It was Friday 20 March 2020. All sorts of information had already been made widely available concerning Covid 19.
An health emergency is declared on Tuesday 17 March.
The advice, and later requirements, are
to wash your hands often during the day, especially before and after touching surfaces,
to keep social distance (at least 2 metres or 6 feet away from others)
avoid gatherings of people (over 50 people gatherings are banned)
For the latest information on restrictions (now 15 people on 29Mar, and lots more as the attempt is made to limit the fast spread which will overwhelm available services) see: https://www.alberta.ca/coronavirus-info-for-albertans.aspx
There is much more: to repeat what many have posted already:
A study from researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), published in the New England Journal of Medicine, suggests the virus can live
up to four hours on copper,
up to a day on cardboard,
up to three days on plastic and stainless steel, and
up to three hours in the air.
The times vary according to environmental conditions, of course. Meaning these could be much longer under ideal conditions (for the virus – very un-ideal for us!)
NOTE! Freezing temperatures ‘put the virus in stasis’, meaning freezing does not kill it all, but preserves much of it! Meaning the above times are put on hold in freezing temperatures.
An earlier study of SARS Cov (the outbreak of 2002-3) determined that the survival time for this related virus under optimal dry surface, air conditioned temperatures, could be as long as 2 weeks, or 3 weeks in a liquid environment at room temperature. The greatest transmission ‘assistants’ could be foamites (objects or materials which are likely to carry infection, such as clothes, utensils, and furniture.) https://www.hindawi.com/journals/av/2011/734690/
Still needed is information at what temperatures/humidity SARS CoV2 is killed.
Bright Clear
Nice
Icicle
Sometimes the light is so bright that it bounces all over and compromises the beauty of the most natural developments. Here the icicles of warm days and cold nights catch the evening sun that lays down shadows sweeping across the soft curves of blown snow.
The light’s reflections and distortions do not change the snow, the trees, the shadows, the icicles. It changes only our perceptions.
Reality is still reality.
I’m in Walmart to get the few groceries I need and can afford, wiping down items to disinfect them before putting them in my sanitized container, to take to the self check out; controlling what I can.
A father walks past me, whom I’ve greeted at a distance just minutes before, who says to me:
“It’s airborne. Wiping down things will not help.”
I responded sarcastically, “You’re so smart, but deadly wrong!”
Later I’m in the Dollar Tree picking up essentials, keeping my distance from the people in front of me, and I turn part way around and see the line up behind me, the nearest person is less than 2 feet away. Everybody behind that person is just as close, as if there were no warning to keep your distance from other people.
The golden sun, set spreads no reflections.
Instead just beautiful light.
We have the ability to see the same things at different times, in different light, and appreciate the root of the beauty of the universe.
The light’s reflections and beauty do not change the snow, the trees, the icicles. There are no shadows. Still the real change is only our perceptions.
Reality is still reality.
What gives, with the deadly stupidity about town?
Someone standing that close to a person with a compromised immune system could be essentially killing the compromised person.
Do people not listen? Learn? Care?
Or are people so angry at being told to change their habits that they protest by not following the recommendations?
Or is it the disbelief of the masses that gets crazy people elected? That tolerates systemic abuse of identifiable groups of people? That brings intelligent people to jump on the band wagon of Gaslighting victims of abuse?
Stupid is just Stupid. Sometimes it is also Deadly.
Brought
me to the road towards the East and the rising sun.
Golden
light and a sound alerted me to a photo about to be.
Can you
see the sound?
Can you
tell what is different in each photo? (ignore that the position of
the camera moves slightly so that the view shifts, the edges are
different.)
What is a wonderful Saturday morning, -2⁰ with clear sky and waning gibbous moon, a touch of frost and a good warm fire keeping ‘home’ warm, and the water for coffee boiling,
if not a perfect opportunity to play and make a small riddle-puzzle, seek-and-find photo series?
sacrificing
to the cold the colours left when photosynthesis cannot any more
as they
shed summer and fall pushing the liquids of life back into the ground
protecting themselves
from the
expansion of freezing that would tear out their hearts.
In the
still air as the light of warmth reaches through the tops to the
yellow carpet below
the trees cry ice drops,
melting from the freezing night’s moisture collected on leaves not yet having succumbed like their fallen comrades
to the wretched destruction of passing time,
or
to the blessed transition from green biting-bug-and pollen-filled hot days transitioning to the cool respite of fall.
.
Colour drips Drops of Time
Drip,
drop, drip … it is time
time to
prepare
time to
celebrate what was
time to
prepare for what will come
time to haul wood, trees murdered for a bit of white bark or taken as the victim’s of drug-hyped-senslessness and bravado that a madman with an axe can fell living trees just for the show of it, for the false exuberance of finally being able to master something, since he could not master himself.
The Cost for Truth has been everything for me, except a sleeping bag, a tent, my clothes and a bicycle.
The
Cost for Truth has been everything for me, except a sleeping bag, a
tent, my clothes and a bicycle.
