Winter – Page 20

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – December 6

Sunday, December 6, 2020

Second Sunday of Advent

Saint Nicholas Day, Remembering the Bringer of Gifts

Like Tracks in the Snow Disappearing Toward the Light,

The Signs and Wonders of God’s Work for Us All

Are All Around Us.

Daniel 4:2

The signs and wonders that the Most High God has worked for me I am pleased to recount.

1 John 1:2

This life [the word of life that Jesus brings to us] was revealed, and we have seen it and testify to it, and declare to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us.

Words of Grace For Today

Signs and wonders … the word of life revealed, eternal life even today for us.

These are everywhere to be encountered, seen, heard, touched, inwardly experienced.

The sun rises in the cold morning, light spreading and pushing back the darkness until a clear burst of light is visible through the trees near the horizon. The Light of the world is here, as a blessed sign that God is with us.

The periodic drone of fisher’s ice augers rumbles like bumble bees across the snow covered lake and through the trees. There are fish in this lake, stocked as it is, which provide food for many, except in the shoulder seasons when the ice forms or melts and is not safe enough to support a fisher. When the water is open boats bring fishers to all corners and bays of this lake. Then the ice is solid, on foot, by quad and side-by-side and snowmobile, or by truck, fishers spread across the lake to harvest for their families sustenance, signs of God’s blessings unceasingly flowing for us all.

After more than seven years with various people seeking my destruction, death and/or exile based on lies and greed, and a mental illness perverted view of life, fuelled by misandry and hate-based, perverted faith, I wake each morning, here, alive, accepting my life as blessed, though I am financially so far in debt I will likely never emerge, though my reputation among corrupt people of power will likely never be restored, though I work desperately hard to survive the challenges of living rough: cold requires lots of work but it is constant and properly conquered with care; moisture, heat, and bugs are the most difficult, fickle, and most dangerous. Each day I still breath is a gift from God, a sign of the wonders God works sustaining my life though it is under constant attack by so many, and so powerful.

This is eternal life, for today. (Yes, eternal life has already begun. We do not wait until after death!) For the Word of life, Jesus Christ, has come, is here, and will return.

Advent, these precious few days of blue hope, suspending us in waiting, holding us alert in watching, guiding us with Light into the darkness of winter … Advent is filled with signs and wonders of God working for us. We only need take a breath, pause, reflect, … and notice all that God does for us each day.

This day there are millions of people who through terrible injustice and cruelty do not have clean air, clean water, nourishing food, adequate clothing, sufficient shelter. Many, many people will die this day across the face of the earth … and it need not be so.

So many more millions have those basics of life, but lack the other two that keep us give us resilience to face the challenges and evil that would rob us of our hearts, minds and strength: meaningful labour and love (both being able to love others and to be loved by others).

Facing Covid 19 and our feeble efforts to slow it’s progress through the populations, if we do not have an ever-renewing reserve of resilience, we can lose our hearts, minds and strength to face each day. We can instead forego all precautions and put others at great risk, we can gather as if we thought that would help (participating in a super-spreader event, killing and maiming many downstream), or we can join the insane protests with no masks or physical distance (also participating in a super-spreader event, killing and maiming many downstream).

What will we do this day, if seemingly small, to reach out with the Word of life, to all? What will we do reaching out to others, for therein we build our own resilience?

The Word of Life works signs and wonders for us all.

Stay alert, lest we do not notice, or hear, or see Christ in our midst, calling us to be Christ’s signs and wonders for us all.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – December 5

Saturday, December 5, 2020

Dark Advent

Blue Hope

Psalm 68:6-7

God gives the desolate a home to live in; he leads out the prisoners to prosperity, but the rebellious live in a parched land. O God, when you went out before your people, when you marched through the wilderness, Selah

Mark 1:32-34

That evening, at sunset, they brought to him all who were sick or possessed with demons. And the whole city was gathered around the door. And he cured many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons; and he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him.

Words of Grace For Today

Stories contain our identity. We ignore and lose our ancestors’ stories at our own peril, for then we not only find ourselves foreigners in our own land, we separate ourselves from reality: we think and behave as if we could separate ourselves from God.

… O God, when you went out before your people, when you marched through the wilderness, Selah.

These simple words remind us of God’s rescue of God’s people, out of slavery in Egypt, through the wilderness, into the Promised Land.

… the whole city was gathered around the door. [Jesus] cured many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons….

