Category: Winter

Choice Stock, Broken Stock

Friday, March 26, 2021

Where Will This Day Take Us?

The First Step is Always

Confess, Repent, and Be Gratefully Gracious

Jeremiah 2:21

Yet I planted you as a choice vine, from the purest stock. How then did you turn degenerate and become a wild vine?

Revelation 2:5

Remember then from what you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent.

Words of Grace For Today

Humble pie, these readings are for today.

God creates us good, choice vines from the purest stock.

We degenerate and become wild vines, producing little good!

We have fallen from the greatness that God created us to be, to live out in creation.

What are we to do?

The most common human response is …

Denial.

No, we are not that bad. No, we have not fallen. No, God did not create us to be good only.

And on go our denials, some quite marvellous in their creativity.

What is God to do?

We expect that God will punish us, removing our lampstands, unless we return to being good and doing good works.

This expectation is more denial. It is not just that we have fallen. We cannot rescue ourselves or ever again but sin, behave as wild vines, fail to do the good works that God created us for to do.

Doch, God does not punish us. God has mercy on us and is prodigiously gracious with us. God forgives us. God promises to forgive us. God invites us to face reality. God invites us to repent.

To repent is to turn about: we cannot ‘turn about’ and be and do good; but we can ‘turn about’ our pride and arrogance that denies our prolific sins. We can acknowledge, confess, and rely solely on God’s forgiveness … and then move forward relying solely on God’s Grace each day, each moment.

We become humble, grateful, and gracious with ourselves and others.

We recognized that we are broken, somewhat repaired, vessels that carry in our brokenness witness to God’s overwhelming mercy, grace, and love for us (and for all people, and for all creation).

Creation needs our good hard work. We need our hard, diligent, and good work … for our own survival and for the survival of all other people … and more than survival we work to provide abundant life for all people.

This day has it’s fullness waiting.

Are we ready to repent … and let God guide us to (with joyful thanks) accomplish the work that is ours this day?

Out of the Valleys of the Shadows of Death

Thursday, March 25, 2021

20210310_081202small

The Obstacles in Our Way

Cannot Stop the Sun from Rising

Nor God’s Grace and Love from Reaching Us

Saving Us

Psalm 27:9

Do not hide your face from me. Do not turn your servant away in anger, you who have been my help. Do not cast me off, do not forsake me, O God of my salvation!

Luke 23:42-43

Then he said, ‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.’ He replied, ‘Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.’

Words of Grace For Today

While the challenges of life and the challenges to life rise up against us, and enemies lay in wait and attack and remain ever ready to destroy us with violence, gaslighting, and/or false witness, there is no shortage of our own sins (having nothing to do with the false convictions made by false witness and dishonest, dishonourable, and lying judges, the gaslighting, or our enemies lies about us) which are the real threat to our very lives.

Others’ attacks can physically harm us and even end our lives on earth. Others’ gaslighting can nearly drive us mad as we grapple with what is actually real and what is not, which is a whole other kind of hell to live through. False witness and false convictions and judges’ dishonest rulings can put our lives in jeopardy in jail, ruin our reputations, and make life very lonely as friends turn their backs on us and even our pastors refuse to communicate with us.

These are all terrible.

Still the worst thing that threatens our lives is not from outside ourselves. It is always from within. It is our own sins which can lead us to doubt God’s grace and to fear that God will turn from us.

Our own sins bring on the valleys of the shadows of death that threaten not only our physical life, not only our sanity, but our very souls … so that there is nothing left of life, and indeed of us. These experiences are when we lose our love of God and fear that God no longer loves us … and we only fear God.

We cry out.

We cry out if we are even still that capable: Do not hide your face from me. Do not turn your servant away in anger, you who have been my help. Do not cast me off, do not forsake me, O God of my salvation!

The valleys of the shadows of death are no illusion. They are certainly the work of the Devil himself/herself/themselves [in these valleys the gender is irrelevant!]

Our fear of God is no illusion.

Our cries are not illusions.

Always, always, always God answers us as he answered the criminal that hung on a cross with Jesus and cried out to Jesus for help: Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.