The Reward
But
the reward for truth is a clear eye and a clear conscience.”
Clear eyes enable one to see the beauty of life.
Clear
eyes enable one to see the beauty of life.
The True Work of Justice
“It
is as important to exonerate an innocent person as to convict a
guilty person.”
Clearly Fog Challenges Clarity
Clearly Fog Challenges Clarity
I have a clear eye and clear conscience.
So many who’ve had the chance have not paid any price for truth. It is a party where they imbibe the intoxicating evil of false power based on the Devil’s seductions, drunk so deeply in order to ignore the truth.
I do not see good people working for justice to exonerate the innocent, myself included. Like hundreds of thousands others, I see good people become evil, working to convict the innocent like me, a kind, generous, man of great integrity, an excellent stay at home father.
The long view allows one to see the the rocks and sticks, and the wonderful light.
The
long view allows one to see the the rocks and sticks, and the
wonderful light.
It’s colour that plays with the light.
It’s
colour that plays with the light.
Rest in the solitude and calm is possible as God blesses those persecuted without just cause.
Rest
in the solitude and calm is possible as God blesses those persecuted
without just cause.
But woe to those who unjustly persecute the innocent. For God judges without rules of evidence or games of cover-ups possible. God judges the reality of one’s life and actions. There is no hiding possible for evil. There is no negotiating for something other than actual reality, for that is what God sees and judges. Entrance to blessing never comes with Spin or Cover-up, or declaring something to be other than it is.
In this
life, our challenge is to not become like the persecutors, not to
become vengeful and vindictive … but to remain, trusting God’s
promises and quiet blessings each day, … to remain fully alive with
grace.
As for me and my non-existent household, unjustly taken from me thrice, I and the Holy Spirit, we choose to live only by Grace.
Exodus
32:7-14
Psalm 51:1-10
1 Timothy 1:12-17
Luke 15:1-10
We want it Simple, But life is messy
We really do like it simple: we want everything black and white, either Good or Evil. There are good people and there are evil people. We are the good people. They are the evil people. God chooses us, not them. But life is much messier than that. We are all simultaneously God-made saints and self-made sinners.
We are all sinners
Bill of AA
In the early years of Alcoholics Anonymous, at many meetings a comfortably dressed and well-groomed man would enter, not as a person of importance expecting special respect and appreciation. He never even sat in the front with the regulars. Instead he would choose the back, the place where someone new was likely to be sitting – someone with the shakes –someone with an odour that he recognized. He knew that odour. He could find it in the back of his own closet at home. Reminded how he was once right there dying with that smell, he loved that man.
When the time came he would stand and introduce himself like everyone else at the meeting. “Hello. My name is Bill, and I’m an alcoholic.” He did not add that he was one of the co-founders of AA.
The back of our Closets
We all have ugly skeletons in the back of our closets that remind us how broken we really are. It is not easy to acknowledge what’s in the back of our closets, so we often say in confession: If we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.
The important truth is that we are self-made sinners.
Do we have to make it to God, Or does God come to rescue us?
How is it that we move from being sinners to being righteous before God? Of course we would like it to be simple, we just go to God, or God just comes to us. But real life is not that simple.
How far lost we can be, even far from the ocean waters
Huts on a deserted island
During a raging storm lightning struck a cruise ship disabling all communications and controls. Drifting far off course, hours later the ship struck a reef and sank off a deserted island. Having no end of conflict during the voyage due to outspoken beliefs the survivors sorted themselves on to the island according to their beliefs about God so as to avoid the ongoing conflicts.
Freewill
The largest group built huts helter-skelter around the lovely sandy beaches. Most organized themselves in small groups, working terribly hard, some to build a raft to float back to civilization, some to build a communication system to call for help, some to make themselves as comfortable as possible. A small number of them simply did nothing but gather food and coconuts to make alcohol.
This disparate group from all religions, even agnostics, believed that they had to save themselves. God, if there was one the agnostics added, was not going to intervene. It was all up to them. They said they had great moral guides, but they did whatever they could get away with, so trouble constantly arose between them. They fought to prove that they had indeed done enough good to earn God’s favour. This large group lived like God did not exist at all, even though they said they believed in God, except the agnostics.
Alice and Double Predestination
Alice’s group built huts far from everyone else, facing a square yard for the kids and adults to walk in and meet in. The believed God was in charge of everything, including everything bad that happened. They wanted to have as little to do with the others as possible. They knew that God had saved them and not the others. They lived to prove God had chosen to save them. This group could not admit that they had ever done anything wrong, so they stuffed their closets full of old skeletons. In the dark they exercised those skeletons all too well, but when the sun shone they denied everything.
Inside Alice’s group a sub-group set up in their own corner. They believed as well that God had saved only them, that God was in charge of everything, including all evil, like their shipwreck. Instead of trying to prove God saved them they just gave up and did as little as possible. God was going to do what God was going to do and there was no way to change that. So why care about anything? They simply let life progress as it would. It was all up to God.
