Lord, Save Us From Aerosols & Idiots

Sunday, September 12, 2021

Forests Start With Seedlings

Each Spring Growing New Leaves.

So We Start as Children,

And Protect and Nurture Children,

Or

We Have No Future.

Psalm 10:14

But you do see! Indeed you note trouble and grief, that you may take it into your hands; the helpless commit themselves to you; you have been the helper of the orphan.

Mark 9:22

It has often cast him into the fire and into the water, to destroy him; but if you are able to do anything, have pity on us and help us.

Words of Grace For Today

When I hear this ‘cast him into the fire and into the water [that place where uncreation bubbles up to border on and at times consume creation], to destroy him’ I think of the guy yesterday who jumped in front of me. The corner of No Frills where the milk coolers are was congested with at least 6 different people. So I stood a good 2 metres short of the pack, waiting patiently for them to move on. A few were visiting so it took a while. That’s when the guy came up from behind me and wedged his way less than a foot from me past me and another customer waiting to get at the cooler. The guy was an obese bear of a middle aged man. He quickly worked his way to the coolers, but then dwaddled getting his milk jug as if they had been moved since the last time, as if he could not find the right shelf of 2% which is always all the shelves behind door 2. Then he peered into the coolers dwiddling in the corner a few extra minutes before finally leaving.

I paused a bit, not too long, considering the other customers waiting politely behind me. When I stepped into the corner to door 1 to get skim milk it was clear the jerk had dwiddled to leave the air filled with flatus expelled through the anus, an aerosol that could be full of Covid virus.

The news is all full of Covid 19 fourth wave in Canada, fuelled by the Delta variant and 39 times more infecting the unvaccinated, though vulnerable (otherwise health compromised – read old or ill or young) vaccinated are still among those in hospital, ICU, and the morgue.

This jerk’s antics are a clear demonstration how aerosols hang in the air, filled with Covid virus, waiting to be breathed in, and how impossible it is to avoid doing so, except by staying in total seclusion … without milk.

The passage from Mark is not about this at all, of course. Covid 19 did not exist when Mark wrote his account of Jesus’ ministry. This passage is about the ‘demon’ who inhabits a young boy, which casts him into fire and water to destroy him.

Taken with the Psalm one could point to our work done to help alleviate the trouble and grief of the helpless and of the orphan. This is the work of the saints. Our courts commit themselves to taking the ‘best interests of the children’ as the first priority in family court … though they certainly do not! Quite the opposite. The courts commonly sacrifice children to be raised by the most dangerous of possible parents (most favoured are birth mothers, no matter the indications that the birth mother is a clear and present danger to the children!) Apparently the courts want more clients (criminals) in the next generations, which is the result of these dangerous parents’ parenting.

So with our prayers and our work as God’s voice, hands, and feet we say, “have pity on us and help us” You are the one who can take our trouble and grief into your hands. Do so now, for among the most vulnerable are the children (who cannot be vaccinated yet at all!)

Our future is at risk. There are so many idiots, jerks, antiscience idiots, anti-vac idiots and covidiots abundant enough to put us all at risk, to put the vulnerable at risk, to put our children and our future at risk.

You, Oh Lord, are the only one who can take our trouble and our grief into your hands, and heal us of these idiots and their destruction of life and future.

From God With Love … for Justice

Wednesday, September 8, 2021

There is so much for which to be

Thankful

Like a View to a New Sunrise.

Isaiah 42:1

Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations.

Luke 4:22

All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, ‘Is not this Joseph’s son?’

Words of Grace For Today

Is this not George’s son?

Is this not Katie’s daughter?

Is this not your Granddaughter?

Just ordinary people George, Katie, and you, right!? So …

So how can any real person so ordinary give rise (or rather birth) to a young person so spectacular as God’s chosen servant, one to bring justice to the nations, one who can speak so well that all are amazed at this person’s gracious words.

Wow, how can it be? First that there is such a person who can change the course of history, and second that this peculiar person, this spectacular person, comes from an ordinary family?

Which is that the best things about life, and the best possibilities in history, grow from a healthy family. Or at least we hope they do.

But …

in reality the best things (or people) in life grow from families that are … well … the most screwed up and dysfunctional families ever. And then in reality sometimes the best things (and people) in life grow from the healthiest families ever … and all the kinds of families between the worst and the best.

Thank God, then, that we get to celebrate all that God gives us … including a chosen person who brings justice to all the nations, and more importantly, that God gives us the gifts and people who love us so much that all the world seems right … and is just right.

