Let the redeemed of the Lord, … those he redeemed from trouble … thank the Lord for his steadfast love, for his wonderful works to humankind.
Luke 14:22-23
The slave said, “Sir, what you ordered has been done, and there is still room.” Then the master said to the slave, “Go out into the roads and lanes, and compel people to come in, so that my house may be filled.
Words of Grace For Today
How wonderful, awesome (the real meaning of awesome is: profound awe at the ‘out of this world’, divine presence encountered in the mundane),
How awesome it is to have these two verses side by side.
First we, the redeemed from trouble …
And OH how the trouble is that we’ve been in! Our enemies (if we’ve lived a life worth something we’ve made plenty of enemies) have done us in … or if they have not we’ve done them in. Either way, how we’ve treated our enemies, and/or how they have treated us is nothing to be proud of in the presence of God! No hiding, no lies, no messing the truth with spin. We’ve been in great trouble, most everyday a little bit. And in lives where we’ve stood for something honourable, then we’ve been in a lot of trouble at different times. The evil in humanity cannot stand someone being honourable. It puts a spotlight on the evil, the spotlight of Christ’s light of truth.
And when we’ve been in trouble, done in by our enemies, or worse that we’ve treated our enemies with anything less than the grace of God, God has paid a terrible price to redeem us!
So …
First we, the redeemed from trouble, thank the Lord …
Now that’s a wonderful response to God’s awesome intervention in the messes of trouble that we get into! We turn into vessels overflowing with gratitude, spilling it across our paths as we proceed through the day.
We leave a trail of awesome gratitude and witness to God’s great mercy and grace! That’s what we spill out into the world – even if we also spew out sin, evil and a deadly virus.
We overflow with thanks for all God has done, out of love. This is thanks not just for God’s acting for us, but God acting for all humanity! No one is left out of God’s Grace and Love!
Then in the second verse, we read how when Jesus puts on a feast of celebration, and there are empty seats …
Don’t we know empty seats in our churches today as we put on feasts of Christ’s Body and Blood!
When there are empty seats, Jesus, our redeemer and saviour, sends us faithful servants out into the world around us to invite in everyone found in the lanes and alleys … the street people, the disadvantaged, the outcasts, … in other words all the people who need a good hot meal, all the people the world has turned against, all the people who’ve been left on the way side to suffer while others have trampled on to riches undeserved, on the backs of so many.
These are the people we, the redeemed, turn to in order to fulfill our Lord and Master’s command: Compel them to come!
Well, we are not to kidnap or force, but we have the words of Grace and Love of God to share with all those who are outcast, disadvantaged, suffering and could use a good, honourable, glorious feast! The words of Grace that we have … especially as Lutherans (though we’ve no copyright on them, they are for all Christians to embrace), that Jesus came into the world not to condemn but to save all people! … The words of Grace we have reach deep in the heart and soul of each person who will listen. We’ve experienced it ourselves and seen it in countless people. …
So we, who God has redeemed and saved from the trouble we are in, as we give undying thanks to God, turn as Jesus commands us, to invite the outcast, those whom Jesus also redeems, into a feast of celebrating.
The feast is Jesus last meal, the Eucharist, to sustain the soul. The feast is more. It’s a hot meal to sustain the body. It’s a gathering of redeemed people, overflowing with thanks, which sustains the heart and mind.
Except we cannot gather with more than 15 people, and not with anyone outside our core family, or maybe our ‘cohort’ family. Thanks Covid 19! [emoji of disgust.]
But we’ve been redeemed! We overflow with gratitude!
Certainly we can figure out how to share this feast of Christ’s Eucharist and Hot and Cold food, and of sharing each other’s presence, so that we can follow Jesus’ command to compel people from the roads and lanes to come. It may take a football stadium size area. Maybe an 80 acre farm so that no street person or family is closer than 8 metres to any other person or family.
That might take a bit of government approval, a careful plan for serving, and a few extra dollars … but in this time surely someone could put all that together!
Or on a smaller scale, any of us could invite an online meeting of families and street people to join together for the Eucharist and a real home cooked meal! Why not?
Do we or do we not overflow with gratitude?!