Martin Luther’s messy Single Predestination
A third large group believed that God alone could save them, but they still had freewill to choose to walk away from God. Few of them could precisely describe their beliefs. They built huts all around the island. This group constantly held joyous meals, celebrating that, when this member or that member had walked away from God, by Grace God had brought them back.
They were usually the kindest people, but they admitted, sometimes also as cruel as could be! They said God saved them many times each day, just because God chose to. They believed their life purpose was to extend God’s Grace to everyone. This group had people from all faiths, even Lutherans. They understood Evil came, not from God, but from humans choosing to turn away from God, as God created them to be able to.
They neither hid their sins nor tried to hide from sin. They just didn’t worry about or focus on their sins, yet they weren’t reckless with sin. They trusted God’s constant forgiveness, and worked to be God’s people of Grace.
Simultaneously Saints and Sinners and Golden Calves Galore
They accepted Luther’s paradox that all God’s people are simultaneously saints and sinners. They understood all too well that they had been right there next to Bill at the back of the room and, many times, at the bottom of their own Mt Sinai, building their own golden calf, so like Moses’ people had.
Golden Calf – God Changes God’s Mind
Moses’ people feared God had abandoned them. God became visible to Moses just 3000 yards away, but they did not dare venture up that steep trail. So they waited for Moses to come back, but he didn’t. They impatiently needed a god who would be available to them. So they collected their gold, melted it into an idol and worshipped their little godlet. Their false worship settled their anxiety, but it ate out their hearts and souls. God sees all this and asks Moses to leave him alone so that God’s wrath can burn hot and consume this perverse people. God goes so far as to tell Moses these are Moses’ people, whom Moses brought out of Egypt. That may be all true, of a sorts, so Moses reminds God that God has delivered the people, they are God’s people.
[May we never be in need of such boldness before God. But then if it need be, may we speak only the truth! And trust that God’s Grace will prevail also for us.]
Then God remembers God’s promises, and God changes God’s mind, from deserved annihilation to gracious forgiveness. God doesn’t smite the golden calf people. Instead they will stay in the wilderness for 40 years. The next generation will enter the promised land.
We would prefer to hide all the skeletons of golden calves
What are our ‘golden calves’?
What are our ‘golden calves’? How many times have we set up our own little godlets, not that far from the Altar of the Eucharist where God is visible and handed to us in the bread and wine?
It can be something as simple as the colour of the new carpet, the stewardship campaign we run, the prayers and music we can use in worship, or even who is welcome in ‘our’ church. In our daily lives our little godlets take on a variety that could more than fill all the stores and warehouses in the world.
God’s response to our sin
How does God respond when God sees all this? God remembers God’s promises, and chooses not to consume us with fury and wrath, which we deserve! Instead God changes God’s mind and does not smite us sinners as we worship our godlets of so great a variety.
Jesus eats with us, rejoices at our return
Instead Jesus eats with tax collectors and sinners, like us. And Jesus explains it like this: The shepherd loses one sheep of 100, leaves the 99 to find the lost one, and rejoices at it’s finding and celebrates with friends. The woman loses one coin, looks thoroughly for it, finds it, rejoices and calls friends to celebrate with her. So also as God all too often loses one of us to sin. God’s glory is not in smiting us out of existence, but in rescuing us. God delights and rejoices in bringing us home.
God comes all the way to us and through the sacrificial blood of Jesus reclaims us as holy saints. God makes us sinners into saints, and though we remain sinners we are simultaneously God-made saints.
What is it to live in God’s Promise to Rejoice at Forgiving Us Sinners?
How do we reflect our faith that Jesus came into the world to save sinners? Are we to sin all the more that God can continually delight in rescuing us! No, bound to sin and unable to free ourselves, we have all given God plenty of opportunity to save us and then to rejoice and celebrate our coming home.
We have no need to try to sin more. As much as God delights in our homecoming, God enjoys us most when we live at home with all the other saints in light.
Living in Grace: Not Simple, But Joyous!
We may want it simple, but there is never a simple answer to how to live Grace. It may sound simple: we sin, God saves us, everyone rejoices, repeat. That we repeat without end makes the cycle anything but simple. It is so far from simple, though it is profoundly joyous at each coming home.
It is not ever a treat to look in the back of our closets at all the godlets of our past, but when we do, and when we fully admit who we are as sinners, then God has already reclaimed us and is busy returning us home. The whole of heaven and all the saints celebrate our return. We, too, can rejoice. When others stray to worship their golden cafe godlets and God brings them home then we get to rejoice again.
Our Prayers
We pray that we might learn to love each other, especially the ones sitting in the back barely in the door but here, shaking with ugly sin as we have all done. We pray that the Holy Spirit will teach us to love the one’s we think we cannot love, and to rejoice at each one God brings home.
As the loons haunt the dim dawn light with their forlorn wails as if begging for something close to truth to be recognized in the coming light, the not quite still lake undulates softly the moon caught in it’s liquid mostly-water.