Life is Fragile! So …

Tuesday, September 7, 2021

All of Our Lives Will

Eventually, Inevitably

Go Up In Smoke!’

So What Are You Going To Do and Be

Until That Day?

Deuteronomy 2:7

Surely the Lord your God has blessed you in all your undertakings; he knows your going through this great wilderness. These forty years the Lord your God has been with you; you have lacked nothing.

Matthew 16:18

I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.

Words of Grace For Today

Life is fragile, so eat dessert first.

The value reflected in this humour is that pleasure is all life has to offer, and life is going to end at any time, unpredictably, so grab all the pleasure you can while you still can.

God acts to free God’s people from slavery in Egypt, delivering them to 40 years wandering in the wilderness. Wilderness is not plentiful with the necessities of life, and even here God has been with the people, walking with them, and providing all the people need. They have lacked nothing.

God sends Jesus to be a living human, in the most understandable language for us humans. Jesus story is to teach and guide us to live lives worthy of God’s blessing given to us. Even as Jesus offers himself (in order to demonstrate God’s power in weakness, in forgiveness {not vengeance}, and God’s enduring unconditional love that graciously forgives us all our sins), and will no longer be present to the disciples as he has been, Jesus does not desert the disciples. He provides the Holy Spirit to guide them, and takes their ‘rock’, Peter (the one so zealous yet foolish and full of faults), and builds on that a church that will last and not succumb even to the power of the Devil.

How do we respond?

The popular concept that comes the closest to simply explain our appropriate response is ‘pay it forward.’ That is, give to others what God has given to us, namely abundant life (through gracious forgiveness and the renewal of life).

Pay it forward.

A concept that is easy to understand, and very exactly when we try to exercise it fully … since God has given us so, so, so much!

God’s value for our lives would have the humorous saying go like this:

Life is fragile, so give it to others while you still can.

No Worries, Just Wonders! … OR?

Friday, September 3, 2021

We can see both the darkness

and

the morning light.

Which do we consider first?

Psalm 33:5

He loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full of the steadfast love of the Lord.

Matthew 6:25

Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?

Words of Grace For Today

What is it to worry?

What would it be like to have no concern for drink, food, or clothing? Would we survive? … Well not in most of the world no we would not.

So is there something other than ‘worry’ for our drink, food and clothing, and having no concern for our drink, food, and clothing?

The question is not if there is something between these two extremes. The question is how do we consider our needs? Do we consider these first from our needs’ demands on our time and energy … or do we consider everything first from God’s great generosity with us, and God’s abiding presence in the world?

If we start every calculation from God’s grace and love for us, it makes no sense to be worried about our daily needs, for all that we need for life is already given to us. We only need to remember how filled the earth is with God’s steadfast love.

Then we can get on with life. The purpose of our lives is no longer trying to get for ourselves. Rather we have the greatest purpose in sharing all that we can, with everyone, especially those who do not have enough to provide for their and their family’s basic needs.

What a life! A life of plenty!

With every opportunity to share everything with those most in need.

It does not get better.

So why do so many people think they have to take as much as they can get from others, just to meet their daily needs?!

God Calls, Come Home!

Saturday, August 28, 2021

Come Home

Live in Christ’s Light

In the Truth

Ezekiel 11:19

I will give them one heart, and put a new spirit within them; I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh.

Acts 2:39

For the promise is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to Godself.

Words of Grace For Today

God calls home, home to life as God created us to live it.

Home to live with lively hearts of flesh, and renewed spirits.

Home to leave behind our hearts that have grown hard as stone with the travails of life and the evil that has bombarded us, and the evil with which we have bombarded others.

God calls us home to live with new spirits and hearts that are shared among us all. Hearts the love one another because God first loves us, though we certainly do not deserve God’s love at all, not at all.

There is no greater promise than that God will renew our spirits and give us new hearts, for our spirits and our hearts are what we have to share with each other, with the strangers, and even with our enemies. In our hearts and in our spirits God’s image is made known to us and to others, as God created us, in God’s own image, thus able to choose to love and live and give without end generously to others so that they may live.

Come home, this morning, this day, this evening, this night.

Receive the gifts that God promises

and

live.

God Writes

Friday, August 27, 2021

Whether Written in Letters and Words on a Page

or

in the Clouds Each Day

The Light of Christ Shines Through the Darkness

and Transforms Our Hearts, Minds, and Souls

To God’s Good Purposes.