Today.

No waiting.

No delay.

Today, though we suffer greatly in these valleys, today we will be in paradise with Jesus.

These are the words that again and again usher us out of the valleys of the shadows of death and back into the Grace which gives us life, light, and hope. These words stymie the wishes and efforts of all our enemies. These words usher us back into abundant life.

Thanks be to God.

Angels vs Upheaval

Monday, March 22, 2021

No Matter the Obstacles in Our Path

God’s Angels Encamp around Us,

Guiding Us

Psalm 34:7

The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him, and delivers them.

Luke 11:10

For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.

Words of Grace For Today

There are enough challenges to everyday,

even ordinary everyday days.

Through in upheaval like a pandemic, or injustice focused at oneself, or … [fill in the extraordinary upheaval that meets every life] the challenges can seem to be a bit overwhelming.

Then it is good to know that God’s Angels ‘encamp’ around we who fear and love God.

Then it is good to know that when we ask, God provides (what we need, not necessarily what we ask for). When we search, God guides us to find (what we need, not necessarily what we thought we sought). When we knock, God opens (the door that God knows we need to have opened, not necessarily the door we were banging away on).

To fear and love God.

To fear and love God is the beginning of everything good.

To fear and love God is the beginning of every good day, every good hour, every good minute.

To fear and love God is the beginning of every good relationship, project, or yearning.

Help us, we pray, to fear and love God before all else, (more than all the things that threaten to and do upend our lives.)

Help us, we pray, to trust God’s Angels are with us, (no matter what threatens to and does upend our lives.)

Furnace or Grace, What Do You Say Today?

Monday, March 15, 2021

God Speaks Clearly.

So

what do you say with your life today:

‘Into the furnace!’

or

‘Welcome to the Light of Christ!’

Daniel 3:17-18

If our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the furnace of blazing fire and out of your hand, O king, let him deliver us. But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods and we will not worship the golden statue that you have set up.

Acts 4:20

For we cannot keep from speaking about what we have seen and heard.

Words of Grace For Today

When God speaks, there is no one who ….

Well, that cannot be true, because people react on the full spectrum from loving worship to full our rejection that God exists, yet alone speaks clearly to people … for people to hear.

God is not a puppeteer, pulling the strings of control over humans, or any part of creation. Yet when some people hear God speaking, clearly, lovingly, they and we cannot keep from speaking about what we have seen and heard. That is the life of a sacramental mystic, who encounters God talking at every turn in creation, even in and among those most dangerous of animals, the two-legged kind that speak every kind of word on the spectrum from life-giving truth to life-robbing, evil lies.

What kind of word do you speak this day?

Amidst a pandemic, do you speak truth that supports, enhances, and inspired people to life healthily and abundantly, blessed by God.

Or are you off worshipping another kind of godlet, one who demands strict adherence to reality denying lies, controlled thoughts and expressions, and (like the king who is ready to throw Daniel and his companions into the furnace), the painful death of anyone who will not ‘fall into line’ worshipping your life-sucking godlet.

The powerful king who demanded Daniel worship his godlet, had not encountered God, Daniel’s God, who may or may not deliver Daniel (and us) from the fiery furnace of destruction (the actual fires of burning or the fire of lies that destroy our reputations.) Whether God chooses to deliver us does not deter us from remaining faithful. For we will not begin to worship a godlet who takes life from so many people, promising the greatest life, and delivering it’s followers into a long life more painfully greedy and selfish than death in a fiery furnace ever could be.

We have seen. We have heard. We have known. God is gracious, unconditionally loving, and prodigiously generous. We need nothing more than God’s blessings and opportunities to worship and serve God … with every word and breath … even if it be our last.

On the spectrum from life-giving, self-sacrificial, unconditionally loving (reflecting God’s Grace for us all) to the Devil’s empty promised, self-made life at the expense of others’ lives:

What kind of word do you speak this day?

From the outcast homeless poverty captured person to the most powerful ruler or judge of the day, God allows a simple question to sit before us each day:

What kind of word do you speak this day?