There are many powerful and privileged people of luxury far beyond necessity or souls’ enjoyment who fear the light, not of a simple day’s dawn, but the Light that dawns as the Truth is revealed.
There are more people who look to this dawn of brilliant Truth with expectation of exoneration and finally, finally real justice through which real mercy is possible.
The waters reflect the small light that persists despite the Darkness
As so many have confessed through generation upon generation, if we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. But if we confess our sins, God, who is faithful and just, will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
It certainly cannot be that God plays games with us like those in power, teasing us and tempting us just to catch us off guard. No, if who we trust to be God is God, creator all powerful and merciful, loving, forgiving and gracious, yearning to delight in our existence, our joys and even our sorrows that make up an abundant life, then certainly God plays no games with us concerning the Truth of who we are and what we have actually done; whether we acknowledge the Truth or we hide from it.
The Truth.
Often
it is so much simpler than we want to acknowledge, when we want to
deceive ourselves. Like the water we too often want for wind to blow
the clear reflection of what we have done, so that no evidence of the
truth is discernible.
But the light will shine, and I for one, I, Tim Lofstrom, like I, Daniel Blake, eagerly wait the Light that will shine on the Truth. For I will be exonerated and those who have fabricated lies about me, bullied me, threatened my life, and sat in false judgment of me will be put to shame.
That which in them thrives on the darkness and falsehoods of their doings will be put to an end, as consumed by the fire of God’s judgment. Then our victory will be double, for not only will we be free, all of us falsely judged and destroyed by lies, but those who unjustly ruin and destroy us will be set free from the darkness that grips their whole unnatural being. Though little of them, who have given themselves to the Evil One, may survive as the kernels are separated from the chaff, still together we will bask in the Light, the Truth and the Grace which God delights in giving to us. Our collective shame will be ended.
For
this day we wait, as we wait for the rising of the sun to replace the
crescent moon which leaves darkness’ canopy pressing down on our
hearts, our hopes, and our joys.
The Light catches all that would hide in chaos and makes it clear
In today’s Gospel lesson, Luke 13:10-17, Jesus reaches out and sets a woman free from 18 years of being held hostage to an ailment, an illness. She is set free and can walk upright, humbly unimpeded by a body oppressed by dis-ease in God’s creation.
The woman and the people are over-joyed. She is free!
But
the temple priests have no joy because they are threatened. They have
not provided this freedom and therefore they are not celebrated. They
and the people now clearly know that the priests live in darkness and
the light has just burst the seams of reality in ‘their’ temple.
They use the law as a hammer against the Light, to no avail. The law, given to guide the people in freedom, is corrupted in their hands to become the hammer that strikes down faith, joy, and hope in all the people. They would treat animals better than the people needing God’s Grace. They try to maintain an order that provides them false power and oppresses people into the mud of life. But the Light shines brightly.
The
people rejoice in the healing of the woman.
The
priests, they who would claim dark power over others, are put to
shame. Their grip is loosened, if just for a few hours, days or
weeks. Not only is this woman free, but all the people bask in the
Light, sharing in this woman’s joy.
Who
are you today?
Are you the woman, who after 18 years of suffering illness that consumes the essence of life right out of you, and yet leaves you a shell of a human still looking down at the daisies, wishing for freedom even if that freedom arrives on the other side of the grave?
Are you the people, who after generations of suffering the oppression of those who rule in darkness over them, are overjoyed that the Light has arrived for this woman, for they are caught also in its Light? Their oppressors are put to shame.
Are you the priest, the oppressors, who live in darkness, who are skilled at turning truths in to dark falsehoods? Are you one who plays with truth as an axeman cutting trees, with falsehoods chipping life out of your victims, over whom you claim power? Are you put to shame by the coming of the Light and Truth? Have you put yourself outside the delight of God, to whom the coming of the Light not only means shame but loss of most of who you have made yourself to be, against the yearnings of your creator?
Are you the hands of Christ, who understand that the perversions of the Law, perversions of God’s Grace even, can be healed with a word, a redeeming touch, with sacred oil, water and bread? Are you the one who God uses as a conduit, and instrument to set people free? Are you one, like so many in the great cloud of witnesses we inherit, who sacrifices the abundance of your life that others may simply live, knowing that God’s Light shines brightly even in our darknesses?
One
thing is certain: God’s Light will shine brightly! Not according to
our plans, but as God chooses.
As Isaiah. prophet of Exile awaited, survived and returned from, wrote of our simple ways and God’s mysteries of Grace:
If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil, if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday. The Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail. Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in.
Isaiah 58:9b-14
The Light brings Truth in Full Depth of Colour
As the loons haunt the dim dawn light with their forlorn wails as if begging for something close to truth to be recognized in the coming light, the not quite still lake undulated softly the moon caught by it’s liquid mostly-water.
There
are many powerful and privileged people of luxury far beyond
necessity or souls’ enjoyment who fear the light, not of a simple
day’s dawn, but the light that dawns as the truth is revealed.