Psalm 19:8

The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the Lord is clear, enlightening the eyes.

2 Timothy 3:16

All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.

Words of Grace For Today

The Words recorded in scripture are long since recognized as instructive, inspired by God (though not written by anyone other than humans interpreting what God inspires), and providing health for the body, mind, and soul.

There is an idea that we can train ourselves in righteousness reflected in the words from the letter to Timothy.

Ah, yes, the age old turn of grace into something we must accomplish ourselves, even if it is only possible after God saves us.

What good does it do for us to think that after baptism we are more capable of being ‘trained’ to be righteous and do righteousness.

Paul’s comments on this (as opposed to pseudo-Paul, or letters written after Paul’s style), and Martin Luther’s are instructive: on our own we cannot do anything to make ourselves righteous before God, only God can bring us to righteousness. No matter how much we discipline ourselves, instruct ourselves, strive to change ourselves … there simply is no hope in or good result from such efforts. In fact they serve to blind us to the reality of who we are and who God is to us and who God makes us. We are, and always remain, sinners. Any effort to pretend it is otherwise only detracts from our faith, our trust in God, our hope in God’s Grace for us.

Grace.

Grace alone.

Then are we to simply allow ourselves to be as depraved and debauched as we can or would wont to be? Are we to focus on all that is sin and attempt to multiply our sins without end?

There is no good end to that, of course, as we destroy people and creation around us, and even ourselves.

As we acknowledge that we are sinners and will always remain sinners, and that only by Grace can God make us to be anything else, and in fact God makes us saints, holy people who reflect God’s Grace, Truth, and Love … THEN

Then we can choose to put aside sin (as best we can), and allow God’s Grace to flow through us, infusing our thoughts, words, and deeds with God’s free and unconditional love for all people.

Then we may just be the reflectors of God’s righteousness. BUT we fall into the Devil’s snare if and when we try to claim that we, made to reflect God’s Grace by God’s Grace alone working in us, have somehow accomplished this sainthood on our own merits (or even in part on our own merits.)

Scripture inspires us as God-made saints to reflect God’s Grace, and to confess daily or more often that we sin and cannot free ourselves … or even do anything good … except by God’s Grace working in and through us.

Scripture inspires us. That is it creates in us an awareness of God’s presence in, with, and through us. Scripture does not make us more or other than we are. Neither does scripture reflect God’s own thoughts. Scripture remains the result of sinful humans, interpreting and reflecting God’s presence in their imperfect lives.

Not perfect: neither us humans, nor the scriptures we produce by God’s inspiration. But they are the best it gets, kind of like us. We are the best it gets, until God works through us, and then we still are the best it gets.

Which as God’s Grace works in us can be awfully awesome and wondrous … which can also be the scariest and the most comforting experience we will ever have. The scariest it is because it exposes with great clarity the raw sin and evil in us that we otherwise would hide from and deny. The most comforting it is because that raw sin and evil (so horrid as it is) is dealt with by God and it needs no further effort on our part to be set to rest in our pasts.

What a life!

Shepherd Guide Us

Thursday, August 26, 2021

God’s Great and Mighty Deeds

Are Reflected in the Wonders

of All Creation,

Even in Our Enemies!

Psalm 28:9

O save your people, and bless your heritage; be their shepherd, and carry them for ever.

1 Peter 2:9

You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light.

Words of Grace For Today

When one thinks of all the times and all the things that have been done by people claiming to be God’s own people, a royal priesthood, and a chosen race, one’s stomach must turn dark with boiling acid. How such promise and blessing has been perverted to evil to serve the Devil’s purposes, against God’s will, and to great detriment of the perpetrators and the victims.

What are we chosen, as God’s own people, solely so that we can give witness to God’s power in weakness, God’s power of love demonstrated to us again and again by saving us by grace, though we never deserve anything from God.

There are many mighty acts of God that we are called to tell in our stories, the stories we tell ourselves, the stories that we write and speak to others, and the stories we create with our lives.

What we have demonstrated through history and in each of our lives, is that without God’s grace, without surrendering in humility (at the horror of the sin we can commit) to our need for God to save us again and again each day, without Grace giving us breath … without God’s help each moment we are capable of the most evil and depraved things done to others, even to those we profess to love, and even to ourselves.

So we pray:

O save your people, and bless your heritage; be their shepherd, and carry them for ever.

