Now when these signs meet you, do whatever you see fit to do, for God is with you.
2 Timothy 2:7
Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in all things.
Words of Grace For Today
Happy Mother’s Day, to the mothers in my life (and in yours.)
How can we meet the expectations that we and others have for how we honour our mothers on this day … when we cannot go see them, give them flowers, ….
There are telephones, and the internet, thankfully.
How can we hug the precious mother who gave us life?
and hopefully astounding love?
In these times this is not possible, or legal, or even advisable … since even if we are asymptomatic we could be contagious and hugging our mothers could share more than we wanted to. We could share that nasty virus that is likely much more dangerous for our mother than for us.
So let words and gestures abound.
Let humour abound.
Let our imaginations abound.
Like the care facility that made a mock up of Tim’s to allow the residents a bit of normalcy: an opportunity to place and receive an order for coffee and Timbits.
Or the children who showed up outside their grandmother’s care-home window, called her to tell her to look out the window, and they danced in a ring, well a sort-of-ring, that turned out to be the shape of a heart! before they rolled all over the ground before standing up in a line to take their bows.
Whatever is required, when we live immersed in God’s Word day in and day out, no matter the challenge that we face, God will be with us as we find our way forward.
Courage, Faith, Love and Hope, all this God provides aplenty for us.
And be reflected by all water and life in Creation
Isaiah 42:16
I will turn the darkness before them into light, the rough places into level ground.
Luke 1:78-79
By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.
Words of Grace For Today
Darkness. Total, deep, profound darkness of the soul. No light at the end of the tunnel.
When we find ourselves there, to put it into cosmic terms, in a black hole that pulls everything around it into nothingness …
When we find ourselves there it seems that everything is lost, not only things that build a sense of continuity and security (like jobs, homes, family, church, and even the tool that enables one to create – a camera, a pencil, a computer, a canvas), not just life and all good life at that for us and for creation, but meaning, history, presence and future ….
When time and hope are lost into the void and emptiness that is left to us, then only memory of, or re-spoken promises made in the past, or that little light at the end of the vortex can save us from going totally bonkers.
Covid 19’s threat (the lock-down, our isolations, our ‘staying the blazes home’, our financial concerns, the risk to our and our loved ones’ health and lives), for most of us does not approach the vortex of a black hole where no light exists. For some of us it does.
Whether its a total black out, or a brown out, or we have already gone a bit bonkers so that it all looks like dark colours everywhere …
However this affects us,
We yearn for Light, if yearning is still possible.
God promises to turn darkness into light, rough places into level ground. The dawn from on high breaks in on us in darkness, in the shadow of death, and guides us in the way of peace.
That’s the promise that we can remember … if we can remember.
That’s the promise that we can re-speak for others … when they cannot remember, we can, and we can still speak.
That’s the promise that we need to re-speak, to proclaim with all the vivid colours of the rainbow splashing about …
because even if we do not notice them, there is someone onto whom those colours (carrying Light) will splash.
And they will be saved from the vortex of absolute darkness, by our generous, reckless, prodigal re-speaking a promise that created, redeemed, and guides this whole universe of creation to be able to seek peace.
Peace is not something we attain and hold on to.
Peace is a manner of being in this universe, when participated in brings us to reflect God’s intent for us, but which is lost as quickly as a candle is snuffed out by even a gentle breeze.
Peace be with you, also this day, whatever this day is for you.
Splash and be splashed by the Light and Colours of the rainbow, God’s rainbow of promise, faith, hope, love, grace, and life – abundant life.
sacrificing ourselves that others may live abundantly.
Psalms 51:13
Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will return to you.
Colossians 1:3.13
In our prayers for you we always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ … He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son
Words of Grace For Today
Rescued from the darkness
It was cold and dark. Dangerously dark, though not even winter cold, yet. Spending the night in the woods miles from anywhere was not the plan.