There are more people who look to this dawn of brilliant Truth with expectation of exoneration and finally, finally real justice through which real mercy is possible.
When the Light comes we will have a double victory: for ourselves and for you, our oppressors.
When skiing in the mountains on a slope with
trees on it
I’ve taught more than a few people how to ski. Invariably we arrive on top of a slope where there are trees at least dotting the slope. The student looks with apprehension. I say respect the trees, but do not fear them. Do not look at them or you will head straight into one of them. Look at the snowy hillside between the trees where you want to ski.
Three Lessons full of Trees
Lost in the Fog of Delusion
OT: The self deluded Teacher Fool
We heard the Teacher in today’s first Lesson say:
Vanity of vanities! … All is vanity.
Our labour produces great results but our results are left to others, who may be wise or foolish.
Ecclesiastes
It is tempting to think he may be right: that God has created, humans have worked, and nothing is worth anything. But the Teacher’s wisdom is a big forest of trees of hopelessness. Here God’s truth disappears like the misty fog evaporating with the rising sun. Then any lie can be presented as if true. Despair takes on all sorts of guises. Instead of being thankful, one demands more and more of things that cannot fill the empty void that should be one’s heart. This kind of life is at war with itself and the ensuing conflict and chaos allow one to hide from accountability, hope, love and even Jesus.
NT: The Different Life of Lists
In contrast the writer of Colossians reminds us that Christ raises us differently, into life free from what destroys us. The writer then presents us with lists of things to leave behind: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed (which is idolatry), anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language. Do not lie to one another. These are more trees to avoid.
The one
exception would be passion, though as all God’s gifts, passion can
be abused and used as a destructive force in one’s own life and in
others’.
Since
the early Christians, including the Colossians, expected Jesus to
return in their own lifetimes, their sense of urgency valued the
freedom of celibacy and devalued the ties of passion. But God created
passion as an important and healthy motivation for much of life
including marriage, parenting, care of the earth and the building of
a just society.
Gospel: Using Jesus for Greed
Today’s Gospel is a great parable within a parable: A man comes to use Jesus to get an inheritance from his brother, against the tradition of the time. Through the ages we human beings have more than perfected the use of Jesus or Religion to pound others down and try to feed our own greed. Greed is related to gluttony.
“A glutton is (a person) who raids the icebox for a cure for spiritual malnutrition.”
(Wishful Thinking, F Buechner)
Gluttony and Greed kill us as we try to eat or possess more than we can stand. To teach us this, Jesus tells a parable of the pathetic wealthy man who after a great harvest, builds new barns to hold it and anticipates the remainder of his life as an easy retirement. But his possessions are the end of him. It’s all for naught!
Lots of Trees to Avoid
That gives us lots of trees to avoid. There is precious little of what we should aim for. It’s like skiing down a mountain and all we see are trees.
Look beyond the Trees
Where is Grace
So where is the Good News?
NT: Look above
The writer of Colossians points us to set our minds on things that are above. So looking up ever since we lived in caves we see the stars, the moon and the sun. Aided by the passionate drive of George Ellery Hale, and so many others, to see and learn more by building bigger and better telescopes in the last 100 years, what we see is astoundingly mind boggling. (E.g. see the documentary Journey to Palomar) Before, we knew the earth, one of nine planets, revolved around the sun. Now, we’ve seen numerous planetoids, one being Pluto, so there are only eight planets. We know our sun has a magnetic field, with flares that cause the northern lights and disrupt satellite communications. We know about galaxies, that most of the matter in the universe is invisible, that the universe is expanding and the universe is so, so much larger than we ever imagined! We have not found alien life, but in the immense expanse of the universe it is probable, if not guaranteed. We have seen God’s handiwork in the awesome expanse and workings of the universe and begun to understand their impact on our daily lives. Are these ‘the things above’ that we are to aim for? Maybe not, one would quickly say. But then perhaps we ought not be too quick to decide.
Rest of Scripture
With so many trees in our lessons, we look to the rest of Scripture and the Christian Church’s history, to guide us to the joy of life ‘skiing’, as it were, without hitting the trees.
Relationships Trinity
We believe that God is Trinitarian. God is three in one. In part that means that the basic reality of God is that God is in relationship. We are created in God’s image, so we know we are created to be in relationship.
God Loves, We love
Luther taught that the core of the Gospel could be summed up in one short passage “ God so loved the world that God sent his only Son so that everyone believes in Jesus may have eternal life.” God loves – us … and the whole universe God created! In relationships we are to love one another and all of creation. The Teacher’s wisdom is folly because he ignores other people as God’s good creatures. Work is not to be hated, rather it is to be joyful and rewarding precisely because it provides for others, just as God has provided for us! The pathetic farmer in Jesus’ parable is consumed by his possessions because he has no sense that his bounty is a gift from God entrusted to him to be shared with others.
The wonders of Creation
God’s Grace and Work
We know God’s Grace for us. We know that God comes to us, forgives us, makes us righteous before God, by Grace (in other words, as a gift that we do not earn!) We know that God does this first, then we can get down to living and working as God’s own children in this marvelous creation.