Or on an individual scale, we can always call others on the phone! And when needed deliver a home-cooked meal. Why not?
sacrificing ourselves that others may live abundantly.
Psalms 51:13
Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will return to you.
Colossians 1:3.13
In our prayers for you we always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ … He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son
Words of Grace For Today
Rescued from the darkness
It was cold and dark. Dangerously dark, though not even winter cold, yet. Spending the night in the woods miles from anywhere was not the plan.
It was just a hike on a trail being developed, this portion already well planned, if not clearly marked. We arrived climbing up the side of the huge rock to our right, on to the second level of that rock as it overlooked a small lake below. The trail seemed to peter out across the gentle downward slope of the rock face toward the lake and further to the right around that side of the lake.
But then there was just a sheer drop of a few metres into the lake, or the effectively solid wall of trees to the right barring any progress on that side of the lake. There were no signs of a trail around the left side of the lake either and other large rocks jutted out over the lake around that side.
The danger from the dark was not that it was pitch black. It was already dusk and we had miles to go. I was experienced outdoors, but the three with me were not and two were young children. Dark, the real dark that was coming, meant stumbling lost all night, or bedding down in the wet and cold. It had just started to rain as I searched for the trail forward from that rock we ended up on.
Finally I came up with a plan. I’d walk back two miles to where the trail took a turn and was well marked. With flashlight in hand I would retrace our steps.
Huffing, tired, and being spit on from above, cold, I trudged back step by step through the miles, and then returned. Nothing. The obvious trail had no other possible turns as it joined a creek that ran into the lake we had stopped at. As the hard face of that huge rock came up to shoulder height I saw to the left the creek water through the underbrush. It was maybe, yes, it was sort of a path, and then there on the tree on the left side of the trail was a trail-marker arrow. A turn back to the left and quickly down, with a quick switchback to the right and one arrived at a bridge of two logs over the creek.
I lifted my feet as my spirits were lifted. We were not lost. I found the others on the rock overlooking the lake, huddled together for warmth under a rain poncho to keep themselves dry.
We worked our way, sometimes with flashlights down over the creek and up high on the huge rocks along the lake and back down near the wet outflow on the far side of that lake, and onward over roots, and around huge 5 foot diameter trees, through the rain forest, back to the vehicle we’d parked near northwest edge of the small town we called home.
A hot shower, prayers of thanks.
We were rescued, once again, from the darkness by the Grace of God.
It is as easy to lose ourselves in the forest of challenges presented to us, now also because of Covid 19. It is easy to miss an obvious turn because we’ve lost ourselves in the darkness of despair or exhaustion or laziness or disorientation.
Always, God sends us others, or sometimes a clear plan, to help us find our way forward, so that we are there for others as well tomorrow.
Looking at things from God’s perspective always does
net us truth.
Numbers 11:23
The Lord said to Moses, ‘Is the Lord’s power limited? Now you shall see whether my word will come true for you or not.’
Matthew 6:28-29.31
And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying, “What will we eat?” or “What will we drink?” or “What will we wear?”
Words of Grace For Today
Part of the human condition, built in for survival, is that we can worry, or anticipate with concern, dangers that we may face. And we can do this in such an engaging way that we do something about the danger.
In the summer, there is little pressing reason to make warm clothes. When the bitter winds blow the light blizzardy snow over the thick lake ice set by weeks of -35⁰ and colder temperatures, then the need for warm clothes is clear!
Worry, or being able to anticipate with fully engaging concern, helps us get on with the hard work in the warm weather of making warm clothes for our family for the winter. And for those who cannot make clothes for themselves.
Jump ahead a few eons, and we just need to have a job that pays well enough so that we can go to the store where warm clothes are offered for sale, because someone else has made them, someone else transported them, and someone else has put them in the store for sale.
Now our worry or anticipatory concern drives us to have a job that pays enough so that we can afford warm clothes. Note that our ‘worry’ drive becomes more and more disconnected from our real needs as we face real dangers in the cold winters.
So why does Jesus teach that we should not worry. God clothes the birds of the air and flowers in the field with great beauty. God will also clothe us. Will God? Can we just quit our jobs and go to the store and get the clothes we need for the winter come October? Simply put no.