It was just a hike on a trail being developed, this portion already well planned, if not clearly marked. We arrived climbing up the side of the huge rock to our right, on to the second level of that rock as it overlooked a small lake below. The trail seemed to peter out across the gentle downward slope of the rock face toward the lake and further to the right around that side of the lake.
But then there was just a sheer drop of a few metres into the lake, or the effectively solid wall of trees to the right barring any progress on that side of the lake. There were no signs of a trail around the left side of the lake either and other large rocks jutted out over the lake around that side.
The danger from the dark was not that it was pitch black. It was already dusk and we had miles to go. I was experienced outdoors, but the three with me were not and two were young children. Dark, the real dark that was coming, meant stumbling lost all night, or bedding down in the wet and cold. It had just started to rain as I searched for the trail forward from that rock we ended up on.
Finally I came up with a plan. I’d walk back two miles to where the trail took a turn and was well marked. With flashlight in hand I would retrace our steps.
Huffing, tired, and being spit on from above, cold, I trudged back step by step through the miles, and then returned. Nothing. The obvious trail had no other possible turns as it joined a creek that ran into the lake we had stopped at. As the hard face of that huge rock came up to shoulder height I saw to the left the creek water through the underbrush. It was maybe, yes, it was sort of a path, and then there on the tree on the left side of the trail was a trail-marker arrow. A turn back to the left and quickly down, with a quick switchback to the right and one arrived at a bridge of two logs over the creek.
I lifted my feet as my spirits were lifted. We were not lost. I found the others on the rock overlooking the lake, huddled together for warmth under a rain poncho to keep themselves dry.
We worked our way, sometimes with flashlights down over the creek and up high on the huge rocks along the lake and back down near the wet outflow on the far side of that lake, and onward over roots, and around huge 5 foot diameter trees, through the rain forest, back to the vehicle we’d parked near northwest edge of the small town we called home.
A hot shower, prayers of thanks.
We were rescued, once again, from the darkness by the Grace of God.
It is as easy to lose ourselves in the forest of challenges presented to us, now also because of Covid 19. It is easy to miss an obvious turn because we’ve lost ourselves in the darkness of despair or exhaustion or laziness or disorientation.
Always, God sends us others, or sometimes a clear plan, to help us find our way forward, so that we are there for others as well tomorrow.
Looking at things from God’s perspective always does
net us truth.
Numbers 11:23
The Lord said to Moses, ‘Is the Lord’s power limited? Now you shall see whether my word will come true for you or not.’
Matthew 6:28-29.31
And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying, “What will we eat?” or “What will we drink?” or “What will we wear?”
Words of Grace For Today
Part of the human condition, built in for survival, is that we can worry, or anticipate with concern, dangers that we may face. And we can do this in such an engaging way that we do something about the danger.
In the summer, there is little pressing reason to make warm clothes. When the bitter winds blow the light blizzardy snow over the thick lake ice set by weeks of -35⁰ and colder temperatures, then the need for warm clothes is clear!
Worry, or being able to anticipate with fully engaging concern, helps us get on with the hard work in the warm weather of making warm clothes for our family for the winter. And for those who cannot make clothes for themselves.
Jump ahead a few eons, and we just need to have a job that pays well enough so that we can go to the store where warm clothes are offered for sale, because someone else has made them, someone else transported them, and someone else has put them in the store for sale.
Now our worry or anticipatory concern drives us to have a job that pays enough so that we can afford warm clothes. Note that our ‘worry’ drive becomes more and more disconnected from our real needs as we face real dangers in the cold winters.
So why does Jesus teach that we should not worry. God clothes the birds of the air and flowers in the field with great beauty. God will also clothe us. Will God? Can we just quit our jobs and go to the store and get the clothes we need for the winter come October? Simply put no.
God provides. God provides everything we need. God provides the drive to be concerned before a danger presents itself. God also provides enough rational capabilities for us to sort out how our drives are disconnected from our real needs and real dangers.