Riches with God
In today’s Gospel Lesson, Jesus points us ‘to build up riches with God’. It is easy to understand that our ‘riches with God’ are what God gives us, namely God’s Grace and all that flows from it.
Our work: Response, because … therefore
We know then our work is NOT to make ourselves good enough for God. Everything we do is to be a response to God’s Grace for us. Because God makes us Good, perfect before God, therefore we can fully engage in creation. We can be passionate about life and the goodness of creation, so that we can share the necessities of life and the wonders of the universe with ALL other people, in the present and for all generations to come. The Teacher in Ecclesiastes had no room for any passion for sharing the beauty of life with others. He had no passion to know that God’s love moved God to speak a word “Let there be Light,” and after 7 days to say, “it is good!” In the resulting blessed creation of order and beauty, we can be passionately engaged in the wonders of the universe. We can share this life with another person with the passion of a marriage. We can invest in friendships that carry us, our friends, and people around the world through the trials of life. Sharing God’s riches brings us to be so passionate about life that we can expend all of our lives striving to see and share our place in God’s awesome universe. For some of us that may mean building bigger and better telescopes. For all of us it means respecting but leaving behind the ‘trees’ of judgment, condemnation and lists, sharing instead God’s Grace with all people. We can choose to make justice a reality for each person.
Sharing God’s riches is possible for everyone. We could choose not to share God’s riches. But why would we?
Story: We Ain’t Poor by Florence Ferrier
In the story We Ain’t Poor! the Sheldons, a large family in the Appalachians, live in severe financial distress after a series of misfortunes. They receive inadequate assistance, yet they manage their meager income with ingenuity — and without complaint. One fall day the social worker “visits the Sheldons in the ramshackle rented house they lived in at the edge of the woods. Despite a painful physical handicap, Mr. Sheldon had shot and butchered a bear, which strayed into their yard once too often. They canned it so that there would be meat even during the worst of the winter when their fuel costs were high. The social worker reported: “Mr. Sheldon offered me a jar of bear meat. I hesitated to accept it, but he said kindly and firmly. ‘Now you just have to take this. We don’t have much, that’s a fact; but we ain’t poor!’“[In astonished disbelief, the social work asked, ‘How can you say that?’] His answer proved unforgettable. “’When you can give something away, even when you don’t have much, then you ain’t poor. When you don’t feel easy giving something away even if you got more’n you need, then you’re poor, whether you know it or not.’”
(Gospel Notes 2001, Brian Stoffregen, reworked TL)
Look at the World all around you! … God has made us Rich and given us the ability to see more and more of the universe as God’s amazing creation … Can we say ‘We ain’t poor!’? Amen
What is
it that, in coming to pass, would fulfill your life? Not just your
dreams, but the expectations of the community you live in, and of
your church. What would fulfill all that God intended you to be?
The Gift of the Magi, O Henry
In the
radio adaptation of O Henry’s The Gift of the Magi a young couple
has two precious belongings in their otherwise poverty captured
lives: his heirloom golden pocket watch, and her flowing hair that
would put the jewels of the Queen of Sheba to shame. In a shop window
they see an exquisite pair of bejeweled shell combs that match her
hair perfectly. But they are unimaginably expensive.
Unbeknownst
to the other as Christmas Eve arrives, he buys the combs for her, and
she buys for him a silver chain perfect for his watch. But the price
for each of the gifts is so high.
‘One Thing’
What is
the ‘one thing’ of all your dreams?
Martha’s, Mary’s and Our ‘One Things’
After
Martha invites Jesus into her home one thing fully occupies her:
respecting an ancient tradition as hostess she must provide for her
guest.
Mary has
one thing on her mind, and it has nothing to do with Martha’s busy
concerns. Mary sits attentively listening to Jesus.
Isn’t
it true how as listeners we do not worry about the preoccupied doers’
tasks and obligations. And as doers we are offended by the lazy,
unrealistic listeners or talkers who do not help with the obligations
that must be met!
Whether
you are a doer or a listener, what is the one thing that you dream of
that would make life good and fulfill all that God intended you to
be?
Sitting by the Oaks of Mamre
In the
OT lesson for today Abraham sits under one of Mamre’s oaks in the
midday heat, recovering from his recent circumcision.
Mamre is
one of Abraham’s three allies. Abraham and Sarah have no land. They
squat in tents by Mamre’s oaks. Eventually Abraham will buy a piece
of land near the oaks. There in a hewn cave Abraham buries Sarah.
Isaac and Ishmael, the son of Hagar, bury
Abraham there. Jacob and Esau, the estranged twins
together, bury Isaac there. Jacob buries Leah there. Joseph
returns from Egypt to bury Jacob there.
God Comes Strolling Up
Abraham
and Sarah do not go to God to find him. God comes as three strangers,
yet one, strolling up to their camp at the oaks of Mamre, where they
have built an altar to worship God.