Searching Famine, Hear and Obey

Sunday, March 14, 2021

Listen and You Will Hear

the Colours of God’s Word

in the Sun Setting Through the Trees

Amos 8:11-12

The time is surely coming, says the Lord God, when I will send a famine on the land; not a famine of bread, or a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord. They shall wander from sea to sea, and from north to east; they shall run to and fro, seeking the word of the Lord, but they shall not find it.

Luke 11:28

But Jesus said, ‘Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it!’

Words of Grace For Today

A great many religious efforts through history and on-going today are well described by Amos’ Words from God: They shall wander from sea to sea, and from north to east; they shall run to and fro, seeking the word of the Lord, but they shall not find it.

To make up for the futility of our great and desperate searchings, we humans make up all sorts of things, religious things, rituals, ‘truths’ which are certainly nothing of the sort, ways of speaking, judgments against other people, wars, and great empires and ideas.

It is as if we have ourselves convinced that if we are seeking the Other, the divine, then what we do must be other than … well other than everything sane, practical, real, truthful, reasonable, understandable, and even reverent.

Yes, God is OTHER than we are, so other, infinite, immortal and on goes the list of how great God is compared to how miserably un-great we are.

All our efforts to bridge the gap between us and God are doomed to fail. That is the kind of gap that it is between Divine and us humans. Ah, you say, then with a long tradition behind you, ‘Why bother with God at all! Most likely God does not even exist!’ There certainly is no irrefutable proof of God’s existence, for sure!

The origin of our very idea of God is not knowable.

And for the faithful it does not matter.

We do not bridge the gap.

God created us and has gone to great lengths (in human terms of reference) to demonstrate to us that God already has bridged the gap between the Divine and us humans.

In a word we refer to it as God’s Word.

Jesus, the Word of God, God’s self, become human, so that we could encounter God as one of us, points us to how we can respond.

First off, we stop trying to reach God, or win God’s approval, or become one with God. God has reached us, given us God’s approval (freely, that’s Grace), and has become one with us.

We do not and cannot ‘have God’ in anyway, not in our hearts, minds, souls, or special religious rites of any kind.

God has us.

Second Jesus points us to obedience: Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it! We’ve made great traditions of obeying in order to be good enough for God. It’s all and always futile and destructive to us and those around us. Hearing God’s Word and obeying it is to trust that God has provided the Word for us to hear. It is trusting that we can hear it, without some special rigmarole or religious effort. It is trusting that we can obey it, not to earn God’s favour, but in response to knowing God has already granted us God’s favour, unconditionally and overwhelmingly abundant, so that we have enough to share with everyone else.

So we all know where that leaves us. We humans fight with each other who has God’s ‘real’ Word, and who ‘really’ hears it and obeys it.

Ahh Quatsch. Get over ourselves. God’s Word is not something we can claim over other people’s claims. It’s there. Written by our ancestors as they encountered God, mind you quite imperfectly so. God has put God’s Word all around us, in nature, in the materials we build houses and cities with. God’s Word is the stuff that makes a city a community, and a house a home.

Obedience is simple. Listen. Hear the ten commandments. They set limits. Hear Jesus’ Commandment: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and strength, and your neighbour as yourself and love even your enemy.

Limits and goal. Life is pretty simple. Listen and give it all you’ve got. You cannot take anything to the grave with you, so ‘spend’ it sharing God’s Word here and now.

If not now, when are you going to do what God created you to do?!

Strangers in a New Land

Thursday, March 11, 2021

Welcoming and Loving

Aliens

into the Wilderness

With God’s Unconditional Love

Leviticus 19:34

The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.

Romans 12:13

Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers.

Words of Grace For Today

Strangers and aliens are citizens with us in God’s Kingdom, which is at hand, here on earth already today.

We love because we are loved first by God.

We accept the alien, the stranger, because we were once aliens and strangers in a foreign land. If we do not have that story in our lifetime, we have ancestors who do.

An elderly woman, frail of body and sound of mind asked the pastor visiting her to help her make a donation to CLWR, a donation to give a goat for Christmas in a far away, never seen country. She did not care where. She did not need to know the circumstances of need. She trusted her church for those details. She had to make the donation as she had every Christmas. This might be her last Christmas. She had to make the donation.