But we are lazy. Part of the human condition so that we do not waste limited energy on useless activities. Thinking clearly is hard work. We like to not think about what is going to happen and just let our God given ‘instinctual’ drives run us. We like to give in to the easy temptations the Devil offers, and instead of using our instinctual drives according to some clearly thought out value system, an ethic, we just let it all happen to us and we take no responsibility. Meanwhile the Devil builds up a perverted rationalization in our minds as to how and why we do what we do. Easy sins are easy to rationalize.
And all hell breaks loose in our lives, because the disconnect between our drive, the dangers we face, and the anticipatory concern to address the dangers are so distantly disconnected that our ‘worry’ now drives us to do all sorts of foolish things, things that rob us and others of life.
We develop, instead of utilitarian answers to our needs for life, an adornment on top of our needs that encroaches on the utilitarian value of the things that meet our needs … and it spirals out of control until, instead of utilitarian things, we acquire pure aesthetics that do not meet our need at all. Our real needs are not met. Our ‘worry’ spirals up, we acquire more things that also do not meet the real needs we have. More and more until we cannot even see the real needs as they are covered by ‘fictionalized needs’ that must be met.
We worry ourselves sick about ‘meeting’ these ‘needs’.
These are the worries that Jesus advises we leave behind, and trust that God will clothe us, as God does the birds of the air and the flowers of the field.
God will clothe us by reconnecting our real anticipatory concerns, and drive thereof, to meet our real needs.
Throw into that mix, since we’ve escaped into aesthetics instead of utilitarian things, that we actually do need to create, enjoy, and admire beauty, both naturally occurring and human created. The first reflects God’s Spirit showing itself for us to marvel at. The later reflects the human spirit, given to us by God, that can overcome otherwise insurmountable dangers and challenges.
Simply put, art and beauty (not necessarily the same, but they can overlap) direct our minds and spirits to connect with people out of the past. Connected to the past we can see the present more clearly, more profoundly. And then we are equipped to ‘see’ the future as it is. It is in God’s hands. We can approach each day with hope.
God’s work will come about. We need not worry, saying, “What will we eat?” or “What will we drink?” or “What will we wear?” Instead we can lighten our minds to see the real challenges and expend our energies to meet them. Sometimes that will mean working hard to provide food, drink, or clothing.
Always that will mean giving God thanks for all that is possible each day.
The worry that Jesus directs us away from is the destructive, downward-spiralling negative thought patterns aimed at things we really can do nothing about, or things around which we’d be better off if we actually did what we can to mitigate the challenges ahead.
Regardless, God will do as God promises. We are God’s, God is with us.
Covid 19: there are many things we can do. Hand washing and physical distancing and Staying the Blazes home and thinking clearly how we acquire things, or touch things that could have the virus on them, and self-isolating and quarantining if we show even small symptoms … these are only some of the basic and smart things we can do to mitigate the risk to ourselves and everyone around us. We can also help others do these things. Sometimes we need to figure out how to inspire others to do these things.
Then our lives are all about caring for ourselves and others, physically (to social distance ourselves from the fridge, but climb those stairs 10 to 100 times a day), spiritually (setting a specific time to read, pray, and sing each day), and mentally (get a few old fashion games going – even if that is like chess over the phone, or four-way board game, all by telephone – it goes slow, but then we’ve got time, right! OK, parents with children maybe not a second, but get the children playing with friends over the phone. Let them be creative, constructive, and helpful to others.)
And get on the phone: make a call list of people who could use a good word, and call them once a week or so. Model it for children. Do it for your elders. Take care of the vulnerable.
We can STOP worrying, by getting on with what we actually can do.
The Goal of life is not to see who can get to the sunrise first,
nor to the sunsetof life with the most power or possessions
but to see if you can bring to Grace all the people God places in your path.
1 Chronicles 22:19
Now set your mind and heart to seek the Lord your God. Go and build the sanctuary of the Lord God so that the ark of the covenant of the Lord and the holy vessels of God may be brought into a house built for the name of the Lord.’
