere creatures capable of bearing God’s Spirit to others, capable of bearing God’s Spirit to all creation – not that we do, more often than not we choose to turn against God, God’s creatures and creation, playing as if we were little gods.
It is known that when our spirits, our souls, are in good health, the health of our bodies improves, we recover from illness quicker. When we connect with nature we reduce our stress and our physical and mental health improves. We, body and soul, are connected to God’s creation, interacting at least, though God teaches us we are interconnected.
In the face of Covid 19, and all the challenges to our physical health, even age itself, we pray for ourselves and all people, that as God heals our souls, God may heal our bodies as well. We pray that we may recognize that not only are we in this pandemic together and so dependent on others to observe restrictions to stem the transmission of Covid 19, we are guests on this earth and so dependent on each other to treat all humans as the precious gifts they are and all of creation as the wondrous gift it is, for us all.
You have made me stride freely, and my feet do not slip.
2 Corinthians 3:17
Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.
Words of Grace For Today
Faced with the impossible challenge of facing war against Hitler, Churchill famously said: We have nothing to fear other than fear itself.
Taking office in 1933 FDR faced the great depression and famously said: The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
This phrase as best researched seems to have originated with Montaigne in the sixteenth century, was probably picked up from Montaigne by Francis Bacon in the seventeenth, and then became a common proverb or axiom in later writers.
Over and over again in scripture as angels, leaders of God’s people, and Jesus himself greet people in great distress they say Fear not! For the Lord is with you! Or words similar.
Fear overwhelms our normal ability to deal reasonably with dangerous or challenging situations. We know that fear triggers a response generated in the brain below the cerebral cortex, which controls language and reason. Of course if we really are under attack in an imminent life and death situation, sitting and contemplating what is happening could be the end of us, so quicker responses, choosing between freeze, fight, or flight, are made by a faster area of our brain closer to the rest of our body.
Most of life is not helped by these responses, and in fact as a whole society, when we reduce our choices to these we end up with mass panic, if not in outright rioting mobs, then in masses of people unable to function and contribute to a societal solution, instead getting in the way of a solution and multiplying the problems faced.
God provides us, in the Good News that Jesus has redeemed us with Grace, not according to our works, a way of living that assures us: no matter what we face, God is with us. That reassurance, renewed in us by God’s Word each day gives us freedom from fear and all it’s causes, which are more than enough in this world to sink any reasonable person.
We, by Grace, are able to stride freely into each day, assured that this is the day of our Lord, God’s time, God’s creation, and God’s Spirit that accompanies us … giving us choices to respond to all sorts of evil with the same Grace that God gives to us.
We offer to others, by our very presence, the same Grace God exercises in and for us.
Calm reassurance of God’s Love for all creation in the face of Evil is God’s way of defeating Evil at every turn.
What a life, an abundant life, we get to live. God gives this life to us as pure gift! And we get to multiply it by giving it as gift to others!
It’s simple math: miracles of Grace beget miracles by God’s infinite factor of Love.
We have nothing to fear, but fear (Evil’s greatest presence) itself, and God has defeated fear and all Evil’s ways, even death!
And Ezra said: ‘You are the Lord, you alone; you have made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them. To all of them you give life, and the host of heaven worships you.’
Romans 11:36
For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory for ever. Amen.
Words of Grace For Today
There is much that we can create:
Paintings, sculptures, pottery, photography.
Dance, theatre, film.
Novels, short stories, poetry.
Our spirit flows from us as we create, and as others take in our creation they certainly can be inspired. The spirit flows.
As parents we are privileged and responsible and accountable for nurturing, guiding and inspiring our children to become healthy adults. Teachers, coaches, and pastors/rabbi/priests are privileged to assist and participate in nurturing children. Yet we do not inspire life into children, we merely help God’s given spirit grow.
We cannot, no matter how hard we try, inspire, on our own, our creations to breathe. God alone can bring what is not alive, to breathe and come to life, to dream and envision the possibilities of joy and hope.