These simple words remind us of Jesus’ ministry on earth, teaching, healing illnesses, casting out demons, and of the people’s flocking to listen to and be healed by Jesus.

Our God has claimed us as people, rescued us from slavery and brought us, as God had promised, into a land flowing with milk and honey. God’s Son Jesus came, taught and healed us, and cast out demons.

We understand disease, and healing. Casting out demons is not part of our worldview today, not part of our science based ordering of chaos into an understandable, ordered view of the world that can be manipulated with technology to give us ‘control’ and ‘comforts’ and ‘advancements’. Nothing is wrong with a scientific view of the universe. On the contrary science is possible (and was possible as the historical record shows) only because we believe God created an order to the universe. Science is not able to encompass all of the universe. ‘Casting out demons’ is an example. It could be clearly exemplified by what possesses Donald Trump, who with a constant flow of lies tries, unfortunately successfully in the minds of some likewise possessed people, to create a fiction about life that is not based at all in reality, just so that he can ‘succeed’.

That kind of possession is all too common: lie, lie, and lie again until one believes one’s own lies, others believe your lies, and they add more lies to confirm the resulting fiction as if it were based in any reality.

Remembering the stories of our ancestors we need not disconnect ourselves from reality. We need not hide in a bubble of like-thinking, skewed-thinking people. We can encounter all ideas and thoughts, evaluate all with our ancestors’ stories as a guide to what is real and what is fantasy or diseased or ‘demon’. Our present and future are anchored in the real past: this is God’s creation and we are God’s creatures, God’s people.

Engaging with all people, we can remain true to God’s wish for us: that we love all people unconditionally. Surrounded by, restricted by, and endangered by everything Covid 19 brings upon us, we need not panic, go bananas, or rebel with protests demanding that it is all a hoax, no matter how much we wish it were. Anchored in our ancestors’ stories of their journeys with God at their side, we can trust that God is at our side. Our hearts need not be troubled. We know that God gives the desolate a home to live in; God leads out the prisoners to prosperity, but the rebellious live in a parched land.

God gives us a calm assurance that God’s blessing still flow unceasingly over us.

With the Psalmist we can sigh with the precious blue hope of Advent: Selah!

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – December 4

Friday, December 4, 2020

The morning moon

about to set.

As we, quite late in the winter,

prepare for another day

of work to survive,

and rest to celebrate God’s endless blessings.

Psalm 127:2

It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for he gives sleep to his beloved.

Matthew 6:8

Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

Words of Grace For Today

From our ancestors’ instincts to rise up early and go late to rest in order to be ready to catch the prey and ensure one did not become prey, we still have an instinctual drive to ‘give it our all’ and then some, to ensure our survival.

Examples abound of humans who have worked and worked and worked themselves ‘to the bone’ at the cost of any real life. The majority of humans who have ever lived were oppressed and enslaved in poverty by the rich and the powerful; they have ‘given their all’ out of necessity to provide the mere basics of life for those for whom they are responsible.

Many others through history and especially today, as the gap between rich and poor grows ever greater, and still the ‘middle class’ is larger than ever in all of history, throw themselves into perpetual work at the expense of living life, all in order to have just one more comfort, one more luxury, to possess one more thing, to pay for just one more purchase that fails to fulfill it’s promise to give life meaning.

A third category of people are those who are rich, and give everything they are and have in order to protect and grow their wealth, as if it could ever provide them life or any real security.

This second and third group are those to whom this passage is addressed.

God did not create us to continually work. God created us to work hard, and then to rest. God created us to wake each day and work hard, but then to relax and enjoy the company of other people, and to sleep content with the blessings provided to us. God created us to work hard for six days, and to rest on the seventh.

All the sciences about humans confirm sleep, companionship, and regular rest are requirements for a human to maintain long-term health. It is no surprise at all that religious wisdom is confirmed by scientific research.

The first group is addressed less by this passage than by God’s repeated promises to bring judgment and justice to earth, for all people, living and dead. To them, to us, to all people, Matthew addresses Jesus’ words about how to pray, not heaping up empty phrases, but asking for what one needs. God listens. God walks with us. God promises justice for all in the end. And God knows already what we each need … and God ensures we receive it. We need God’s blessings, no matter our circumstance. The danger to life is not the lack of necessities or the inevitable arrival of death. The real danger to live is the corruption of our hearts, minds and strength by the work of the Devil.

Pray constantly that God would deliver us from this, and that God would bless the czar (all who exercise corrupt power) and keep him from us, very far.

