My tears have been my food day and night, while people say to me continually, ‘Where is your God?’
Matthew 2:1-2
In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking, ‘Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.’
Words of Grace For Today
Jupiter and Saturn will come within 0.1 degrees of each other, forming the first visible “double planet” in 800 years. This bright star, or one like it, led the wise ‘men’ from the east to travel to find Jesus.
We search for God, like the ‘wisemen’ who may have been women and men. Others deride us for a God they cannot find. We suffer the ‘slings and arrows’ of life and they claim that God has deserted us, or that God never existed anyway.
Searching for God can bring rewards. It brought the wise ones to see Jesus and present him with gifts. Their search also set Herod to look for Jesus, though he would not bring gifts. Instead he kills off all the children in the area who are in Jesus’ age.
Jesus survives only because his parents have taken him and themselves in flight on a dangerous journey, as refugees to this day still take to try to survive.
This day we begin our Christmas celebrations, celebrations that few alive have held or been able to anticipate. Such are the restrictions and safeties of a time of pandemic.
May this day be one of many when we recognize Jesus
in the needs of our neighbours the world over, regardless of colour, creed, or company they hold and keep.
May this day be one of many when we recognize God’s Grace
as the sole source of our breath and hope.
May this day be one of many when unexpected challenges force us to see the Light of God anew in the simplest of things, in the wonders that fill this world all around.
On the night coming, as we celebrate the Light of Christ, may the Joy of God fill our hearts, minds and strength.
I am not afraid of tens of thousands of people who have set themselves against me all around.
Mark 10:15
Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.
Words of Grace For Today
Close to Christmas, and enemies have not relented.
And if you do not have enemies who have not relented, then perhaps you have not lived well and righteously, or courageously.
Still we like to say others cannot enter the Kingdom of God, for they are not humble like children before God.
This we say with our pride swelling, for definitely we are God’s favoured and God’s chosen and at least we are assured of great place in God’s Kingdom …
just like the disciples who argued who would be first in Jesus’ rule!
First are those who have nothing left, who like children are fully dependent on their parents, and on God, for their survival,
which is not going to be much longer on this earth
for the powers that be are quite willing to kill off those who stand righteously before them with truth and grace,
testaments to God’s Grace and Truth.
Like children then, let us take these final days to prepare for God to come, as a helpless child in our midst, as a human, suffering all we do in this hard, short and brutish life,
which by God’s blessings alone (not our material wealth or comforts or privilege) is blessed with challenges and meaningful labour, eternal and overfilled with wonders, and filled with kindnesses unending.
The first day the sun can shine longer than yesterday
…
by a few seconds.
Tuesday, December 22, 2020
Life is Filled with Wonderful
Mundane Things
Like Cold, Snow, Trees, Light
From Generation to Generation
All in God’s Hands
Psalm 102:28
The children of your servants shall live secure; their offspring shall be established in your presence.
Revelation 1:8
‘I am the Alpha and the Omega’, says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.
Words of Grace For Today
Security is a fleeting illusion, unless one by grace places one’s full trust in God. The security one has then is not in having a comfortable or successful life. Then security is in God’s hands, God who is the Alpha and the Omega (the ‘A’ and ‘Z’ of all.)
When we practice placing our trust in God, which we usually skew into something else, then the ‘habit level’ of our lives moves to a different ‘place’. If we are fortunate (the self made skew not being too extreme) we start each day conscious that God is our all in all, and that all we have and are is God’s anyway, so we ‘give it’ all we’ve ‘got’ by ‘giving it our all’ so that all other people can have life abundant. Then through the day as we make choices each moment, they are at least somewhat informed by this awareness.
The truth is most ‘religious’ people skew the love of God into something that supports their own privilege or position in the world. Rich people interpret God’s blessings as evident in their wealth. Poor people see God’s blessings poured out on the poor. Powerful people interpret God’s blessing as evident in their having power, powerless see God’s blessings in the meek, the lowly, the outcasts, the pure of heart.
And we all desire to have a place in the history of humanity, by not dying and being forgotten, but by making our mark and being remembered for generations. While few can hope to be remembered, most all of us strive to pass on to the next generations some of who we are and what we value.