1 Corinthians 9:24
Do you not know that in a race the runners all compete, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win it.
Words of Grace For Today
Goals, competitions, setting one’s mind … these all are very human endeavours, good endeavours, too.
They cannot net us real security, real love, real faith, real hope, or real life, no matter how hard we try.
These are gifts from God, already at our baptisms. Seeking them is to first deny that God has given them to us. We get to rest assured that these are already ours. We need not set our minds and hearts on seeking and finding the Lord our God. God has found us. That game never was one we could succeed at anyway.
So why all the images in these scripture passages?
Is there something about goals, competitions, setting one’ heart and mind to doing something that is part of our life as God-made saints?
Naturally. All humans have some degree of drive. God designed us so. Exercising this drive is a large part of a full life, life lived as God created and redeemed us to live.
These drives cannot win God’s favour. We already have it, along with salvation, joy, and the fullness of life that goes along with being claimed by God.
These drives cannot win us joy. God has completed our joy with Christ’s resurrection.
These drives cannot win us security, faith, or hope, nor love. All these God has already lavishly poured over us, so that we can share them with others.
These drives move us there, to share all that God has given us with others.
There most certainly is a race, and it is good for the heart to participate in it every day. The race is to see who can give away the greatest percentage to the benefit of the most people. The best we can do is come in tied for second place, along with all the other God-made saints. Jesus has first place wrapped up.
So, if you can at all, get in on that race, at least take a daily walk in that direction. It is very counter intuitive to what the Devil plants in our hearts and minds as the way to success. It fits with the best of creation made by God.
Be the best you can. There are lots of people needing what we have to share during this pandemic, and it’s not the virus!
Into Every nook and cranny of creation (and our lives.)
Genesis 3:8
They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.
Romans 8:15
For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’
Words of Grace For Today
Fear and anxiety are our greatest enemies, the factors in our lives that most thoroughly bring us to our destruction, to do inane things, and to fight for the worst causes.
Anxiety not only destroys the person it controls, devouring our souls from the inside out, it’s effects destroy people around the anxious one. Anxiety breeds anxiety. It is more contagious than the fastest spreading virus.
Anxiety does not require anything in reality to be compromised or threatened, but it’s effects compromise and threaten all reality.
Adam and Eve walk in the Garden of Eden. God created Paradise for them, and gave them freedom to choose to obey, to not touch the tree in the centre of the garden and live full of joy from base to peak, or to disobey and be exiled out of the garden to face death in the dark valleys of despair.
Ah, arch-typically, Adam and Eve succumb to curiosity and the desire to know more than God and to be ‘gods’ themselves. As we all would, and do, again and again in our lives.
After we have turned from God, then fear sets in. That’s real and appropriate. The huge problem arises when they/we try to deny we’ve done against God. That’s when anxiety sets in and controls us. We begin to believe that if we lie even more and more, somehow God will not notice. If we can fool ourselves into believing we have not turned away from obeying God, and somehow if we believe it then it becomes true and God will be fooled as well. Not at all.
God has mercy.
God’s mercy is ours to claim, imbibe, and live out of. OR we can choose to ignore all God does for us, redeeming us, claiming us as God’s own children. We can continue in our anxiousness to choose to fool ourselves. Doch God is not fooled and
God still has mercy.
God redeems us at a great cost, to frees us from slavery to sin.
Yet we can still anxiously choose to live in that slavery, to try to fool ourselves and hope to fool God, though we know there is no fooling God, not ever.
So we cry Abba, save us. This cry is ours constantly to cry out with all desperation. For we need God’s mercy and protection, or we end up living anxiously as if we were separated from God.
God is merciful, God is trustworthy. God claims us and never lets go. God is with us
You cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the flood surrounded me; all your waves and your billows passed over me.