Observant, Inviting, Busy, and Attentively
Listening
Abraham
beseeches the Strangers to pause to receive his hospitality as
required by ancient custom. They accept, which sets Abraham, Sarah
and their servants all into a flurry of action preparing a feast!
Abraham
stands listening attentively under the oaks as the Strangers eat.
The
Stranger asks after Sarah by name and includes her in God’s
restated Promise. She shall bear Abraham a son when the Stranger
returns again.
Sarah
and Abraham listened to God. They risked everything to leave home.
They have established themselves in the new land with reputation,
herds and flocks, servants, and a place they borrow to call home.
Though God has promised many times God has still not blessed them
with a son. For an heir is the one thing they lack to fulfill God’s
purpose for them: to inhabit this new land.
What is our ‘one thing’ we dream of?
What is
the one thing that we wish and dream for that will make life good?
What is it that, in coming to pass, would fulfill our lives by
completing for us all that God intends us to be as children of God?
A Canoe, a Boat (the Church)
A canoe
has one purpose, to traverse the waters without sinking. It may
require at least one person handy with a paddle, and the ability to
launch the canoe, and to secure it from theft and storms between
uses. But the canoe is not purposed to sit on land, or in a garage,
or to be hidden under a tree or set out in the sun to rot. A canoe is
made to traverse the water as early as the misty dawn of light that
pushes back the fog, and as late as the last drop of sun light
recedes below the horizon after sunset.
Our Purpose?
Do each
of us have one purpose? Is there one thing that in the doing we would
fulfill our purpose, the purpose for which God created each of us?
God Comes to Us: We do the Works of the Righteous
It is
clear in today’s OT and Gospel lessons: We do not need to go to God
to fulfill our purpose. God comes to us, names us, and calls us. God
comes many times to us, as God does to Abraham and Sarah, as Jesus
does to Martha and Mary. God builds a relationship with us. We
do not build a relationship with God, we are not the builders; we are
the clay and God is the Potter. As Abraham and Martha, so we too can
only be attentive and welcome God, in whatever guise God arrives in
our lives.
What can
God do to give you a fulfilled life?
Maudie, the movie: How Can She Be Happy!
One would hardly think that Maud Lewis would be happy.
As the movie Maudie portrays her, she was born an invalid, able to walk but not well. She bore a child, the result of incest, who she was told was so invalid the baby died. But the baby was healthy and sold by her brother, never to know Maud as her mother. Maud’s parents die, her aunt takes her in, and treats her as if she cannot care for herself. They treat Maud as a nobody.
So Maud strikes out on her own to work as a live-in housemaid for a simple man. But Everett hits her, is at best grouchy and at worst impossible. She prevails and starts to paint flowers on the walls in the dingy one room house in rural Nova Scotia. Eventually the two fall in love and are married.
Maud goes on to sell numerous small paintings, most for pennies and some for only a few dollars.
Eventually
people travel to buy her paintings. She is even commissioned by
Richard Nixon among others. But she lives in poverty her whole life.
In a TV
documentary on her, which makes her more famous, she smiles, and
paints within the small reach of her arthritic hands, arms and body.
Her aunt on her death bed astounds Maud by asking her about her appearance on TV: How come, of all of us in the family, you, Maud, are the only one who turns out to be happy?
Curmudgeon and insecure Everett gets fed up with Maud’s success. Fearing Maud will leave him, he forces her out. When he finally visits her at her friend’s he asks clearly if she will leave him for someone better.
Maud Lewis’s Pair of Oxen with Sled of Logs. (Consignor Canadian Fine Art) Linked From CBC website.
Maud Responds
To her aunt’s question about how she turns out to be the one who is happy Maud responds: “I am happy with whatever, as long as I have a paintbrush in my hands.”
To
Everett when he asks if she will go off with someone better than him,
she responds simply and completely:
“I
have everything with you that I have ever wanted.”
The Gift of the Magi: the cost so high, yet Rich
beyond their dreams!
On
Christmas Eve James and Della discover that she has sold her hair to
buy him the chain for his watch and he has sold his watch to buy her
the precious combs. So they set their gifts aside and sit down to
their coffee and supper of meat … with each other.
For what
is more precious than her hair or his watch, more precious than his
silver chain or her precious hair combs? Most precious in all the
world is their love for each other, and their loving sacrifices made
for the other. They are poor, but their love makes them the richest
people on earth.
Jesus: One Thing
At
Martha’s Jesus says only one thing is needed. He is not clear what
that one thing is. It is left up to us to discover.
What is
it that, in coming to pass, would fulfill our lives? Have we
discovered it, for this time and place?
Happy are they who know God’s ‘One Thing’
for them!
As the
earth moves through space and time we are not unnamed nobodies. God
comes to each and all of us wherever we are and relates to us.
God Colours us More Beautiful than all the Flowers in the Woods.
