Category: Perspective

Correction or God’s Wrath!

Tuesday, January 25, 2022

When We Skew Our Perspective On God’s Creation,

Taking Correction is Welcomed

even if it chaffs.

…

God’s Wrath

though

takes all perspective and vision and life

away from us

in all time.

Jeremiah 10:24

Correct me, O Lord, but in just measure; not in your anger, or you will bring me to nothing.

1 Thessalonians 5:9

For God has destined us not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Words of Grace For Today

There are many people, on earth, and who have lived on earth (and there will be plenty more in times to come), who know that they need no correction from God or anyone else for that matter. They are wrong, but there is little to be done for them. They sit in positions of power, like judges and bishops, archbishops can cardinals, who are pretty hard, if not impossible, to provide any correction to. They get away with bullying, abuses beyond imagination, and making light dark, sweet bitter, and life death. They have no fear … of anyone, especially not God.

There are many people, on earth, and who have lived on earth (and there will be plenty more in times to come), who know that they need every correction available from God or anyone else for that matter. They live humble lives, fearing and loving God, and loving other people, praying that God will have saved them (like that pastor about to retire who expressed his greatest concern to his colleagues over a game of cards and scotch – I was so young and did not understand then – ) ‘from having hurt anyone!’

God’s wrath directed at any part of creation, at any person or any people rips that part of creation with unimaginable agony out of creation. God’s wrath completely unmakes it/them, uncreates it/them, separates it/them from every having existed.

We pray we will never know God’s wrath!

God’s wrath is perhaps well directed towards those who will take no correction.

God promises are that God has destined us not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.

In this promise we live, in fear of God, overwhelmed with love for God and all God’s creation and all God’s people.

It’s a good life, though we know we always need correction, and pray that God’s correction will come in ways that will not destroy us, for we breathe, and work, and pray, and struggle, and love, and hope … as God-made saints and simultaneously as sinner still.

And we pray each day that we will, above all, not hurt anyone, and, knowing that we have and cannot help but still hurt others, we pray for forgiveness each morning, noon and night.

“I Chose You!”

Friday, January 21, 2022

In the Beginning God Created

At Our Beginnings God Created Us

Before Each Moment of Our Days

God Creates Faith In Us

A Gift

We Can Deny or Acknowledge

With Gratitude!

And Generosity Towards All Creation.

Isaiah 64:7

There is no one who calls on your name, or attempts to take hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us, and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity.

John 15:16

You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name.

Words of Grace For Today

All this reaching for …

… for viral posts,

… for glory,

… for fame,

… for wealth,

… for power,

… for … well for anything that will fill the emptiness in our being, an emptiness of being separated from God,

All of it is futile, and most of it fills us – not with what we want, but deceptive as it is instead we get filled right up with shtako, and it sucks the life right out of us as we reach ever more desperately.

Most futile of all are all the human efforts spent (wasted) reaching for God.

The games we create to try to convince ourselves that we have reached God: all the piety, all the restrictions on our lives, all the condemnations of others to make ourselves look good (in God’s eyes, as if!), all the hate for ourselves and others that builds and comes out as self-righteousness and bullying. All these games are so life-sucking that we are soon left as mere shells of the life that God created us to enjoy. And even then we reach and reach and reach for something, anything, to fill our overwhelming emptiness. All sorts of addictions follow: to alcohol (God’s gift so abused), to drugs (ingenuity of humans so perverted), to gambling (the gift of the necessities of life severely abused), sex (the gift of intimacy perverted by and into base self-indulgence and licentious promiscuity), work (the gift of labour perverted into an obsession that denies everything good in life), and on and on and on the addictions are numbered, not least of all the addiction to religiosity and piety (perverted from worshipping God, to worshipping one’s own efforts).

God’s gift to us of faith is exactly like the gift of life: only God can give it, we cannot reproduce it, nor even can we meet God part way to receive it. But oh, have we figured out ways to pervert, subvert, and deny it as God’s gift to us!

If God chooses to hide God’s presence from us then our prayers should well begin with Isaiah’s words, “There is no one who calls on your name, or attempts to take hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us, and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity.” To which we should add: “SAVE US!”

So God is not.

As baptized saints we trust that Jesus came to demonstrate that we may often think God has abandoned us, Doch, God never does. God walks with us. God’s presence is not our choosing or in response to our doing or not doing, believing or not believing. God chooses us, to create us, to sustain us, to forgive us, to renew us, to make us saints able to be God’s Grace on earth.

As Jesus says, “You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last.”