God provides. God provides everything we need. God provides the drive to be concerned before a danger presents itself. God also provides enough rational capabilities for us to sort out how our drives are disconnected from our real needs and real dangers.
But we are lazy. Part of the human condition so that we do not waste limited energy on useless activities. Thinking clearly is hard work. We like to not think about what is going to happen and just let our God given ‘instinctual’ drives run us. We like to give in to the easy temptations the Devil offers, and instead of using our instinctual drives according to some clearly thought out value system, an ethic, we just let it all happen to us and we take no responsibility. Meanwhile the Devil builds up a perverted rationalization in our minds as to how and why we do what we do. Easy sins are easy to rationalize.
And all hell breaks loose in our lives, because the disconnect between our drive, the dangers we face, and the anticipatory concern to address the dangers are so distantly disconnected that our ‘worry’ now drives us to do all sorts of foolish things, things that rob us and others of life.
We develop, instead of utilitarian answers to our needs for life, an adornment on top of our needs that encroaches on the utilitarian value of the things that meet our needs … and it spirals out of control until, instead of utilitarian things, we acquire pure aesthetics that do not meet our need at all. Our real needs are not met. Our ‘worry’ spirals up, we acquire more things that also do not meet the real needs we have. More and more until we cannot even see the real needs as they are covered by ‘fictionalized needs’ that must be met.
We worry ourselves sick about ‘meeting’ these ‘needs’.
These are the worries that Jesus advises we leave behind, and trust that God will clothe us, as God does the birds of the air and the flowers of the field.
God will clothe us by reconnecting our real anticipatory concerns, and drive thereof, to meet our real needs.
Throw into that mix, since we’ve escaped into aesthetics instead of utilitarian things, that we actually do need to create, enjoy, and admire beauty, both naturally occurring and human created. The first reflects God’s Spirit showing itself for us to marvel at. The later reflects the human spirit, given to us by God, that can overcome otherwise insurmountable dangers and challenges.
Simply put, art and beauty (not necessarily the same, but they can overlap) direct our minds and spirits to connect with people out of the past. Connected to the past we can see the present more clearly, more profoundly. And then we are equipped to ‘see’ the future as it is. It is in God’s hands. We can approach each day with hope.
God’s work will come about. We need not worry, saying, “What will we eat?” or “What will we drink?” or “What will we wear?” Instead we can lighten our minds to see the real challenges and expend our energies to meet them. Sometimes that will mean working hard to provide food, drink, or clothing.
Always that will mean giving God thanks for all that is possible each day.
The worry that Jesus directs us away from is the destructive, downward-spiralling negative thought patterns aimed at things we really can do nothing about, or things around which we’d be better off if we actually did what we can to mitigate the challenges ahead.
Regardless, God will do as God promises. We are God’s, God is with us.
Covid 19: there are many things we can do. Hand washing and physical distancing and Staying the Blazes home and thinking clearly how we acquire things, or touch things that could have the virus on them, and self-isolating and quarantining if we show even small symptoms … these are only some of the basic and smart things we can do to mitigate the risk to ourselves and everyone around us. We can also help others do these things. Sometimes we need to figure out how to inspire others to do these things.
Then our lives are all about caring for ourselves and others, physically (to social distance ourselves from the fridge, but climb those stairs 10 to 100 times a day), spiritually (setting a specific time to read, pray, and sing each day), and mentally (get a few old fashion games going – even if that is like chess over the phone, or four-way board game, all by telephone – it goes slow, but then we’ve got time, right! OK, parents with children maybe not a second, but get the children playing with friends over the phone. Let them be creative, constructive, and helpful to others.)
And get on the phone: make a call list of people who could use a good word, and call them once a week or so. Model it for children. Do it for your elders. Take care of the vulnerable.
We can STOP worrying, by getting on with what we actually can do.
Truly God is good to the upright, to those who are pure in heart.
1 John 3:21-22
Beloved, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have boldness before God; and we receive from him whatever we ask, because we obey his commandments and do what pleases him.