The pastor asked her why it was so important. Could she not rest in these her last years and leave that work to others, for she was barely able to provide for herself as it was.

No, she insisted. She must make that donation. She recounted how as a young teen, she and the others in her village were rounded up, and set on a march west. The crops had been plentiful, but all the grain was taken away by train, so they marched. There was so little food, day after day. Then there was no food, and they filled their bellies with grass to stop the pain of an empty stomach eating away at itself.

No, she insisted. My son was here and he refused to help me. Now pastor, you must help me. I have to make that donation, for I am still here.

We do what we can. Sometimes it is no more than a donation. Sometimes it is our years. Sometimes it is all the energy we have to welcome refugees and strangers, aliens come into our land hoping for a life, a new life.

We do what we can, for we know (if not from our own history, then from our ancestors’ history) what it is to be a stranger and an alien in a new land … in a new land with nothing to our names but trust in God and God’s people.

Selah.

God’s Faithfulness, Grace and Truth is Our Response

Wednesday, March 10, 2021

Because God is Faithful to Us

We Stand Tall

Giving Witness to the Truth:

This is God’s Creation,

God’s Alone.

Jeremiah 31:3

The Lord appeared to him from far away. I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you.

1 John 4:16

So we have known and believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.

Words of Grace For Today

There are too many people ready to lie, and lie, and lie, and do as much damage to others as they can with their lies.

How can we respond?

We can be sure only that God loves us, and as God enables us to love God, God abides in us. God continues to be faithful to us.

While voices continue the lies, shutting us out, denying us voice, gaslighting us, expanding the terrible lies about us, how can we respond?

We can respond with grace, only truth and grace.

Those ready to destroy us will show no mercy. They care not at all for the truth. They care not for God’s creation or any of God’s children. They care only for their own advantage, their own power, their own false record of appearing to be just but actually being very unjust.

Those who wish to destroy us are of all kinds, from the smallest child to the highest powers, and many in between.

How can we respond except with grace, only truth and grace?

For while those ready to destroy us will persistently pursue us, God is more faithful than any person could ever be, even those who relentlessly pursue us to destroy us.

We count on God, for God has continued God’s faithfulness to us.

We fear and love God greater than we could possible fear or love anyone else.

Who are we that God continues God’s faithfulness to us?

We are God’s children, God-made saints, yet simultaneously still sinners – though we are not guilty of the charges made against us, nor of the convictions falsely made against us. This is truth. This is Grace.

We are Children of the Light

Tuesday, March 9, 2021

In the Dark

or

In the Light

We Remain Children of the Light

Micah 7:8

Do not rejoice over me, O my enemy; when I fall, I shall rise; when I sit in darkness, the Lord will be a light to me.

1 Thessalonians 5:5

For you are all children of light and children of the day; we are not of the night or of darkness.

Words of Grace For Today

Are we to be good?

Are we to be evil?

Sometimes the difference between what we are to be is what we know about ourselves.

In knowing truth, there is hope that cannot be lost.

Darkness is powerful. It tempts many to lie in wait, to prey upon the weak, to put all their weight into the lie that will bring them forward.

The Light gives Life as God created us to live it.

Who are we?

Who have we been in the past?

Who are we going to be in the future?

God knows.

God knows who we are.

God knows who we are is what most of us have lost track of.

So God expends so much to show us who we are, to give us freedom from our past to be what we are, to guide us into the future so that we will be who we are, and who God created us to be.

YET

YET we always are so eager, able, and willing to choose to work the dark work of the Devil, to try to take shortcuts to a better life. There are no shortcuts. Shortcuts or cuts at all are not what is needed.

God’s work in us is all that is needed, and it is the only thing that can move us to live in the Light.

The Light is frightening for most of us, we’ve hidden from our sins for so long. The light is the only way that God created us to live. So we remember even in the face of our enemies:

when we fall, we shall rise; when we sit in darkness, the Lord will be a light to us, for we are all children of light and children of the day; we are not of the night or of darkness.