This day, what fruit, what Grace, has Jesus led us to harvest from God’s great abundance, so that we have much to share with all around, especially the poor?

Mercy Lord! Mercy Me!

Wednesday, January 19, 2022

The Golden Butter

Spread Generously

Before the Bitter

Bites Hungry and Deep

Proverbs 17:5

Those who mock the poor insult their Maker; those who are glad at calamity will not go unpunished.

Matthew 5:7

Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.

Words of Grace For Today

The forecast is for -30⁰ tonight, dropping there by sunrise or an hour after.

Now, at 17:30, after the golden sun spread its butter across the trees, snow, and ice, as the sun has set only an hour ago, the thermometer sits squarely pointing at -30⁰, meaning it will get significantly colder before the ‘warming’ (or shall we say more accurately ‘the freeking-cold-mitigating’) rays of the sun start the thermometer’s climb to levels where humans can survive and machines run and breath does not freeze before it’s in one’s lungs or constantly in one’s own face.

Cold, and the challenges it presses on those living in these climes, is nothing to mock or to celebrate when others suffer it .. but you, of course, you are so privileged because you do not have to (or get to) suffer the cold.

Those who are poor, (and I fit rather securely in that category not to emerge before my death, other than by some inexplicable miracle – thank you liars all and corrupt officials too many to count), know the cold better than those who can afford to find comfort even at the extreme ends of the climate … expanding lower and higher and more extreme in so many ways as those extremes are now with climate change. To us poor the cold is not a simple thing or a nuisance. It is life threatening, directly. Is there enough wood ready and available to keep the fire going hot enough to avoid freezing as I try to get at least some sleep? Is the grate from the street sewer warm enough to keep my sleep tonight to be not just fitful, but also not the last sleep I get as I comfortably freeze and shake off this mortal coil? Are my blankets warm enough for another night of nightmares and cold sweats and nausea? Will I wake? And if I do will my body be as whole as it is now, or will a limb or extremity be frozen solid or frostbit beyond salvation?

These considerations may be the focus of many people’s mockery: what did you poor thing do to earn poverty, for surely you deserve it, yes? Are you not smart enough to do better? If you had only worked harder when you were younger and able OR if you would have played along with the corrupt leaders, thugs and bullies, corrupt bishops and lay leaders included! Oh, you fool, for succumbing to addictions that will kill you sooner or later, so why should we be concerned if your death is a comfortable one today, costing us nothing in health care … rather than your death at a later date after huge costs to us all as you die from your addictions. It matters not, of course, that I and many other poor people have no addictions or perversions. Instead what informs the corrupt on lookers are the rumours and false stories about us, which are told to protect the hugely guilty people who have cheated us of finances and years of good life. Then of course, many others are driven to addictions to escape the cruelty of people in their lives, or to mental instability, or to plain outright madness, by the inexplicable cruelty of bullies, weak bullies, destructive bullies, pitiful bullies.

To us poor people be God’s mercy shown, should we be so blessed. As for me and so many others baptized as saints, we have discovered God’s mercy for us and all others. Therefore we trust that God, if no others, will deal with us … and indeed does deal with us … each day of our lives with mercy, love, forgiveness, and favour.

What’s your night look like, for the coming night of cold? Is it your heart that is cold? Or just the climate outside? Have you learned to respond to others, especially us poor, with mercy, and love, and

…

Grace?

Mercy! Mercy Me!

What will happen if …?

Tuesday, January 18, 2022

As Long as We Continue to Ask With Cold, Hard Hearts

What Will Happen to Me If …?

Then Our World Remains Skewed

Far From Christ’ Way for Us

And We Do Not Follow Jesus.

Micah 7:14

Shepherd your people with your staff, the flock that belongs to you, which lives alone in a forest in the midst of a garden land; let them feed in Bashan and Gilead as in the days of old.

John 10:4

When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice.

Words of Grace For Today

Yesterday was Martin Luther King Jr. Day in the US.