Having acknowledged who we are, sinners all … having turned to God yet again to rescue us and carry us … having recognized God’s great and mighty acts for our ancestors and for us in our own lifetimes … we celebrate God’s promises for us, God’s claim on us as God’s own people, that God has chosen us to be examples of what goodness can be accomplished when God redeems God’s people.

We sing and we dance in celebration with all people, even our enemies; for if God can save us, certainly God will do what is necessary to save them (starting with us seeing clearly if they are even our enemies at all, and if they so remain, then celebrating that God still gives them time for the amendment of life.)

Such a celebration! A feast in paradise already today!

Our Efforts Compared to God’s Promises

Sunday, August 22, 2021

The Marvels of Technology

That Made Mobile a Living Space

Hardly Compares To

God’s Love

Which Makes a Living Space a Home,

A Safe Home.

Leviticus 26:12

And I will walk among you, and will be your God, and you shall be my people.

1 John 1:3-4

We declare to you what we have seen and heard so that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. We are writing these things so that our joy may be complete.

Words of Grace For Today

God creates.

God creates humans.

God creates you.

God creates me.

God knows what wretched sinners we each will be.

God still creates you and me and all of us.

God plans that in our wretched sinfulness, God’s power will be made obvious to all who have eyes to see and ears to hear and hearts to love and live and believe. God does not abandon us to our sinfulness, though we may experience the painful results of sin, of others’ and our own sins, as unending suffering and abandonment by God.

God brings words to the ancient writers minds, words of promise to counter our limited understanding of our own lives and of God’s great goodness, mercy, love and grace. The ancient writers put in words for us to read so many generations since: that God promises to not abandon us, not even to our own wilful sins and their consequences. God promises to walk with us.

This many mystics and other faithful people have experienced in the face of sin’s great destructive consequences: that God walks with us each step of each day, no matter what we do, say, or think.

God’s promises are sure.

We use many things to make life safer for us:

Natural gas for heating, though some of us only have wood heat it is still heat against the winter cold.

Gasoline to power engines to do work for us, mowing grass, clearing snow, moving vehicles to and fro bringing food and other supplies to stores and home from stores.

Coal, natural gas, and water (and a tiny amount of wind turbines and solar panels) to generate electricity to a distribution grid that powers industry, business machines, and home appliances to wash and dry our clothes, wash our dishes, run our computers and TVs, charge our phones; though some of us cannot afford to connect to the grid, and some of us use our own generators run on solar power or gasoline.

Science and engineering accomplishments and implementations that bring water to us and remove waste; that have allowed us to build vertical cities from deep underground to high above the streets; that have given us a system of roadways and railways and shipping systems and air transportation systems including complex trucks, trains, ships, and planes that span rivers, valleys, oceans, and continents; that have provided specialized buildings for research, health care, magnetic imagining that provides details unimagined by even Röntgen; computers with all their benefits and detriments to healthy living.

The list of what we use to make life more secure goes on and on.

Nothing of our own efforts guarantees us a good future.

Our own efforts are so marvellous that previous generations would hardly comprehend what we’ve done, and what we rely on. We rely on our accomplishments so thoroughly that we seem unable to give up any of it, not even to walk away for a few days without that always-at-hand ‘smart’phone. We’ve become so dependent that we by and large equate security with our ability to posses and use these technologies.

Yet nothing of our own efforts can guarantee us a good future. Reliance on them as security for life is a reduction of life to what they provide us; God created life to be so much more than our own technologies (marvellous as they are) can provide. No matter the marvel, no thing can match the power of love, the power of forgiveness, the power of healing with mercy and grace.

Only God’s promises can and do provide us the guarantee we ask for, that today and all our tomorrows be life abundant for us. As God walks with us, God loves us each step through our days, today and every tomorrow. There is no more powerful provision for and assurance of life abundant, even as we inevitably face death, of our loved ones and our own deaths than that God walks with us and love us unconditionally. There is no comparison in all our technologies that enables us so to live and to provide life abundant to others, everywhere in God’s good creation.

Listen Up!

Saturday, August 21, 2021

Sometimes

We Need to Stand Up Above the Fray

And Be

God’s Listening Ears

and

Loving Hearts

For Others

Isaiah 65:24

Before they call I will answer, while they are yet speaking I will hear.

Romans 5:8

God proves God’s love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.

Words of Grace For Today

It’s real simple:

we don’t deserve God’s love,

God loves us again and again anyway.

We don’t deserve God’s forgiveness,

God forgives us again and again anyway.