As we wait, prepare, and remain alert, we pray with thanks for all God gives us, every blessing. We can work hard and rest easy. Covid 19 restrictions, infections, long-haul symptoms, and even death cannot separate us from God’s unconditional love, nor our ability to exercise that unconditional love for all whom God created.

Facing Covic 19: Daily Words of Grace – December 3

Thursday, December 3, 2020

We focus on what we do not have,

which makes us think we need to strive to be better, more, something else.

God focuses us on what we have

to share.

Deuteronomy 16:17

All shall give as they are able, according to the blessing of the Lord your God that he has given you.

2 Corinthians 8:12

For if the eagerness is there, the gift is acceptable according to what one has – not according to what one does not have.

Words of Grace For Today

The world, with simplistic lessons, teaches us that IF we want to survive or IF we want to maintain our standard of living or IF we want to protect our riches, power or fame … or IF we want in any way to guarantee our own lives to be as we want them,

THEN we must take care of ourselves, hang on to whatever we have or can get by any means, and protect ourselves from others who will always try to get (by whatever means) from us what we have.

This is not how God created us to live. It is not how humans survive. It is not how civilizations provide protection from barbarism. This is how the devil works to steal life from us. This is what kills humans. This is how the thin veneer of civilized society is shredded by barbarism from within.

God created us in God’s likeness, not just our faces, or bodies, or anything else external about us. God created us like God, in that we live well when we graciously and generously share all we have with everyone we can.

Giving, not taking, is how we live abundantly. It is how we live as Christ’s voice, hands, and feet on this earth. It is how we live blessed.

Eventually 100% of us humans die. It’s not a matter of if, but of when, and how. Death is not the goal of life, nor (since God promises us eternal life through Jesus Christ’ record in place of ours on our judgment day) is it the end or terminus of life.

God gives us our lives, so that we can imitate Christ: giving to all, all we have to give; seeking justice for all, until we have nothing more with which to seek; loving unconditionally all, until we have nothing left, no breathe of life, with which to love.

Whether giving leaves us more vulnerable to death, whether pressing for justice leaves us more vulnerable to death, whether forgiving our enemies and loving everyone unconditionally leaves us more vulnerable to death – all this is simply not significant, ultimately. Our actions of giving, seeking justice, and loving unconditionally are exactly what God has done for us, given us, blessed us with.

Giving is not an exercise in trying to not hit a tree as we ski down the hills of life. Focusing on the trees we are surely going to crash into one or more. Giving is not an exercise measured by what we cannot give or do not want to give up. Giving is an exercise measured by what God has given us … until we have given away every last drop of life, breathe, hope, and love that God has given us.

While we may think, having learned the simplistic lessons of life from the world around us, that it is foolish to give everything away, to seek true justice at all costs, and to love (especially our enemies) unconditionally though it robs us of hope, this is simply, truthfully all wrong. God did not create humans to live in a zero-summed life. Much of creation around us appears to be zero-summed, that is there is a limit to the resources available and we must strive to get our portion … or more!

Doch, God created humans to live as the loaf of bread, and jar of oil, which Elijah shared with the widow and her son: they never diminished but were continually restored to fullness, in order to provide sustenance for all three people, saving their lives through the famine.

God’s blessing pour over us all our lives, overfilling us and everything around us … if we would only see God’s blessings.

Our measure of giving then is not to miss the trees, and try (in vain) to ensure our survival. Our measure of giving is God’s prodigal blessings that never end.

God walks with us, even when we suffer greatly, no matter what we do not have, no matter what injustices are aimed at us, no matter what hate is focused on us.

Giving from a never failing supply of goodness, love and blessings is a great way to live.

Advent is our time to take time to reflect on God’s blessings and promises that we have forgotten or become blind to. Wake up, Be alert. Wait for Christ. Rest assured. Do not be afraid or troubled. Christ is already here, and will come again. Christmas celebrations can wait, until Christmas. We have more than enough to do, to give, to seek, to love, while we wait.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – December 2

Wednesday, December 2, 2020

Pyramid Mountain Before Sunrise

God’s promise of a day of renewal

each day,

every day.

Psalm 11:1

In the Lord I take refuge; how can you say to me, ‘Flee like a bird to the mountains.’

John 14:27

Jesus spoke: Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.

Words of Grace For Today

When I am most drained, I head to the mountains. I do not flee. I head there to hike, to camp, to ski, to take photos, to write. The mountains are a place of renewal.