This snippet from

This past Monday was Martin Luther King Jr. Day in the USA. Hear a part of his last speech (the day before he died) as he spoke in support of 1300 sanitation workers who were striking for the right to form a Union. He introduces the parable of the Good Samaritan, and provides a number of explanations that have often been given for the Levite and priest’s passing by this man in need: that they are busy going to a church meeting, that the religious law forbade them to touch a human body 24 hours before leading a service, that they were going to organize a Jericho Road Improvement Association to deal with the root cause of the danger on the road. Then King continues:

“But I’m going to tell you what my imagination tells me. It’s possible that those men were afraid. You see, the Jericho Road is a dangerous road. (That’s right)

… “I can see why Jesus used this as the setting for his parable.” It’s a winding, meandering road. (Yes) It’s really conducive for ambushing. You start out in Jerusalem, which is about … twelve hundred feet above sea level. And by the time you get down to Jericho fifteen or twenty minutes later, you’re about twenty-two hundred feet below sea level. That’s a dangerous road. (Yes)

… you know, it’s possible that the priest and the Levite looked over that man on the ground and wondered if the robbers were still around. (Go ahead) Or it’s possible that they felt that the man on the ground was merely faking (Yeah), and he was acting like he had been robbed and hurt, in order to … lure them [over] there for quick and easy seizure. (Oh yeah) And so the first question that the priest asked, the first question that the Levite asked was, “If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?” (All right)

“But then the Good Samaritan came by, and he reversed the question: “If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?” That’s the question before you tonight. (Yes) Not, “If I stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to my job?”… The question is not, “If I stop to help this man in need, what will happen to me?” The question is, “If I do not stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to them?” That’s the question. (applause)

“Let us rise up tonight with a greater readiness. Let us stand with a greater determination. And let us move on in these powerful days, these days of challenge, to make America [we add Canada, and the whole world] what it ought to be. We have an opportunity to make America a better nation [we add Canada a better nation, and the whole world better world for all people]. (Amen)”

…

It would be easier to keep asking ‘what will happen to us if …?’

Doch

When Jesus gathers us out of the safety of our ‘sheepfold’ and calls us to follow him, we know that all our own self interest is set aside, as Jesus set aside his, and we cannot ignore the important questions of what will happen to other people if we do not follow Jesus providing to others life, and life abundant.

It is Fitting …

Monday, January 17, 2022

Moonset,

Waiting for Sunrise,

Trusting God’s Gifts,

Singing God’s Praise

As It Is Fitting!

Psalm 147:1

Praise the Lord! How good it is to sing praises to our God; for he is gracious, and a song of praise is fitting.

Ephesians 5:19

Sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves, singing and making melody to the Lord in your hearts.

Words of Grace For Today

Cell phones across the world produce pictures and videos at an astounding rate each day.

From Statista: “In 2021, the number of mobile devices operating worldwide stood at almost 15 billion….” https://www.statista.com/statistics/245501/multiple-mobile-device-ownership-worldwide/

This means that we have an overwhelming plethora of images of our world, manipulated to look better than reality by software written and rewritten by programmers … so much so that our imagination of what the world is has been bent, skewed, and perverted to such an extent that experiencing the real world has become extra-ordinary. Some find it marvellous to experience the real world. Others (those so disconnected from reality through their reliance on digital ‘connections’) find it outright daunting and even frightening.

The music of the spheres, as it was named centuries ago, plays through the universe, from the deepest points in space to the tiniest piece of creation on earth …

and

we are privileged to be able to sing along

with

wondrous praise

for the Creator of this magnificent creation

in which we were created to live, flourish, love, hope, and find connection with each other and with creation.

A great photo (in comparison to a snapshot or picture or video) uses all the tools at hand (in the camera and available to the photographer) and

imagines

the wonders that can be produced from a particular perspective of creation,

in order to create (as God made us able to be creative, not mere tools manipulated by software)

an image that speaks volumes

(of praise)

about

the Creator, us creatures, and this amazing planet we live on (and some of us are so privileged to have shelter to call home on.)

So we sing songs of praise that are fitting to the gifts God gives us, and we sing and make melody to the Lord in our hearts.

What will we do this day with all God’s gifts?

Will we selfishly destroy and destory other people’s connection to reality in order that we can ‘get ahead’ or

will we sing God’s praises?

What will you do this day with all God’s gifts?

Will you selfishly destroy and destory other people’s connection to reality in order that you can ‘get ahead’ or

will you sing God’s praises?

Choose as you will, but as for me and mine, we will serve the Lord, and sing and sing and sing God’s praises in our hearts and in all we do each day, as God makes us saints able.

The Way of the World

Tuesday, January 11, 2022

The Sky Remembers

With the Colour of Honour

The Blood of All

The Men Abused

and Many Who Were Killed

Ecclesiastes 5:6

Do not let your mouth lead you into sin, and do not say before the messenger that it was a mistake; why should God be angry at your words, and destroy the work of your hands?

Colossians 2:18

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

Words of Grace For Today

Sunday rest.

Monday work and remember the children.

Tuesday work and remember all the men who are abused by women.

Oh, you say, that is not how the world is. Men abuse women and kill them.