All this is rather foolish of us, though pretty standard. God keeps calling us to see the world anew, through the eyes of others, through the eyes of Jesus.
We cannot secure our own lives, we all die. We cannot secure our place in history, we all vanish like grass in winter under the snow.
We need not secure our own lives. God already secures us as God’s own children.
The children of God’s children shall live secure; their offspring shall be established in God’s presence.
More we cannot attain. Even this is given to us as a free gift. More we do not need.
So what are we doing this extraordinary Advent to prepare for an extraordinary Christmas?
Whatever we have done this Advent to prepare, whatever we do this Christmas, more than what God has done for us by being born as one of us, is all our own odd skewing of what Christmas is about.
So celebrate, and maybe remember, that what we do is at best a misty, foggy, reflection (in our own warped mirrors) of what God has done, does today, and will do for us, each and every one of us humans, each day.
God takes care of that mushroom cloud of sin and hypocrisy (ours and everyone else’s, too) and sets us re-newed into each moment of each day.
The Lord said: … these people draw near with their mouths and honour me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me, and their worship of me is a human commandment learned by rote.
1 John 3:18
Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.
Words of Grace For Today
Walk the Talk!
Talk is cheep, or cheap.
There is still nothing we can do to earn our salvation, and yet !!!
You’d think if a person or a group of people knew that Jesus had done everything to save them from their sins, adopting them as children of God and giving them re-newed life each day, then that person or group would be able to live a bit of the Good News in their lives and share it with other people, not just lip syncing to a song written by someone else while living out the Devil’s wishes for them each day. After all we humans are capable of gratitude, growth and receiving God-given sainthood, or?
Yet again and again in scripture and in real life we encounter the exact opposite: people lip-sync the story of Jesus, while their deeds and banking belie that they value something quite foreign to being children of God. They value their own comfort, privilege and security, all supposedly attainable by their own thoughts, words and deeds … though all that self-attained stuff is just a mirage that covers the devil’s claim on their hearts, minds, and strength!
It is all too easy to see this hypocrisy blossoming like a nuclear mushroom cloud over most every person we meet. The real problem is, if we are at all honest with ourselves, when we stand by ourselves in front of the mirror … we see that ugly mushroom cloud as darker than ever.
Yikes, what are we all about anyway! Can we not somehow live out with thoughts, words, AND deeds what we hope to believe and reflect in our lives?!
The answer is … no. Not one single human can do that, except the one born to Mary and Joseph and laid in a manger. So it is so good that we prepare these last few days to celebrate Jesus’ birth.
Still, what are we to DO?
The answer is simple … pray, and trust that God will transform our hearts, minds and strength so that, at least occasionally, we can recognize the Good News of Jesus reflected in our thoughts, words, AND deeds. It is much like writing or playing sports: if you focus on trying to do it right, it will rarely be possible to actually DO as well as you might. It is in focusing, not on trying to do it right instead of wrong, but in focusing on the moment’s demands, and then into the follow-through (editing or rebounding off the boards or getting down the field and into position … [fill in the correct sequence for your preferred sport’s metaphor]).
We cannot guarantee that we will do God’s Will. We can only trust with thankful hearts that God will take our sinful efforts and make something good come out of them.
Still, we do not neglect our prayers, nor our concerted efforts to effect an abundant life for others, ALL others. This remains our life’s focus, far and above any focus on the ‘success’ of our own lives.
Then, as Jesus has stepped in to replace our tattered abysmal record before God with his impeccable record, we are able to walk humbly before our God as we strive to bring justice to all people in all circumstances.
Taking Advent seriously as time to prepare for Christmas, we see the hope of Advent’s precious blues … and give God thanks that we are able to also recognize ‘the blues’ among the many colours of the rainbows of life.
Your eyes beheld my unformed substance. In your book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet existed.
Luke 10:20
Nevertheless, do not rejoice at this, that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.
Words of Grace For Today
Do not rejoice at this, that the spirits submit to you
With this short sentence, the promise is made and then fulfilled that not only God controls all the universe, and Jesus, fully God and fully human, controls everything as well – the precreation chaos of the sea submit to his command, demons recognize him and cower and obey his word, but also the disciples can command the evil spirits to vacate bodies and minds, as they heal with the power of Jesus’ Word given to them!