How can
our ‘One Thing’ be anything other than our Knowing that
God knows our names, claims us, redeems us, loves us, inspires us,
gives us work that has great meaning, and gives us people who we love
and who love us, even if they are curmudgeons or our enemies.
The Church, the Boat
The
ancient symbol of the Church is a boat, a boat to traverse the waters
of life. It carries us as we give God thanks for all the challenges
of travelling to a new land where we have no home, a borrowed place
where we must wait for God to give us heirs to carry on into God’s
future for the Church.
Our ‘One Thing’
No
matter our circumstances we can say to our God, “I have everything
with you that I have ever wanted.”
No sermon this past week. Sorry. A few photos though still brighten the horizon even as bleak as it could be.
It was a difficult week again. A judge made an order, full of …. You cannot safely say the truth about judges; though it would be nice if judges would base their work on truth.
This past week has been draining.
Gaslighting is a powerfully terrible thing to experience.
These snippets from a google search highlight just what this is, just how terrible it is, and just how terrible it is that the justice system participates in this. All apologies if any are really needed for just grabbing this information without keeping records to give credit. It’s the kind of thing that after one suffers it, again and again, at one’s spouse’s hand, and then repeatedly at one’s pastor’s, (she was ordained today, just for a sample of God’s justice waiting, and God’s Grace filling undeserving lives), other pastors who have great sins to hide in their false accusations about me, and then almost without ceasing by various RCMP officers, even VSU when I called them, a great number of people working in the justice system, and then again and again at the hand of judges …. It’s the kind of thing that when you have to deal with it again things do not always get done with the correct process. So my apologies.
Birds Fly, even if I Cannot
To Gaslight
to manipulate (someone) by psychological means into questioning their own sanity.
Gaslight
Gaslighting is used to describe abusive behavior, specifically when an abuser manipulates information in such a way as to make a victim question his or her sanity. Gaslighting intentionally makes someone doubt their memories or perception of reality. Gaslighting is a form of psychological abuse used by narcissists in order to instill in their victim’s an extreme sense of anxiety and confusion to the point where they no longer trust their own memory, perception or judgment. … The emotional damage of Gaslighting is huge on the narcissistic victim. Gaslighting can also be part of an authoritarian personality. A person with an authoritarian personality tends to think in absolutes: Things are 100 percent right or 100 percent wrong. When a gaslighter thinks that they are not the problem and everyone else is, this is called having an ego-syntonic personality.
Signs of being Gaslit
• no longer feeling like the person you used to be. • being more anxious and less confident than you used to be. • often wondering if you’re being too sensitive. • feeling like everything you do is wrong. • always thinking it’s your fault when things go wrong. • apologizing often.
The following from, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/here-there-and-everywhere/201701/are-gaslighters-aware-what-they-do
… Gaslighting is a pattern of manipulation tactics used by abusers, narcissists, dictators, and cult leaders to gain control over a person or people. The goal is to make the victim or victims question their own reality and depend on the gaslighter. So, do gaslighters know they’re doing it? It depends on the gaslighter.
Light and the Road. They have Chosen.
Living Well, Surviving Gaslighting
There is only one way to survive Gaslighting:
to live well, as well as one can, given the circumstances. I live well, even if the challenges are great.
In the Purple Light of an Early Morning Before the Storm That follows that Day.
My work is rough. Outdoors, building, tearing down, moving, rebuilding. It’s a dream for a young man who loves to build things with his hands. It’s tough and rough work for an older man like me, even if I like working with my hand. My hands, precious instruments of my creativity.
And the Light at Night
I live well.
The sun sets over the lake outside the window. A canoe rests near the water available to take a camera out to create beauty from what can be ordinary. People respond well to my company, my words, and simple joy of life. I receive grace given to me in abundance. I share grace with everyone I meet, and it makes a visible difference, a positive difference.
I help guide a new truck driver from being stuck to safely position her vacuum truck to be able to do her work and be able to drive out. It just took some well placed shovel work, and some good driving, well planned driving.
I cleaned up 5 garbage bags of drunken, drugged, and orgy leftovers out of this random camping area.
I’ve pulled two dead-falls down this past week, one down by a fool with an axe, the other by a strong wind. Who knows what may have happened, but no one will get hurt from them.
The fireworks after 23:00 are loud, but the view is okay. There are no complaints.
The light is wonderful, when one sees it with the truth that God created it to reflect.
Gas – Lighting
It’s the kind of lighting that only God can put right. I can forgive the family stuff, the gaslighting in the family as horrendous as it was. But the professionals: they should know better: their sins are bound. God will deal with their sins, not forgiven but bound. That, because it is my responsibility to forgive all that can be, and to bind what cannot be. I place it behind me so that I can continue to deal with these people of horrendous deeds with grace. I place it behind me and before them for the rest of their lives. God’s truth has no diminished clarity, no possibility of being lied about, nothing to be spun or hidden.
And the Birds Still Fly
God’s forgiveness, which I have given, remains as clear as God’s light of truth. Photos show reality, the clarity of God’s light shining on God’s wonderful creation.