God, on the other hand, creates in such great quantity and quality that we can only be awestruck. So much in the universe does not breathe, does not carry and share spirit. God also creates things that live, that breathe, that smile and dream.
God gives that to each of us!
We can only respond by being awestruck. We can only appropriately respond by worshipping God, our creator. All the goodness we enjoy comes from God. As we remember that we are God’s creatures owing God everything, life is as God created us to live it: life is life abundant.
As we share with others what God has given us, so that everyone enjoys life abundantly, we enjoy more and more what God intended for us to experience: grace and love.
Another great thing about creation is that that God’s creation is held together by grace and love.
The Lord is your keeper; the Lord is your shade at your right hand. The sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night.
John 17:15
I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one.
Words of Grace For Today
If God made a mistake, creating us to live on this earth, all of us so capable of evil that is so horrific we can barely imagine it’s destructive power, then the solution and our salvation would be for us to be able to leave all this behind. Many stories have been written and and genocidal attempts made, instead of removing us, to remove the evil from earth. It cannot go well for anyone, because sin and the agents of evil are each of us. It is not some identifiable or vague ‘them’. It is all of us who are the agents of sin and evil.
Many stories have been written and ill-fated attempts made to remove us from the bounds of sin on earth, from these flesh encased lives we have to live. None are good or successful. All need a huge dose of delusion.
Delusion runs rampant today, from Trump, Trump supporters, to similar flavours of government that ignore science, and instead implement restrictions for their own political ends instead of as protection for the people. Under the cover of Covid 19 great evil is perpetrated against millions of people the world over.
Did God make a mistake creating these people who use a pandemic as cover for evil, or for that matter for creating all of us, the perpetrators and victims alike?
Doch, God made no mistake creating us to live in these flesh encased lives here on this earth with all these other creatures. All humans, capable of evil, are also capable of great good. For this good God created us.
What we cannot do on our own is take on Evil and win. In fact the easiest route for the Devil to own us is when we try to concoct our lives as good on our own. That opens a freeway into our hearts, minds and strength for the Devil to work his/her wiles, wiles of deception and delusion, and even covering the tracks of evil in our core existence, so that we can fool ourselves about how the Devil possesses us!
In this marvellous life we are each given, God alone is our keeper, our safeguard against evil. God does not remove us from the wonders of creation and our awesome yet limited manner by which we participate in creation: See. Hear. Smell. Taste. Touch. Organize. Assemble what can seem as chaos into good order, good understanding. Marvel. Sing for Joy. Give God Thanks!
Still we will be overrun by evil. It is powerful, so much more powerful than we, ourselves.
Do you think you are so good that you are beyond the reach of evil tapping you at your core to perpetrate evil? Ha, for fools are exactly in this way played out by the Devil to commit the worst evil of all, passive aggressive, smiling to our faces and stabbing us in the back, pretending and parading around as if they were so good, yet at the same time plotting and scheming people’s destruction … completely owned (unawares) by the Devil.
Our only defence is God’s mercy, the story of Jesus’ sacrifice to rescue us and redeem us, the gifts of the Holy Spirit to renew us and guide us to …
… to humble admiration of God’s love for us
… to humble gratitude for God’s mercy
… to humble kindness toward all people, especially our ‘enemies’
… to humble dedication to work for justice for all people, justice based on truth and God’s mercy
… to humble joy no matter what we face, because we know God alone is our keeper and this world is where God intends us to live, and to live abundantly, helping others live abundantly as well.
Are we like that, weighed down, instead of enjoying life!
Psalm 95:2-3
Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving; let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise! For the Lord is a great God, and a great King above all gods.
1 Timothy 6:14-16
He will bring about the manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ at the right time—he who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords. It is he alone who has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see; to him be honour and eternal dominion. Amen.
Words of Grace For Today
Sometimes there is little time.
Still,
Give God thanks.
A foot and half plus of heavy snow fell. I had a full day, with little time to write.