Today we’d flock to meet and be healed by these disciples. There would be mass hysteria trying to reach them. Imagine how many Covid 19 victims could be healed, and the whole world could be no longer threatened by a small and easily transmitted virus!
The spirits cast out also free people’s minds and souls, as swiftly and effectively. There would be no Trump-itis narcissistic fantasy-land and bullying, no false convictions, and no mental illness – no campaigns of lies and distortions to ruin others, no false testimonies, no false police reports, no ill mothers bringing up their children to value money over all else, including honesty and integrity!
The world would celebrate without end, were this power available to all the children of God, to all the followers of Jesus! All would bow in wonder at God’s works to bring health to all creation!
And then we are told the disciples and we with them, should not rejoice at this power to heal and to save.
Rather we are to celebrate that before we were born our lives were written in God’s ‘book of life’ and our names appear among those saved by Jesus. Before we were anything of anything, any substance or even a dream in our parents’ or their parents’ or their parents’ minds, God fully knew us and all our days.
Even then, as God fully knows all our days, the wonderful times, the good times, the bad times, the great suffering, God chooses to walk with us in and through all that. Even when we walk ourselves right in to living hell, God walks with us! … And God keeps us walking right back out, carrying us if necessary!
There are many stories written, many more told, of lives lived, loves that guided, greeds that destroyed, hates that destroyed, and forgiveness that saved and renewed. Each and all of these stories, and each and all the untold stories of humans’ lives, God knows fully, long before a person is imagined and born, even my story, even yours.
God comes, fully human, born in a manger, so that we have God’s story of living as one of us. So that we will know in Jesus’ story the depth and breadth of God’s love for all the universe, and for each person, even me, even you.
Covid 19 cannot disrupt God’s love, nor ruin Jesus’ story, nor our celebration of it, each Christmas. Lock-downs, restrictions, physical distancing and even illness and death, can disrupt all the trappings we have laid on top of Jesus’ story, sometimes obliterating our ‘view’ of the power of God’s love to drive out the demons from each of us. Nothing can rob us of Jesus’ story nor of God’s Will to save us, each and every one of us humans. Long before Covid 19, God fully knew all about this pandemic, and our living through it, with God walking with us, carrying us when we falter … walking with us through it and back out of it.
Advent is the precious blue sombre time of hope, time to prepare, and Covid 19 is among many other things, driving us to ‘rediscover’ Jesus’ story so that our celebrations reflect God’s Word of Life for all people!
What will your Christmas look like this year? What will your Christmas celebration declare about you and your faith? How will God be seen walking with you? With me? With us each and every one of us?
Hear the word of the Lord, O people of Israel; for the Lord has an indictment against the inhabitants of the land. There is no faithfulness or loyalty, and no knowledge of God in the land.
Matthew 3:2
‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.’
Words of Grace For Today
Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.
Repent is to turn around, to proceed in the other direction, in the other manner, to proceed with the Grace of God instead of pounding one’s head against the wall of the Devil’s empty promises in vain trying to make something of life, something that cannot be made … it can only be received …
And God offers it freely.
Beethoven would be 250 years old this year. Overcoming all temptations to decay into decomposition humour, he still connects people with their own powerful and profound emotions and with through these emotions to other people. His 5th and 9th symphonies pound down in all the force of life in bar after bar of melody circling to a full climactic ending, that is both a relief to reach and leaves one wanting more. His pastorale melodies encircle the fog of the early morning’s kiss on the lake and bespeak the yearning that connects us all in the hope of being loved and being able to love purely, simply, profoundly. ZDF provides a tour of the world to places and people touched to the core by Beethoven’s music; Bonn, Osaka, Medellín, Ruhrgebiet, Brisbane, Rsumeb (Namibia), Queensland, Chennai (India.)
Music like Beethoven’s reaches deep into us, moves us, heals us, connects us to other people, creates empathy in us for others, and miraculously sets the world right … if for only a short moment.
This is one way in which the Kingdom of God has come near. It is one way in which God reaches into our hearts and calls us to repent, and moves us to proceed in a manner more fitting the wonders that God created us to be and to know in this tragic and beautiful existence we all know.