Mountains have long since also been a place where we humans have fled from danger to our lives, for in the mountains we are harder to find, though life there is much more challenging. The world can easily give us more than we can take, where even the renewal of the mountains or the refuge of the mountains is not enough.

I do not give to you as the world gives.

The world, filled with sinful people, gives in lots of horrendous ways.

The world gives Covid 19, generously, killing and maiming millions.

The world gives false security with power, fame, and money, but all of that can evaporate in an instant and become more of a burden than a security for the future or a freedom for one’s todays.

The world gives promises of equality, justice, and opportunity; and then oppresses the masses, knowingly judges and falsely convicts, incarcerates and ruins honest people based on falsehoods and cruelty … The world promises opportunity but offers only opportunity to be enslaved so others can exercise corrupt power.

The world provides the blessings God created it to contain: air, water, food and opportunity to produce and utilize clothing and shelter; but the people in the world ensure they have their own excessive ‘comforts’ and luxuries at the expense of others being robbed of clean air, clean water, nourishing food, adequate clothing and sufficient shelter.

The world invites the masses to work to make a living possible, and then enslaves the masses at a standard of living that is impossible to call humane.

The world comes at us when we speak out and encourage change, equity, and justice. The world comes at us, condemns us for threatening the powerful people’s privileges in order to bring justice to the masses. The world comes at us to kill us with lies and Gaslighting or drive us into exile.

This is nothing new. It’s been humanity’s inhumane manner of executing injustice from the beginning of time.

God gives in many and various ways, all of which are marvellous.

God created and creates a universe that provides enough to support each and every person’s needs to live, and to live abundantly.

God gives us free choice to love, along with the other option, to choose evil.

God frees us from our inevitable choices that are evil, forgiving us, redeeming us, and renewing us so that we can live free from the sins of our past, present and future.

God gives us abundant life, and inspires, equips and calls us to give life abundant to all those around us.

God promises to walk with us no matter what we encounter in life. God’s Word is absolutely trustworthy. God keeps promises, always.

God sends Jesus, God’s own son, to live as an example of how to live life fully, abundantly; sacrificing oneself to provide life to others, forgiving even our enemies, and fearing and loving God, loving oneself and all other people, especially one’s enemies.

Jesus gives us peace, a peace that no one and nothing can take from us.

Therefore we have no cause to be afraid and our hearts need not be troubled … by any of the chaos that churns the world around us.

We get to be the people at peace, sharing life and peace – graciously – with all.

What a life.

It is the life of living renewed, each day, as if we were in the mountains.

It is a life living as refugees, in God’s arms, protected from all the threats of this world.

What a life!

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – November 29

Sunday, November 29, 2020

Golden Colours

A small band of the rainbow of God’s Blessings

for All

Psalm 115:14

May the Lord give you increase, both you and your children.

Luke 1:50

His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation.

Words of Grace For Today

The future that we anticipate

Colours our todays.

Trusting

that God may choose to give us and our descendants increase, and that God is merciful to we who fear God, not only today, but from generation to generation

gives us a future of greater and greater blessings and mercy from God’s hand,

which colours our todays

with all the colours of the rainbow and more!

Such is the beauty of life as God’s children.

Breathe in the blessings. Share the blessings, which never cease to overflow our lives.

Face Covid 19 with courage, extreme caution, and compassion for all other people.

God is with us and our descendants from all our yesterdays to all our tomorrows in all our todays.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – November 26

Thursday, November 26, 2020

Sometimes it’s the imperfections

that make life worth giving thanks for,

for therein we notice God’s Grace

1 Chronicles 29:13

Now, our God, we give thanks to you and praise your glorious name.

Ephesians 5:18-20

Be filled with the Spirit, as you sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves, singing and making melody to the Lord in your hearts, giving thanks to God the Father at all times and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Words of Grace For Today

Now.

Whenever now is, where ever now is, it is always the time to give God thanks for everything in the name of our Lord, Jesus Christ.

Amidst the second wave gone bezerk in Alberta with new cases doubling in a week, contact tracing broken down, parties continuing, hospitals overwhelmed with Covid 19 cases shutting out other health care needs, and Covidiots running loose everywhere in town …

It is time to give God thanks for everything:

For every thing one has, or has at one’s disposal.

For every gift, skill, and talent one has.

For every minute of life one has.

For the air, water, food, clothing, shelter, meaningful labour, and love one has (maybe such as it is, or even some of the requirements of life may be missing).

For every challenge one faces, making the day’s efforts worthwhile.