Mark 5:22-24
Then one of the leaders of the synagogue named Jairus came and, when he saw him, fell at his feet and begged him repeatedly, ‘My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well, and live.’ So he went with him. And a large crowd followed him and pressed in on him.
Words of Grace For Today
God rarely delivers us from our trials. Most often God delivers us in our trials.
Jonah tried to hide from God, to no avail. Neither can we hide from God. Jonah was tested severely, as we are, too. In the deep, the heart of the seas, the flood over our heads, God’s waves pass over us.
When we face our own demise we see life more clearly for what it is. When we face the demise of our children, we ought to see life more clearly for what it is. Sometimes though anxiety makes us act as if we were just plain stupid. Anxiety explains a lot of inexplicable behaviour, even during normal times.
Jairus, a leader at the synagogue, faces the death of his daughter. He comes and pleads for Jesus to have mercy and come and heal his daughter, so that she may live.
That should be an account that tears at every parent’s heart. My child is being ripped from life here with me … and what can I do? Jairus has heard of Jesus and goes to beg, to humble himself before Jesus, to beg for his daughter’s life from a man he knows can save her.
That’s faith.
That’s faith that can only be given by God!
That’s faith that brings life to those who have it and those near them.
Jairus’ faith brings Jesus to save his daughter’s life, and she does live.
Beneath the waves of Covid isolation, loneliness, shortages, fear of illness and death (our own and our loved ones’ … and even our enemies’) we gasp for breath,
We gasp … and humbly pray that God will deliver us and our loved ones, heal us all, and bring us all, even our enemies, back to live full lives, filled with gratitude and complete joy!
Still we gasp for air. Where are we caught so dark and deep, that we find little air?
Anxiety.
So we pray, free us from all fear, and make us into the people that can heal others with a word.
God’s Great Creation Teaches Us to Prosper and Know Complete Joy
Deuteronomy 30:9
The Lord your God will make you abundantly prosperous in all your undertakings, in the fruit of your body, in the fruit of your livestock, and in the fruit of your soil. For the Lord will again take delight in prospering you, just as he delighted in prospering your ancestors.
John 15:10-11
If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.
Words of Grace For Today
To prosper. That is what is not happening for so many people the world over. The economies of most nations is at a near standstill, as essentials only are made, distributed, for sale and purchased.
So much that the world thrived on was not necessities, but the benefits of a very advanced global economy. Yet I have not met nor heard of a person who has truly prospered, who did so without doing on the backs of many other people who could not prosper.
To prosper seems to be equivalent to being able to get away with terrible crimes and sins against other humans, all in order to get ahead.
This is not at all what God would have us do or be in this marvellous creation.
Jesus comes to show us an exactly mutually exclusive way of being in creation; self sacrifice so that others may live well. Prospering at others expense is out of the question. The only kind of prospering is when one moves forward through ones days choosing goals and actions so that others may live and live well.
This is a quite foreign concept for many caught in the ‘logic’ of global capitalism, built as it is solidly on greed and making gains at others expense, accumulating power in wealth and using it to continually succeed in getting more money from others getting less money, endlessly.
Jesus had not yet seen global capitalism, but the previous generations had certainly seen themselves either among the conquering Romans or those the Romans conquered and ruled, to the Romans’ advantage. In spite of many wishes that Jesus conquer the Roman occupiers, Jesus instead offers to us that our joy be as his joy is in doing God’s will, and that our joy be complete.
To prosper, and to have our joy complete, all coming to us as we abide in Jesus’ love, so that God’s love will abide in us.
All this is gift; God chooses and acts. We receive and benefit. We live in God’s love. God is in love with us. And we in turn are in love with all creation and all God’s creatures.
Since time immemorial, God has called faithful people to retreat from the demands of normal life, and ask why and how one lives as one does.
This is now the time for us all.
Cancel that world tour vacation. Cancel that entertainment holiday. Cancel that weekend of expensive travel, motor sports, or casual sports. (OK, we’ve been required to do so anyway.)