Words of Grace For Today
Covid 19 puts many things into perspective.
When our boys were young they came asking if they could have coffee. They were intelligent and persistent. Being occupied and having uttered a few no’s! already I said to them that if they drank coffee they would die. Sort of true and it bought me some peace.
Not for long. They came back a few days later insisting that they be given coffee, it smelled so good! I said no, and repeated the half truth from before. If you drink coffee you will die. … Well, OK back then, a recent study had said that coffee was real bad for you, and worse for children; or so I rationalized it. But the boys did not fall away from but rather into some intelligence beyond their parents’.
They responded, yes, if we drink coffee we will die, but if we don’t drink coffee we will die, also.
So we want coffee.
God is truly good to the upright and pure in heart. And God is even better to the worst sinners, for whom God sent God’s own son, Jesus, to teach, heal and forgive … and then give his own life to redeem.
If we have boldness before God and obey his commands and do what pleases God, God will give us whatever we ask. And God gives whatever they ask for to even those who displease God, sinners that all humans are!
Not really. God answers everyone who calls on God. Most often God gives us what we need, not what we ask for. Most often the answer is simply NO, or wait, or maybe. Rarely God answers with a resounding YES! giving exactly what we ask for.
The temptation is to think that IF we behave rightly (and/or fill in whatever correct description you choose) THEN God will bless us with good things (and/or fill in whatever correct description of benefit from God you choose). This is the Devil’s way of getting us to think that we are little gods unto ourselves, that our behaviour controls God’s response to us.
When we start down that path, the Devil has us for life! Again. Until Jesus saves us again!
God’s reality is that BECAUSE God chooses (fill in whatever God chooses) THEREFORE we are blessed (and can think, say, or do whatever, or receive or fill in whatever blessing you want to include.
God’s reality is only God can choose to bless us. And we can only choose to refuse it. As we embrace God’s blessings it is only because the Holy Spirit moves us to do so.
The kind of religion that says we have to earn our way to God is as meaningless as counting backwards from ten. The best result is we end up unconscious. Anything else is painful to watch or experience.
God’s Grace though changes the whole world, from church being a social club with great language, coffee and tax deductions, to church being a calling to be more than we ever thought we could be, bringing abundant life to others in need.
After God acts, and we respond, then life lets loose, and our tasks vary according to our gifts and jobs and time. For now that will be a photo to share, occasionally. I get to create, you get to enjoy the result (or not.) Regardless whether we survive Covid 19 or not, we will all eventually die … for now the challenge is to be better than the best we imagined we could be. Pure of heart and obedient are just starters.
whatever that may be that the Holy Spirit has in store for us!
Ecclesiastes 9:10
Whatever your hand finds to do, do with your might; for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going.
Romans 12:11
Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord.
Words of Grace For Today
Ecclesiastes is always so much fun to read, as long as you bring the humour!
The writer has a universe-size chip on his shoulder, which he called wisdom. Listen to the lack of Grace he exercises for others: ‘you are all going to Sheol’. In modern English … ‘to hell with you all. Work hard now, it’s all that counts.’
Sorry the idea is sort of right, but the reasons are outta this world, at least the one that God created. We do not need to work hard because this is our only chance; in hell there is no work!
That might at first glance make hell a place we’d like to live in … or at least visit to check it out. Plenty of people take the Devil up on his offer and create a hell for themselves here and now, and they are diligent about sharing it with others.
Truth is I have no idea if work, thought, knowledge and so called wisdom are part of hell. It would seem they are a lot of what people use to create hell on earth already. What I trust is that God created us capable of working hard, thinking diligently, knowing clearly, and possessing extraordinary wisdom. God also created us with plenty of zeal and ardent spirits.
Not that we always exercise hard work, diligent thinking, clear knowledge, extraordinary wisdom, zeal or our ardent spirits. Another temptation the Devil places before us is to be none of that, rather he tempts us to be lazy.
Yet this is exactly what God equips us to do, calls us to do … not the lazy part rather being zealously engaged in working, thinking, knowing and being wise.