Where there is no faithfulness or loyalty, and no knowledge of God in the land (which is everywhere in every generation) let music probe deep into our hearts, minds, and lives so that we may repent and proceed in a new (ancient) direction of walking humbly with our God, sharing the Good News (the old, old story of Jesus and God’s love), and always working for justice for all people.
For this Christ came. This we prepare to celebrate, quietly, at our core, with the midnight darkness of our lives sparkling as our candles of remembering, thanks, celebration, and hope, held by people of all sizes, colours, creeds, and experiences pierce through the darkness.
Light one, two, three, [four] candles to wait for Messiah, let the light banish darkness ….
There is hope for your future, says the Lord: your children shall come back to their own country.
Revelation 3:20
Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me.
Words of Grace For Today
Trump will try to present Congress with alternative Electoral College votes, making history with his continued and unprecedented efforts to undermine the democratic election process in the US; and millions voted for him and still support him!
Courts (too many) abuse their authority, declaring lies to be facts, innocent people guilty, legitimate claims to be bogus and lawyers’ lies to be truths; and millions are pleased with the injustice that preserves their way of life. Good, honest men, mostly, spend time in jail and have their reputations ruined. Psychological assessments are made of the good, honest men by corrupt and dishonest ‘experts’ (well paid for their false reports), even when the men have had a life of psychological supervision, testing, and review as they’ve provided counselling to countless people. On appeal the judges simply rubber stamp the injustice, and use legal process to further ruin good, honest, innocent men, eating up their disappeared financial resources, while hiding the truth about the judges’ own lies about the evidence given in court.
RCMP (way too many) focus on good men, help women coordinate false reports over years, invite uninvolved bystanders to create false reports, make false arrests, lay false charges, bully the prisoners, and laugh with corrupt community ‘leaders’ at the fun of ruining good, honest, men, fathers to children who now will be raised by single mothers.
The mothers (far and away too many, for one is already too many) are sick, each in their own way, encouraged by church and community ‘leaders’ to lie, to reward the children for lying in court, to play the victim, as they perpetrate their emotional violence against the men in their lives, just because they can, or because to be honest would mean having to share sizable assets with their men, but killing the men or ruining them in court they get to keep all the assets for themselves. And the children learn that nothing matters except money. Truth, honesty, integrity all must be sacrificed in order to accumulate more and more money. Which perpetuates the cycle of real crimes, and real lies, and real murders into the next, and the next and the next generations.
There is hope for your future, says the Lord: your children shall come back to their own country.
Jeremiah’s words, written in a completely different context, meet today’s corruption of the children and stand firm as God’s promise: True JUSTICE will be done. Our children will return and learn to honour, themselves, their ancestors, and their God. Our children will learn to fear and love God in all things, above all things. Our children will learn to be kind to all people. Our children will learn to tell the old, old story of Jesus and his love, and know that it is what makes them able to breathe, and allows them to be that Word for all other people.
We are those children, each day, tempted to hear from the corruptions of the world in all its guises, to place value on things that wither like leaves and grass. To us all Jesus calls out especially this Advent season which is so different than those for us before:
Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me.
No one will celebrate Christmas alone, for Christ sits to eat with us, sits to pray with us, sits to motivate us to reach out to family and friends … and especially the strangers in our midst who are all alone.
Perhaps this Christmas, Christ will win the hearts of some of those corrupt politicians and their supporters, judges, some of those RCMP, some of those community ‘leaders’, some of those women … and there will be a double victory for many as injustices are righted AND we celebrate that these people live honourable lives, serving Christ, with integrity seeking truth and the best interests of children and parents … and our future, first, and conducting themselves accordingly … according to a life that is daily guided by repentance, forgiveness, and God’s unconditional Grace and love.
How we will celebrate then!
Since this is God’s promise already to us all, we have much to celebrate this Christmas, much to prepare for this Advent.
Covid 19 places all sorts of challenges before us, and the Holy Spirit guides holy people to seize on them as opportunities to renew our trust in God, and in God alone.
Snow falls, inch by inch, fresh every 12 hours or so. The sun hides above the clouds. The days are short, here 7.5 hours of daylight. Next week they start to get longer, though only by a minute a day taking a whole month to add an hour of daylight. Then the sun will shine on the snow, bright and brilliant, just as Christ’s Light already shines in every darkness, every darkness of the past, or the present and of the future.