God calls us to take this time and ask: how does God want us to abide in God’s love and have our joy complete? How does God want us to prosper … now during Covid 19, and after isolation is not needed for everyone’s health.
This is how we prosper: we love and give sacrificially of ourselves to others, as Christ did for us … on his cross.
He sustained him in a desert land, in a howling wilderness waste; he shielded him, cared for him, guarded him as the apple of his eye.
Luke 12:32
‘Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.
Words of Grace For Today
Isolated as we are, not completely cut off from the living, though keeping our distance, not able to see our loved ones as before, we experience the real effects of living in a desert land, in a howling wilderness waste land.
Even isolated though, we are not alone, for God is with us. God gives us the Kingdom, and in that Kingdom all live, and live well!
Fear cuts us off from our wonderful abilities to reason and place ourselves in reality, and then to choose how to respond … to choose to respond with Grace and Love.
Fear is the enemy greater than all others.
Repeatedly angels and messengers of God’s Word repeat what Jesus said often: Do Not Be Afraid!
It is too easy to let ourselves take in the new reality of being isolated because of Covid 19, of being likely to contract this highly contagious and for some painful and even deadly disease and forget all God’s blessings.
It is too easy to let ourselves despair.
It is too easy to let ourselves spiral into fear
that becomes frantic,
that becomes panic,
that becomes rash and foolish thoughts, words and actions
that put us at great risk, not only from this virus, but at great risk to lose our sanity, our God-given calm and the gifts of the Holy Spirit that equip us to be God’s Grace to others.
God treasures each of us.
So we can treasure one another.
Reach out to others as we still safely can:
especially
if you feel the walls closing in on you,
if fear grows on you,
if you feel despair circling.
Allow God to use each of us to sustain one another through this desert wasteland where fear grows too easily. Connect yourself and each other each day to the Grace that gives us breath, to the Courage that gives us life, and to God’s promises that give us hope, no matter what assails us.
The Laws of Physics. An Empty Glove Grows Cold Even in the Light
The Law, Greater than an Empty Hand
Jeremiah 8:7
Even the stork in the heavens knows its times; and the turtle-dove, swallow, and crane observe the time of their coming; but my people do not know the ordinance of the Lord.
Romans 2:14
When Gentiles, who do not possess the law, do instinctively what the law requires, these, though not having the law, are a law to themselves.
Words of Grace For Today
Today all to often sinful people (like us) rationalize anything and everything, as if truth, goodness, purity, and obedience were all relative or in the eye of the beholder or fully dependent on one’s perspective.
Quatsch!
Absolute reality does exist, and those who pretend that they can change reality so that they get to take control and rule over others, are only working out the Devil’s own way.
The ordinances, the Law of God, given in the Old Testament, were not equivocal. Generations spent countless hours interpreting, applying and writing guides to them, but that never changed the Law given by God. Reality is reality. God is God. Law is Law.
Do not murder. Do no commit adultery. Do not steal. Do bear false witness. Do not covet.
These are not complicated, yet a life long challenge to obey.
Jesus’ command is simpler: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and strength! Love your neighbour as yourself, and your enemy.
Jesus’ command is a greater challenge to obey, for instead of proscribing destructive behaviour, Jesus prescribes life-giving behaviour. Jesus’ command impacts everything we think, say and do!
Of course one does not need to hear Jesus’ commands to be able to love God and all people.
On the other hand just because we are baptized hardly means that we will love God and all people. So we need to hear the command again and again, so that we remember what the Holy Spirit equips us to be able and ready to do, each and every day of our lives.
None of us are above God’s law, or above Jesus’ command to love God and all people.
Following the law perfectly is impossible. We remain sinners who break it constantly, but that does not mean that we can pretend the Law does not exist, that we will not break it, and that we are not condemned for those breaches. We are only saved by Grace. That we are saved by Grace alone inspires us to forgive others as we are forgiven.
What a beautiful world that makes, for we are in it, together.