All so that others may enjoy God’s blessings through us, God makes and redeems us so that we can work hard, very hard, physically and otherwise. We can pursue diligent discipline thinking about ourselves, God and others in this creation. We can possess clear and truthful knowledge, and above all we can have the wisdom how to exercise all of that: not for ourselves, but for others.
That is serving God
Instead of serving ourselves, manna, or the false promises of the Devil.
Choose as you may, as for me (since I have no house, nor household) I choose to love: hard work, diligent thinking, clear knowledge and maybe I can enjoy some wisdom.
So may we all work hard at not touching anyone else, or any surface someone else may have touched. Think clearly about how the virus could be on our hands. Don’t pause though to rub our eye as we ponder the new reality. Know what is true about the virus, and sort out stuff like Trump’s suggestion to ingest disinfectant, sarcastically or not! Finally be wise beyond our years: know that as we get older, this virus is harder on us; so enjoy everything we can, carefully, at home, or on walks with no one around.
Solitude, Beauty, and Hope. God provides these in abundance now.
The Goal of life is not to see who can get to the sunrise first,
nor to the sunsetof life with the most power or possessions
but to see if you can bring to Grace all the people God places in your path.
1 Chronicles 22:19
Now set your mind and heart to seek the Lord your God. Go and build the sanctuary of the Lord God so that the ark of the covenant of the Lord and the holy vessels of God may be brought into a house built for the name of the Lord.’
1 Corinthians 9:24
Do you not know that in a race the runners all compete, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win it.
Words of Grace For Today
Goals, competitions, setting one’s mind … these all are very human endeavours, good endeavours, too.
They cannot net us real security, real love, real faith, real hope, or real life, no matter how hard we try.
These are gifts from God, already at our baptisms. Seeking them is to first deny that God has given them to us. We get to rest assured that these are already ours. We need not set our minds and hearts on seeking and finding the Lord our God. God has found us. That game never was one we could succeed at anyway.
So why all the images in these scripture passages?
Is there something about goals, competitions, setting one’ heart and mind to doing something that is part of our life as God-made saints?
Naturally. All humans have some degree of drive. God designed us so. Exercising this drive is a large part of a full life, life lived as God created and redeemed us to live.
These drives cannot win God’s favour. We already have it, along with salvation, joy, and the fullness of life that goes along with being claimed by God.
These drives cannot win us joy. God has completed our joy with Christ’s resurrection.
These drives cannot win us security, faith, or hope, nor love. All these God has already lavishly poured over us, so that we can share them with others.
These drives move us there, to share all that God has given us with others.
There most certainly is a race, and it is good for the heart to participate in it every day. The race is to see who can give away the greatest percentage to the benefit of the most people. The best we can do is come in tied for second place, along with all the other God-made saints. Jesus has first place wrapped up.
So, if you can at all, get in on that race, at least take a daily walk in that direction. It is very counter intuitive to what the Devil plants in our hearts and minds as the way to success. It fits with the best of creation made by God.
Be the best you can. There are lots of people needing what we have to share during this pandemic, and it’s not the virus!
Into Every nook and cranny of creation (and our lives.)
Genesis 3:8
They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.
Romans 8:15
For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’
Words of Grace For Today
Fear and anxiety are our greatest enemies, the factors in our lives that most thoroughly bring us to our destruction, to do inane things, and to fight for the worst causes.
Anxiety not only destroys the person it controls, devouring our souls from the inside out, it’s effects destroy people around the anxious one. Anxiety breeds anxiety. It is more contagious than the fastest spreading virus.
Anxiety does not require anything in reality to be compromised or threatened, but it’s effects compromise and threaten all reality.
Adam and Eve walk in the Garden of Eden. God created Paradise for them, and gave them freedom to choose to obey, to not touch the tree in the centre of the garden and live full of joy from base to peak, or to disobey and be exiled out of the garden to face death in the dark valleys of despair.
Ah, arch-typically, Adam and Eve succumb to curiosity and the desire to know more than God and to be ‘gods’ themselves. As we all would, and do, again and again in our lives.