Thanks be to God!

Messengers of God’s Word

Sunday, March 7, 2021

God’s Word

Is Fire

In Our Hearts

and All Creation!

Jeremiah 1:17

But you, gird up your loins; stand up and tell them everything that I command you. Do not break down before them, or I will break you before them.

2 Corinthians 4:5

For we do not proclaim ourselves; we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus’ sake.

Words of Grace For Today

It is sometimes presented as a glorious calling that we receive in our baptisms: to serve Christ, to proclaim Christ, to obey Christ.

Jeremiah (though before Christ’s life in time on earth) knew well the calling to serve God, to proclaim God’s Word, and to obey God.

God makes it clear: Jeremiah is to proclaim God’s Word, clearly, loudly. He should not break down in front of powerful people or great rulers or in front of anyone. If he does God will show the powerful people and great rulers and everyone else how much more powerful God is than they: he will break Jeremiah as an example, a warning to them.

Driven by God’s command and warning Jeremiah proclaims God’s Word. Most people do not want to hear it and turn on him, the messenger, as if that could ever stop God’s Word! Jeremiah suffers humilities and punishments that would break most people. He survives and continues to proclaim God’s Word, the true inconvenient Word of God, to an obstinate people. Sometimes it is a Word of judgment and warning, other times it is a Word of love, forgiveness, renewal and hope. The people really do not want to hear any of it; for hearing any of it at all, any at all, requires that they recognize their own sins, confess them and return to serve God alone.

They are having too much of a good time serving themselves. They are having to lousy a time suffering as slaves for foreign powers. They do not want God to change things. They want to change things themselves for themselves. They want to become the oppressors of other peoples so that they can enjoy lives of privilege and power and comfort. God will have none of it.

God desires that all people receive life abundant.

Proclaiming Christ’s Word is exactly that. It’s not admonishments to good living. It’s not threats to live moral lives. It’s not an escape route from suffering and sin. It’s not some holy panacea pill that solves every ill.

Christ’s Word is the old, old story of Jesus and his love; God’s clearest demonstration of God’s unconditionally loving attitude toward all people. When that hit’s us, it’s a life changer, not just the first time but every time we hear it and listen. The Holy Spirit sweeps us off our stayed or escaping feet right into the lap of God’s mercy, love and hope, and then the power of the Spirit inspires us and moves us to exercise that same mercy, love and hope for all other people … so that all people have life abundant.

As messengers of Christ’s Word, we also will be persecuted, riled against, and unjustly blamed for things beyond our possible doing. Welcome to Jeremiah’s club, the club of God’s messengers sent to proclaim God’s Word. God’s Word, the fire giving life to our hearts and all creation.

What a life!

Soon and Very Soon, Please!

Saturday, March 6, 2021

Is it too much to ask,

Your Kingdom Come

Today!

Isaiah 60:3

Nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn.

Luke 11:2

He said to them, ‘When you pray, say: Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come.

Words of Grace For Today

The Lord’s Prayer is known by countless people, said countless times, and desperately counted on more than a few times:

Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come.

For when God’s kingdom comes, then those that have done [fill in the injustice, the lies, the gaslighting, the horrendous abominations] to us and all other people will be brought to stop. Perhaps they will be brought to an end, though God’s preference is that they will be converted to serve God alone.

When God’s kingdom comes, then Nations shall come to God’s light, and kings to the brightness of Christ’s dawn,

and all people will give God thanks for the breath they have, for the water they have, for the food they eat, for the shelter (maybe even homes) they have, for the meaningful labour they have, and for the opportunity they have to love and be loved.

For now … the injustice continues, the lies live on, the gaslighting has not stopped, the horrendous abominations are repeated …

and countless people, suffering heartbreak and …

breathing polluted air if they can breath at all,

having no clean water if water at all,

having little nourishing food if any at all,

having no shelter yet a home at all,

having no meaningful labour if any at all,

and no opportunity to love and be loved at all,

wait

and

pray

and

hope

that soon

very soon

God’s Kingdom will come.