Light One, Two, Three candles to watch for Messiah, let the light banish darkness ….
With your strong arm you redeemed your people, the descendants of Jacob and Joseph. Selah
Colossians 1:26-27
The mystery [of God’s Word] has been hidden throughout the ages and generations but has now been revealed to his saints. To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.
Words of Grace For Today
Ah, God’s mighty arm working for us and the power of mysteries revealed to us chosen few …
These are clear evidence that even as God works the wonders of Grace through so many people, through so many generations, we humans still want to step up to control God, and claim God’s power for ourselves, and use it against our enemies.
Thankfully this is not, of course, not the only message that is contained in scripture, or there would be no Good News, no Word of God, and no Hope to share with the world.
There are occasions when God’s people record that God’s might has saved them from violent destruction by violent enemies. God lead Moses and the descendants of Jacob and Joseph with him by a pillar of cloud in the day and a pillar of fire at night. They escaped through the Reed Sea, on dry land made possible by the wind blowing the waters back. When the Egyptian army pursuing them tried to follow the waters flooded back in, like a tide returning. The army was stopped. The people were free … to wander in the wilderness for 40 years!
God’s mighty arm parted the waters. Yes. Or God guided Moses to use a natural if rare phenomenon of the tide going out, combined with strong winds that laid bare a path across the Reed Sea where a natural ‘bridge’ lay beneath a shallow of water. The out going tide laid the land bare for only a short time before the returning tide driven by the same wind, or perhaps a shift of wind, flooded back over the ‘bridge’ with a great wall of water. Mighty arm of God, was it? Yes, of course … maybe.
Then remember that God does not delight in the death of evil doers, of the enemies of God’s people, but rather in their conversion and being saved.
As for the mystery of God revealed to a select few … this is the cry of a great many through history, who have used this ‘secret wisdom’ to elevate themselves to power over others. Sometimes it’s a small following. Sometimes it’s a great hoard that are subdued. Always the ‘secret’ is false.
God’s mysteries are, as Paul stated so well, that all people, Gentiles included, are saved by God’s Grace and Grace alone; not by the thoughts, words and deeds of any person. No person can be good enough to earn salvation for themselves or for others. We all sin, and sin good and well, enough to separate ourselves from God. The ‘mystery’ that Paul discovered and proclaimed (so it would not remain a mystery) is simple: Jesus came to save all people, because God so chooses out of love to do so!
God chooses. We are forgiven, healed, renewed, and equipped to be God’s Grace for others.
There really is no real mystery to it. But in a world filled with humans, all who want to sinfully claim God’s power for themselves and use it to gain advantage over others, this continually is ‘discovered’ again, as if it were a mystery to all. This is profound and repeated Semmelweis Reflex, ‘the propensity to reject new ideas if they challenge established ones — no matter how compelling the evidence is for the new ideas.’ (See the CBC Ideas radio article on hand washing and Dr. Semmelweis.)
This is not rejecting a new idea, it is rejecting an ancient idea, that rises as if new, which challenges the other ancient idea: that we must save ourselves by working our way to God through [fill in all the beliefs, words, ideas, deeds that have been claimed can save us.] These ‘special’ beliefs-deeds’ are almost always named as a control over people, sometimes with good intentions, often not. Even so they are always wrong headed and destructive as they lead people over the cliff of trying to save themselves, all in vain, as they forego life abundant freely offered by God.
Our work then is to continually renew God’s Word of Grace, for ourselves and for others; to tell the old, old story of Jesus and God’s love, evident since the beginning of time, most clearly told in Jesus life, ministry, healing and saving, and in his death and resurrection.
We give God thanks, that God’s ‘strong’ arm, is filled with Grace, and has saved us from ourselves, again and again and again, since the beginning of time, and will until the end of time.
The covenant that you kept for your servant my father David as you declared to him; you promised with your mouth and have this day fulfilled with your hand.
Luke 1:68-69
‘Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has looked favourably on his people and redeemed them. He has raised up a mighty saviour for us in the house of his servant David.
Words of Grace For Today
A mighty saviour for us in the house of his servant David
So often we wish for power and might, with God’s backing, that we can direct at our enemies in order to make our lives better. God promises a saviour.