After we have turned from God, then fear sets in. That’s real and appropriate. The huge problem arises when they/we try to deny we’ve done against God. That’s when anxiety sets in and controls us. We begin to believe that if we lie even more and more, somehow God will not notice. If we can fool ourselves into believing we have not turned away from obeying God, and somehow if we believe it then it becomes true and God will be fooled as well. Not at all.
God has mercy.
God’s mercy is ours to claim, imbibe, and live out of. OR we can choose to ignore all God does for us, redeeming us, claiming us as God’s own children. We can continue in our anxiousness to choose to fool ourselves. Doch God is not fooled and
God still has mercy.
God redeems us at a great cost, to frees us from slavery to sin.
Yet we can still anxiously choose to live in that slavery, to try to fool ourselves and hope to fool God, though we know there is no fooling God, not ever.
So we cry Abba, save us. This cry is ours constantly to cry out with all desperation. For we need God’s mercy and protection, or we end up living anxiously as if we were separated from God.
God is merciful, God is trustworthy. God claims us and never lets go. God is with us
Do not spurn us, for your name’s sake; do not dishonour your glorious throne; remember and do not break your covenant with us.
1 Corinthians 1:9
God is faithful; by him you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
Words of Grace For Today
Jeremiah pleads with God not to break the covenant God made with their ancestor, Abraham. God alone made the covenant. It was not a bi-lateral agreement. It was not tit-for-tat. It was not a contract with the members agreeing on the exchange of things of value.
God made the covenant, simply because God choose to make the covenant. Thereafter, God returns numerous times to restate the promises. In addition to Abraham and his family and descendants being made, by God’s act alone, into the people of God, God makes promises: God will give the wandering Arameans land flowing with milk and honey. God will give Abraham and Sarah descendants as numerous as the stars.
God makes good on God’s promises. God makes good on more than that.
God comes in the human life of Jesus of Nazareth, God’s own son on earth, to live, heal, teach, suffer, and die … to pay for what you and I and all our ancestors and their descendants (i.e. all people) have done against God and the goodness of creation.
The story continues. Death does not win out, because God raises Jesus back to life.
God does this not because we deserve it, but because God so chooses.
God also chooses you and me to join in the fellowship of Jesus, the body of Christ on earth.
We may turn from God.
We may suffer as a result of sins.
We may face challenges we may not know we can even survive, like Covid 19.
God remains trustworthy. God remains a Rock for us to rely on. God remains with us!
This is the ongoing story of God. God remains with us, even when we no longer deserve the great blessings God has given us.
All good is to God’s glory. God’s glory is not our brokenness, doch God’s will to heal us.
May we be healed of all the ills that we face because of isolation, because of loss of loved ones, because of the illness we face, which may indeed bring us to death’s door.
On this and the far side of that door, God stands with us. God is worthy of our trust.
I passed by you again and looked on you; you were at the age for love. I spread the edge of my cloak over you, and covered your nakedness: I pledged myself to you and entered into a covenant with you, says the Lord God, and you became mine.
Galatians 3:26
For in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith.
Words of Grace For Today
Everywhere one hears the words of love, of romantic love that turns one’s world right-side-up, that sets the fears of the night to rest, that provides balm to one’s ills, and brightens the future with brilliant light.
God uses these experiences and images to speak through the prophet to describe how God claims us. When we were at the age of love! When we were but infants we were already at the age of love poured out on us by God, so God claims us. We were robed in white, marked with the cross, and blessed for each day and each challenge …
including the many challenges we face these days!
By faith God claims us through Jesus Christ. The faith that brings an infant to the baptismal font is not the infant’s faith. The faith that brings us as infants to be claimed by God is our parents’ faith … and our godparent’s faith … and the person ordained to baptize us’ faith … and the people who gather’s faith. All this faith is in each instance not earned or acquired. It is given by God.
There is no challenge that can defeat the faith that God creates in us.
Play the music of your faith, the music that rings through all of creation, the music that inspires the soul and heals the body and mind.
In this music experience the love that captures us and sets us free in a world made right with us in it!
Be courageous, calm and kind. We are in this together. Share the love that makes life precious!
God is with us, even when we think we are alone, and if God is with us, then the saints of all the generations walk with us as well. Their love surrounds us no matter what we face.