For every thing of beauty one can see in creation, for this is God’s hand writ large for all to see.

And most of all, for forgiveness, adoption, redemption, and being transformed into saints even as we remain sinners, for this is life the way God created us to live it!

For every opportunity we have to extend God’s Grace to others with forgiveness and inspiration.

Now.

If not now, when?

For one cannot know how many more years, days, minutes one has of this life built on Grace.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – November 25

Wednesday, November 25, 2020

The Riches of the Universe

God’s Gift is Beauty

Amos 6:6

Complacent self-indulgence will be punished, those who drink wine from bowls, and anoint themselves with the finest oils, but are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph!

1 Timothy 6:17-19

As for those who in the present age are rich, command them not to be haughty, or to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but rather on God who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. They are to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share, thus storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of the life that really is life.

Words of Grace For Today

To take hold of the life that is really life!

That is a proper ambition and motivation for any sentient being.

The Biblical stories and writings record so much about how humans have done wonderful and terrible things with the comforts of wealth.

We could learn much, for in today’s world more people enjoy more comforts than ever before in the history of humans, perhaps more than all humans collectively before. Yet there are also more humans today than ever before who do not have secure access (if access at all) to the basics necessities for life: clean air, clean water, nourishing food, adequate clothing, secure shelter, meaningful labour, and opportunity to love and be loved unconditionally.

Worse is that there are among us a select few, getting smaller and richer each year, who have more wealth than most of us could imagine.

The worst is that the gap between the few wealthy and the majority who do not have the basics is growing each year as well. The systems that are in place, the social contract that keeps barbarism at bay (or not in so many places around this globe today) or the barbarism that has replaced a social contract, and all the institutions that support either the social contract or barbarism, and even our individual attitudes and actions all feed that ever increasing gap. Shame on us all!

The biblical accounts and other accounts of the past make it no secret that this destructive inequity has been a plague among humans since the earliest days. Our striving to survive the hunt, whether hunting for food, or being hunted for food, translates in to us striving to survive by ‘hunting’ others in order to try to secure our future.

We simply cannot secure our futures. Every effort to do so is evil, and it destroys those striving to secure the impossible and those who pay the price for it to appear as if the future were secure.

Joseph is ruined. This Joseph is not just the foreigner put in charge of Potipher’s household, only to be imprisoned on false charges by Potipher’s wife, who then interprets Pharaoh’s dreams and is elevated to be in charge of everything of Pharaoh’s, the whole of Egypt. This Joseph then is a refuge for his family, including his brothers who jealously sold him into slavery. These families are the Hebrews who multiply and, feared by future Pharaoh’s are enslaved and put to hard labour. These slaves are Moses’ people, a Hebrew not-orphan, who is raised in Pharaoh’s home as his own son, who commits murder in response to the abuse by the guards of his own people, who flees to the wilderness. This Moses returns to bring Joseph’s descendants out of Egypt, into the Promised Land via the wilderness.

This Joseph is also every blessed country, community, and gathering of God’s people, which has been laid in ruins, while the rich and the collaborators have indulged themselves in luxury. These are the people who eat, drink, and are drunkedly merry, while God’s people are enslaved, oppressed, and disappeared. This Joseph is also the present day USA, polarized by millions who think Trump speaks anything like truth, which chews up and spits out the democratic social contract in ruins. This Joseph laid in ruins is also our own Alberta, where church leaders, community members, and witnesses are gathered to lie in court, and where the courts add to the lies to convict and condemn honest and innocent people, where children are taught that truth is expendable if money is to be gained or courts lied to. In today’s ‘Me-too’ nightmare men are targeted for ruin more easily than woman, but all false convictions and rulings against anyone contribute to the ruin of Joseph.

What are honest people to do?

We grieve the ruin of Joseph.

We do good, are rich in good works, generous, and ready to share what great or little we have been entrusted with.

First and last, and always, though, we remember: God’s Grace saves us anew each day. God calls us to be God’s instruments of Grace to give life abundant to the poor, outcast, strangers, and homeless.

God also chooses to save those who lay Joseph in ruins by Grace. God calls us also to be God’s instruments of Grace to give life abundant to those who try to secure their future with riches.

We, by Grace, help all people take hold of the life that is really life.

(Yes, by Grace we help even the Covidiots, who threaten our lives with their stupidity and recklessness, take hold of life that is really life.)

Facing Covid 19: Words of Grace – November 15

Sunday, November 15, 2020

The Wide View

of God’s Good Creation!