David, King David, ruled Israel by most historical accounts successfully, conquering the neighbouring enemies, solidifying power in his hands, securing a place for his people among the many.
As generations passed, and Israel was weakened by corruption and their neighbours grew powerful, Israel’s independence was crushed again and again. Sometimes it’s civilization, culture, and religion were left in shambles. Sometimes they were all subsumed into a foreign rule, to various degrees benevolent or cruel as opportunity and whim arose for that power and it’s agents.
Israel, as we humans are wont, equated their world power or lack thereof with God’s blessings. God promised a saviour. So the people hope for a powerful ruler of Israel, God’s appointed and anointed, to conquer the foreign powers, to run them out, to rule over them in their lands, to expand Israel’s territory to ensure their domination of the future. This was the image they carried of King David, so a saviour from David’s house was this kind of a saviour.
God’s blessings are, fortunately for the majority of humans who are alive and who have ever lived, not equated with world power, wealth, or privilege. God sends Jesus to demonstrate this very clearly: God’s power is that of sacrificial love, of forgiveness and grace, and of justice and mercy. More clearly stated God’s justice is always based on truth and on God’s steadfast mercy. Thankfully, or we’d all be doomed to eternal damnation.
Jesus comes to teach, heal, forgive, save, renew, and equip us to be God’s grace for others.
God has promised with God’s own mouth and have this day fulfilled with God’s own hand. The Lord God of Israel has looked favourably on his people and redeemed them.
This Advent we prepare again to give witness, among all the things that detract us from God’s Word in Jesus, the Saviour, to God’s power, the power of sacrificial love.
The trappings of Christmas are not all available to us, so what will we use to give the world this clear witness during the coming 12 days of Christmas?
My soul yearns for you in the night, my spirit within me earnestly seeks you. For when your judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness.
2 Corinthians 9:10
He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness.
Words of Grace For Today
As the vaccine is promised ...
Like in every generation before we yearn and hope, sometimes beyond hope. Yet sometimes in despair we give up that last strand of hope …
In the dark of the night, when monsters rear their ugly head occupying all the challenges of our days which we thought we could deal with well enough and those monsters eat at the foundation of the order of our lives amid the chaos …
There is always the darkness, the evil that threatens us.
Whether or not we see or listen or know, God promises to judge all with real justice and grace, out of which will come righteousness for all … whether we experience this righteousness or not God’s promises are the only promises that are sure!
God promises to walk with us, giving seeds that we can sow and harvests abundant that we can gather in, increasing in and around us God’s righteousness – for Christ is come.
God’s Son came, and will come again, to make clear God’s will towards us, namely that God loves us and judges us with mercy and truth. Jesus will judge all for everything they have done.
How can righteousness come out of the evil of all humans, which is so destructive, pervasive and enduring? Jesus offers us his record, pure and sinless, and on that record we are judged. Our records, our sins, the evil we have done to others, and the destruction we have wrought on creation … all this is erased as if it never occurred in all of time at all. So we emerge, all of us, righteous.
We do not get to wait for Christ’s judgment until after we die. Christ judges every day, every hour. Christ renews us as righteous every moment. We still remain sinners, yet always are we fully God-made saints.
So we yearn …
We yearn for judgment …
We yearn deep in our bones for judgment, so that we are made righteous, and those that do us evil will be rescued from their sins and we with them.
Advent is the time we relearn to trust God’s promises, and we live this abundant life waiting, alert, holding to the Promise that draws us onward, and draws from us righteousness we did not know we were capable of.
We are the harvest. We are the labourers in the harvest. The harvest is ready, each day. The harvest is so abundant it cannot be stored in all the earth or even the universe. Such is God’s promise to walk with us and bring us to live life abundantly!
No Covid 19 pandemic can rob us of this abundant life. Not even when our usual Christmas habits are not possible this year while we remain safe for ourselves, for our loved ones, and for all our neighbours.
Life is still abundant. Perhaps just because we must rethink what is essentially Christmas, our celebrations in the future will regain a significance we have not previously known.
Whether or not we see or listen or know, God promises and delivers life over abundant for all!
Let us make it so for all people, also this Christmas!