Yes, we’ve come a long way recognizing how some men, very few men, abuse women with violence that eventually and inevitably leads to the man violently killing the woman, or psychological demeaning until the woman feels so worthless that she kills herself. And we have recognized the signs, and coaxed and coached abuse women away from their abuser (which is very hard to do since the abuser’s abuse captures and makes the abused think she needs the abuser’s presence and approval), and provided safe places for abused women to recover their sense of self, their voice, and their assurance of their own worth … and a vision of life without the abuser.

And many women and men have gone beyond that to assume and punish all men for the abuse done by a few, which only turns the tables on the men. Now the women and men become ardent, unrelenting, unabashed misandrists, theirs is the destruction of innocent, good people (men), and the lies that are told about innocent men mushroom into a cloud over society from which no one can escape.

Meanwhile many men are caught in their abuser’s trap, just as women are also. They have lost their voice, their woman has robbed them of their sense of self, of all their friends, of all contact with reality as they are blamed for so many things each day, small at first, the huge things, that the man has had nothing to do with. And the end is the same as for women: some women abusers are violent and they eventually, inevitably kill the abused man who is so worthless she sees him as not even human. More women psychologically beat the voice, worth, and hope right out of the man until he withers into self-loathing and finds no way to go on, so he kills himself. Men with a even a small tendency for violence use a gun, those with none use other means like poison.

When the courts are involved, like the rest of society, there are precious few who even think it’s possible for a woman to abuse a man if the woman is not beating the living daylights out of the man, and even then they are more likely to charge and convict the man – even though it is the woman violently beating up the man, and the man only tries to save his life. When the abuse is psychologial the courts most likely convict the man of come kind of harassment or psychological abuse (even though it’s the woman who is the abuser, if they would only open their eyes to the possibility!)

The rest of society is not unlike the courts, blaming the man for being abused: ‘what kind of a man are you to let a woman treat you like that!’ ‘No real man could ever be abused by a woman. Look at her. She’s half a foot shorter, and 50 pounds lighter (though so much stronger physically, if they’d only look.)’ ‘You’re not a real human if you let her treat you like that. You must have it coming. You’ve done something terrible to her.’ ‘Hey, man, it’s your fault for staying with her. Anyone with sense would have left long ago.’ And so go the blaming of the man for the woman’s abuse.

In the end everyone loses, no one more than the children, who learn to lie to protect themselves, who learn that courts and cops and church people are all corrupt, who learn never to tell the real truth about who is doing what to whom, because they will be made to pay if they do.

So we remember Tuesdays all the men abused by women.

And we pray that we will not be led astray by our words or others’ words of deceit.

And we pray that we will not be caught up in the ‘human way of thinking’ so that we ignore men who are suffering, and whose suffering will always end in death … unless someone or some miracle intervenes.

Father and Mother, What is Special About This …

Sunday, January 9, 2022

Only A Moose Makes Tracks

Across the -30⁰ and Colder Lake,

While We Remember What We Have Heard

Of God’s Word.

What is special, is that we remember how God ….

Isaiah 31:1

Alas for those who go down to Egypt for help and who rely on horses, who trust in chariots because they are many and in horsemen because they are very strong, but do not look to the Holy One of Israel or consult the Lord!

Hebrews 2:1

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

Words of Grace For Today

Rest.

Today instead of looking to ‘Egypt of might and horses many and chariots strong’, not even when these things of might, many and strength in our lives are carried by so many and various ways of working, of securing money, favour, and power, of being our own people, today

yes

today

we rest.

We rest in the Promises of God,

The Gifts of God,

The Saints of God,

The Forgiveness of God,

The Grace of God,

The Generosity of God,

The Love of God,

The Faith given to us by God,

and

The hope, that

…

that all things will be well, all things will be well, all manner of things will be well,

because,

All manner of things are already, today, by God’s Word that Creates, Sustains, and Renews,

by God’s Will, all things are already today well, quite well,

quite well indeed.

Cleansing and Enough

Thursday, January 6, 2022

If it is enough,

Fly Baby Fly!

Jeremiah 33:8

I will cleanse them from all the guilt of their sin against me, and I will forgive all the guilt of their sin and rebellion against me.

1 John 2:2

He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.

Words of Grace For Today

To have enough,

Not too much,

and

not to litle,

and

to know one has enough,

and though one could use more and dream of that perhaps, to still know

that for today, this is enough:

That is the gift God gives the saints.

…

One may think that has to do with things, food, property, profitable work, toys, power, reputation … or a host of other things.