Gifts Fill Us All!

Micah 6:8

He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

2 Timothy 2:22

Shun youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart.

Words of Grace For Today

God created us good.

Youthful passions and all. The question is not if we have ‘youthful passions’ at any age (in old age, what an extraordinary gift to receive!) it is what we do with them (no matter our age), and with all the other gifts God gives us. In baptism we name the gifts of the Holy Spirit given to us: the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord, the spirit of joy in your presence, both now and forever.

At the affirmation of baptism service we commit ourselves to living out these gifts, by promising:
to live among God’s faithful people,
to hear the word of God and share in the Lord’s supper,
to proclaim the good news of God in Christ through word and deed,
to serve all people, following the example of Jesus,
and to strive for justice and peace in all the earth.

So what are we to do with these gifts that bring us to these commitments?

We are, simply, to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with our God.

That precludes gaslighting others, bearing false witness, seeking (directly or indirectly) others’ death.

That precludes responding to misogyny with misandry.

That precludes accusing others of what you yourself has done.

That precludes [fill in a whole host of sins against God, God’s people, and God’s creation.]

I tell children I meet about town, in parting, with their parent(s) overhearing, ‘give your parents a little bit of trouble everyday. Most of us …’

Invariably the parent interjects here that they have no problem with that.

Then I continue, ‘most of us do not have any problem with the trouble part; it’s the little part that is a challenge!’

When we are humble, we recognize that we give God, God’s people, and God’s creation an overabundance of trouble everyday!

Loving kindness, we can laugh at ourselves, which immediately lessons much of the ‘trouble’ we give others and God.

Working for peace and justice for all people and all creation, we focus our energy on making good trouble the kind of trouble we mostly make.

Good Trouble is the kind that exposes injustice and evil, and offers in it’s place true peace.

Good Trouble is the kind that exposes the lies of people who, like Trump try to create reality out of fantasies that serve their selfish passions.

Good Trouble is the kind that takes an awful lot of ‘youthful passion’ for us to pull off.

Thank God for ‘youthful passions’ and the wisdom to know what to do with them!

Facing Covid 19 and Arrogance: Daily Words of Grace – November 12

Thursday, November 12, 2020

Sometimes bending low, we see more of our path ahead

in the woods

and in life.

Psalm 79:13

Then we your people, the flock of your pasture, will give thanks to you for ever; from generation to generation we will recount your praise.

Hebrews 13:15

Through him, then, let us continually offer a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that confess his name.

Words of Grace For Today

Humble thanks and praise, these we have plenty cause to give to God. Not only for today, this day of -20⁰ and a bike ride home as it got colder and colder, for in the end all is well, all is well.

We have many things to give God thanks, in each generation, since the beginning of time, and for every future generation until there is no more time or a universe for us.

The thanks and praise we offer God is simple, and costly.

It is to give everything we are and have to respond to all other people as God has responded to us: with unconditional grace.

God has gathered us in, adopted us as children, and promised us life abundant. Life abundant is not one that overflows with comforts and luxuries, privileges and power, or ways and means. Life abundant is one that is lived fulfilling God’s purpose for us, which is to reflect God’s way with all people, to be Christ’s feet, hands, and voice for all people.

We confess our belief with words from our mouths, and it is affirmed by how we live. We do not live perfectly or better than others. We live for others.

It is like wearing a mask during this pandemic. One does it not for oneself, but for everyone else.

We do not live as God created us to be, so that we benefit, but that others benefit from God’s Grace.

That is simple and costly and priceless.

Like humbling oneself to give children affirming attention so that they understand they are valuable as people, we humble ourselves and give each person due attention and respect, so that all people understand that they are valuable as people, especially to God.

Trumpism, the manner of Gaslighting everyone to try to make some fiction become real, trying to get some advantage for oneself or ones own, has nothing to do with being in God’s flock. It is what destroys individuals, families, and countries. It is what threatens to sink the whole world into war.

From Nazis, to Stasi, to Trumpites, to those who bear false witness in courts, to those who defend their lies with more lies in daily life, and to lots and lots of others who work us woe: these are the way of the Devil.

When we humble ourselves and practice kindness, we start to see God’s way.

Kindness is at the root of due attention and respect; and clarity when one does something wrong.

Kindness, praise, and thanks: these fill our days with living beauty.

No pandemic, no -20⁰C weather, no gaslighting can change that.

God’s way is from generation to generation assured.