We don’t deserve God’s blessings,

God blesses us with renewed life again and again anyway.

Peter and Michelle had a son, Lloyd, who as he grew into his teens went from a kind and gentle soul to an aggressive, vengeful and hurtful angry whirlwind of trouble. More than once the police brought Lloyd home and released him into his parents care.

After a year of that, the police came one morning when Lloyd had not come home for a few days. Not coming home for days on end had become more and more the routine rather than the exception. The police informed Peter and Michelle (on a first name basis by now with the police) that Lloyd had been arrested and charged with murdering an elderly woman. It appeared, the police said, that a group of teens had attacked her going into her home, roughed her up, tied her up, robbed her, gained entrance to her home, looted the place, and then were about to beat her more when a neighbour interrupted them with a lantern and a large stick. Lloyd was in the hospital still unconscious from a blow to the head from that stick.

Peter and Michelle headed out to the hospital in their horse drawn wagon, found Lloyd, and sat by his side. Taking turns returning home for food and to clean up, they spent the next four days holding vigil by Lloyd’s hospital bed.

When Lloyd finally started to come to Peter was about to relieve Michelle for the ‘graveyard’ shift. Lloyd took a good hour to figure out where he was. Peter and Michelle repeated for him over and over again, that it did not matter what he’d done, they had always loved him and they always would no matter what.

The next day Peter and Michelle returned to the hospital to find the police interviewing Lloyd, who had very little to say. When they left Peter and Michelle sat with Lloyd, assured him that no matter what they loved him and always would.

That night when they came to share supper with Lloyd, a neighbour, Mr. Platt, and Lloyd’s girlfriend, Ginny, were with Lloyd talking. When Peter and Michelle arrived they shared the details of Lloyd being knocked unconscious.

Ginny started out and Mr. Platt jumped in with some details only he knew. Lloyd had been walking home with Ginny, after a two day trip over the mountains to see her grandmother. Since she was Ginny’s only living relative they asked her for her blessing for the two to get married. On their walk they came upon Mrs. Swenson, tied to a tree. Michelle ran for help and Peter stayed to untie Mrs. Swenson. The neighbour, Mr. Platt, alerted by Michelle, told her to stay with his wife and kids. He went out to find Lloyd bent over Mrs. Swenson and without delay disabled him to ‘free’ Mrs. Swenson from her attacker. Mr. Platt then chased the remaining teens but did not catch any of them.

It wasn’t long before the police came, listen to the whole account by Mr. Platt, Ginny, and Lloyd, and the promised Lloyd all the charges against him would be dropped.

A month later at Ginny and Lloyd’s wedding, Peter and Michelle and Ginny’s grandmother welcomed the same police they had come to know so well, and Mr. Platt and his family, along with many of their neighbours. Together they all celebrated the goodness of God’s grace that brought Ginny into Lloyd’s life, and the night that Mr. Platt ‘knocked’ some sense into Lloyd. It’d been a year since Lloyd had been in trouble, though his outings with Ginny did make it seem to everyone that he was still rebelling and heading down a dark road, so Mr. Platt’s knocking really had not changed anything, except made it known to all what Lloyd had been up to. The following summer Grant was born to Ginny and Lloyd, and the whole neighbourhood celebrated again. They knew it took a whole community to raise healthy children, and they’d done their part with Lloyd, and they would again with Grant, all his siblings to come and all the other children raised in that community.

Sometimes we need good friends to be the ones who demonstrate that God listens to us even before we pray, that God saves us even as we are still wretched sinners. Sometimes we need to be the ones who do the demonstrating of God’s Grace for others.

Singing and Dancing

Thursday, August 19, 2021

Every Step In Life

Leads Us to Sing and Dance

For God Is With Us

Always.

1 Chronicles 13:8

David and all Israel were dancing before God with all their might, with song and lyres and harps and tambourines and cymbals and trumpets.

Philippians 4:4-5

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near.

Words of Grace For Today

When one surveys through memory how God has exercised great grace and steadfast love for our ancestors and for us in this time and place, there is only one response that we can engage in:

We sing and dance before God with all our might.

And we work each day to let our gentleness be the mode of our lives, gentleness that is born of enduring great suffering, and still receiving great grace and deliverance by God’s hand, for God is always near.

So we sing with all our hearts, minds, and strength, singing the old, old story of Jesus and his love.

This is the dance that celebrates everything that is good in creation: God’s grace and love for us all. There is nothing better possible than this in all our lives.