Yet, none of that is all that important: one may consider air, water, food, clothing, shelter, meaningful labour, and love more important than the others.

What we need enough of is God’s love,

and forgiveness,

and promise of renewed life.

Enough is not that we have God’s gifts and promises, but enough is to know that God provides these essentials for life for all people.

That is enough.

That is enough for this day.

That is enough for any day for any person.

Thanks be to God for giving us enough.

Spoils and Siblings

Tuesday, January 4, 2022

Whose Land Is It, Anyway?

It is God’s

Given to Us as Stewards

To Share with Our Siblings.

Deuteronomy 3:7-9

All the livestock and the plunder of the towns we kept as spoil for ourselves. So at that time we took from the two kings of the Amorites the land beyond the Jordan, from the Wadi Arnon to Mount Hermon (the Sidonians call Hermon Sirion, while the Amorites call it Senir).

Mark 3:35

Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.

Words of Grace For Today

Ancient claims of land belonging to a particular people are seldom anything but a bit hypocritical.

The land claim of Jews in the Middle East is well known to be established on their claim that ‘their land’ was stolen from others and their right to it was that God promised the people land. To this day the displaced Palestinians have legitimate grievances and suffer terribly waiting for the world to provide a reasonable resolution to being displaced since 1947, and earlier.

Indigenous land claims in Canada are based on white people stealing the land, though the indigenous histories are not without similar events through their own histories.

As long as people have lived, the competition for land has been a repeated source of terrible struggles, losses, and long term grievances.

So we, in our history, record that we took land from the Amorites, and kept livestock and plunder from their towns.

We are no better than the worst of all humans.

We are only saved by God’s Grace.

Only if the Holy Spirit inspires goodness in us, inspires us to do God’s will, and inspires us to be saints, are we able to reflect God’s love for us to others.

The Holy Spirit’s work, God’s work (by God’s will) alone determines then who is Jesus’ brother, sister, and mother. God alone makes us children of God, makes us Jesus’ siblings, and brings us to recognize that we are all ‘in this together.’ We are all each others’ siblings.

Land claims are crucial to pay attention to and to honour.

More important is to honour the gifts God gives us, not to try to hoard them for ourselves, and to share them with all those in need.

Listen to the ‘Jellyfish’

Sunday, January 2, 2022

no need to go batty

whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s

Deuteronomy 32:39

See now that I, even I, am he; there is no god besides me. I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal; and no one can deliver from my hand.

Romans 14:8

If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.

Words of Grace For Today

When the jellyfish came up out of the lake, crawling on all 10 feet, it posed a question that deserves our attention:

What will you do about the rats’ snot that collects on the lower branches of the olive trees, making the collection of sap from the neighbouring maples impossible until fall and then it’s too late, for the time for the amendment of life will have passed us by in the wrong lane?

It’s not a simple question, not like ‘what are we to do with the nuclear wastes from our personal nuclear power pockets that we all carry on our backs to propel us through time and space as we are wont and as we will at the time – or place – that used to be when-where we were?’

That waste … well we can either feed that waste back into our personal reactor for another go at atomizing-chaos-reordering, or we can simply make a quick visit to the nearest sun, deposit our waste in that reaction and then get out so quick it does not consume us for all time in all of space the size of one Adam.

The snotty question of the jelly fish is really the same question that keeps coming up again and again, which we find so hard to state as it is, because .. well we find it so hard because the obvious answer is that we’ve warped the time-space continuum so completely out of whack from it’s original bends and turns that the extreme cases of mist-ordered events and consequences from last year keep getting dwarfed by new extreme event-consequences this year. After a century or two of these it’s pretty hard to catch where the mist is coming from and how the events are consequences or vice versa. It’s just that three orders of species, of the twenty that remain, rely on maple syrup for proper nurturing. And the projections of the best scientists-artists are that any fewer than twenty orders of species and the whole ecosystem of all the various iterations of earth will simply dissolve. It’s like the warnings that no one heeded about climate change and the ice melt of Greenland and Antarctica. But that was centuries ago, or yesterday, depending on where in time one lands or begins.

The only sure thing in this mess we seem to have made of the universe is that God did create it, and whether we live or die we are Christ’s own people, so totally flawed and living by Grace alone.

It’s that Grace that gives us a reference point, the only available reference point in the messed-warped time-place continuum. What is done is done. What is coming will still come. We have now, and only in our now can we make choices, and pray that, also dealing with rat snot, they will reflect God’s Will to give life and heal, and not harm and kill even if it seems it is all impossible to cure of evil.