Still there were many things to be thankful for, many more to laugh at, and some I just had to shake my head at. One over-arching thing keeps getting proven over and over: God has a sense of humour and keeps hoping for us … why else would we humans be left to do such ridiculously, humorously, crazy things that both fill the news and are apparent right in front of one’s eyes … too often done by the one who the eyes belong to!
Patch Adams had it right: the unexpected joyful thing gets people to notice a bit more of life, and life is wonderful. There is every reason to be “excessively happy.” So why not be that for as many people as you can?
God is everywhere watching, a Light that powers the universe, a Light so great we cannot behold it, so we need not wait. Here and now (in each moment of each day) is the right time and place to make a joyful noise to God!
Turn my eyes from looking at vanities; give me life in your ways.
Colossians 2:6-7
As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.
Words of Grace For Today
Eldon worked hard, sought to save as many people as possible wasted money. Yet his life went off in all sorts of directions as he sought to find purpose, meaning, or some fulfillment in life. He chased things that some would call extras or luxuries, just to have something fill up his life. He avoid alcohol and drugs, yet his addiction to things of comfort, pleasure and status had him deep in it’s grasp.
Knowing little, but that his addiction was killing him, he sought any help he could. He even prayed, Lord save me from my addiction. Show me the way to life as you created us to live it. Show me what you have created me to be and do with this life, this life that is so empty.
Jane grew up in the church, was confirmed, participated in the youth group activities and studies. Bright as anyone she knew she went off the university, on to grad school, with full scholarships. She applied to study history for a Ph.D. at Yale and was given a fellowship. While she had always applied herself to study beyond each course, the course work being rather easy for her, she found the Ph.D. studies all encompassing and demanding, so that for the first time in her life she was afraid of failing. She worked long hours each day, through every weekend. Three years into the work she was grinding away at her thesis when it all came tumbling down on her.
She tried to study and could barely see letters on the page. She tried to remember what she’d just read and made notes about, and it would not come to her. She tried to sleep and she could barely sleep.
She went to the doctor, who did a full work up but everything tested fine. The doctor did confirm that Jane was unable to focus on anything. It was as if she’d become an idiot overnight, and it stuck. It was so frustrating. She went to a therapist, who was kind and knowledgeable, but there was no help to give Jane. Finally she took a two week trip back home. Walking her old home town high school paths, nothing seemed to bring her to be able to read and remember.
She went to see her pastor, who listened thoughtfully to everything Jane told her. Her pastor said she had no idea what was happening to Jane. She advised simple things, stop to breath, say morning prayers, sing her favourite hymns, go to confession, come and partake in the Eucharist.
Jane then confided in her pastor that she had stopped going to church when the work load for her doctorate because so demanding.
Her pastor pointed her to a verse from Colossians:
As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.
Her pastor pointed out that no matter what else was going on with her, Jane still had so much to be thankful for. She suggested keeping a daily journal of everything that she had and could be thankful for.
Jane started a Gratitude Journal, making entries each morning. Weeks later after returning to the university and her teaching duties (part of her fellowship) Jane realized she was less stressed about her studies, and she could sit and read and remember.
She dove back into her thesis work.
It was decades later when Jane crossed paths with Eldon, who was still praying for relief from his addiction as life meant nothing if he had not acquired something new that day.
Eldon could see how Jane was kind, thoughtful, and assured of herself, even as she took on some of the toughest challenges at the university where she was a full professor, shortly to take over as head of the history department. He asked how she managed to appear so … so … maybe it was that she looked so content.
She said she always found ten things to be thankful for each morning to enter into her Gratitude Journal. After that no matter what happened, she reminded herself all day long, that God was good to her. The rest was relatively easy, even if it was nearly impossible.
…
Today, remaining alert and consistently doing what is required to minimize the spread of Covid 19 after nearly a full year of it, may seem almost impossible. It need not, if we remember to always be thankful for all we receive from God.
