Winter – Page 5

Stiff-necked People, God’s Fierce Anger

Saturday, February 19, 2022

All Our Own Proud Work

Is Nothing

If We Do Not Work

Out of God’s Unconditional Love

For Us and All People.

2 Chronicles 30:8

Do not now be stiff-necked as your ancestors were, but yield yourselves to the Lord and come to his sanctuary, which he has sanctified for ever, and serve the Lord your God, so that his fierce anger may turn away from you.

Luke 14:15

One of the dinner guests, on hearing this, said to him, ‘Blessed is anyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!’

Words of Grace For Today

Yield ourselves to the Lord, do not be stiff-necked as our ancestors were.

Great words of advice, and if the reward for yielding and not being stiff-necked is to have God’s fierce anger turn away from us, well…

well then, who in their right mind would ever be stiff-necked, and who in their right minds would not yield to the Lord??!!

Except we do all the time, holding our own rights up high, our own abilities out in front of our journeys in life, our own accomplishments of wealth, power, renown, and all else we are proud of and depend on each day to provide us security from the vagaries of life’s journey. Our own accomplishments are of course reached by stomping on others, taking from others, ensuring others remain oppressed, persecuted, abused, disadvantaged, cast out and not wealthy, powerful, or of great renown.

Ahh, we humans and our little games of stealing life from others so that we can have more … but

but more of what?

More security we think, but it can disappear in a flash.

More solid reputation we think, but our underbellies just keep getting bigger and bigger and more and more vulnerable and the chance of us being exposed as frauds and cruel people grows with each of our efforts to secure our own journeys.

More power we think! More wealth we think! But power and wealth can disappear overnight when we are not alert or even as we are watching very alert.

Even so all our wealth, power, renown, and security, and all that we have accumulated and accomplished for ourselves still leaves us as failures, empty shells of the living, creative, loving, enterprising creatures God created us to be … and there remains a void in our heart of hearts, at the centre of our minds, and in the space all around us … no matter what we try to fill our hearts, minds and spaces with. We simply are not made to be filled with anything other than …

other than, well, adoration for our God and Creator:

an adoration that brings us to yield at each step to God’s will.

an adoration that brings us to sacrifice ourselves (yielding even our stiff-necked pride) so that all other people will have the necessities of life, and so that all other people will know God’s unconditional love … through us.

an adoration that brings us joy even as we face the greatest challenges in life and the worst attacks by our enemies.

And we will have enemies, if we practice God’s unconditional love for all people, because God’s love exposes the futility and destruction inherent in the common human way of accomplishing our own journeys at other’s great costs.

God’s fierce anger is what God’s love looks like to stiff-necked people, because God’s love dissolves into ashes and dust all that we think we have accomplished, freeing us from the false securities which own us. The more we rely on our own accomplishments the more we lose, the more we fear losing, the more we attack those who love unconditionally.

God save us and help us to yield everything we are and can do to your unconditional, self-sacrificial love for which you have created us.

Journeying With Goals That Give Life

Thursday, February 17, 2022

Always Christ’s Light

Beckons Us

To Journey Onwards and

To Live Blessed Lives

Sharing Blessed Life

with Others

Psalm 25:5

Lead me in your truth, and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation; for you I wait all day long.

John 8:31-32

Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, ‘If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.’

Words of Grace For Today

Lead me in your truth and teach me …

You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.

Life is not a journey with a final destination that we can reach or achieve or earn or miss out on. Life is a journey always becoming in the next moment what is next, whether that is new, old and oft repeated, or old and first for us. So we look forward with goals and plans that guide us, yet always these goals and plans are secondary to celebrating that God gives us the journey each day and walks with us no matter what we encounter, no matter what our enemies do to us, no matter anything and everything. Our goals and plans are chosen to reflect that everything we have and everything we are right down to the latest breath we’ve taken God gives to us, freely, lovingly, wonderfully.

When I was much younger I worked at the airport in Fargo, on the line of a small flight school and charter service. The chief pilot (the only pilot) drove his black Grand Prix out on to the apron where fueled up the airplanes on day, got out and started chatting with me. Usually I was not even noticed other than to be given orders on what to do with my time.

He pointed to his car. I wasn’t impressed. Cars were not something I was interested in other than as a means of transport. Airplanes of course were a different matter, though even they were for flying somewhere fast, or getting somewhere and being able to land with little to no runway, or doing aerobatics in.

He continued with his tale that he’d dreamed of having one since he was a young teen. Other than becoming a pilot that was what consumed him. He’d dreamed and planned and dreamed and worked. Finally he had one. He was in his early thirties, growing a bit of a paunch. He never had been athletic. The business he worked for was owned and run by his friend, and it turned out it was losing money hard and fast as the two of them ran it into the ground. It had been a gift to the friend from his father who’d built it up from nothing and now was not wealthy but comfortably retired.

The chief pilot finally got to the reason he was telling me his story about his wonderful jet black Grand Prix. “Now that I have it I don’t know what else to do with my life.”

I worked there a few summers during college, and then one final semester when I audited classes since I had more than enough credits to graduate (in 3.5 years) but there was nothing like graduating at any time except after the spring semester. So I was waiting for graduation, and then I’d be off to Yale Divinity School, except a full scholarship year in Germany sandwiched it’s way in first.

I did not understand a life focused on attaining a thing, a piece of metal, plastic, and rubber, as fancy as we humans have been able to make things of a great number of materials.

I can understand it sort of now, but not really. That kind of a life is, as the chief pilot said, pretty empty after one attains one’s dreamed goal. In fact that orientation for life empties life of life itself step by step as the goals is pursued. Things just do not make life worthwhile. They never have and never will, and there are countless stories from history that bear witness to this.

What we know, as followers of Christ, is that all the things in the world cannot fill one’s life with meaning. We receive things, skills, and everything else as gifts from God so that we can give life, abundant life, meaningful life, blessed life, to others.

Continuing in Jesus’ Word is not a choice we make, though our choices, especially our choices of goals and things we hope to attain or achieve in life, reflect whether we have surrendered and continue to surrender our own will and hopes and dreams to God’s Will for us each day.

We pray that we will continue in Jesus’ Word, giving as Jesus gave of himself, so that others can live and living they can know (as the Spirit teaches us) that God’s abundant, unconditional love, is the guide to a meaningful life.

This is the truth that frees us to know that God walks with us each step of our journey from the present into the next present, giving us stories of blessed lives (no matter what our enemies do to us).

Springs, Journeys, and Courage

Wednesday, February 16, 2022

See the Light,

Take the Path,

Discover God’s Blessings

Giving Light and Life to Others.

Psalm 84:6

As they go through the valley of Baca they make it a place of springs; the early rain also covers it with pools.

1 Corinthians 16:13

Keep alert, stand firm in your faith, be courageous, be strong.

Words of Grace For Today

There are many journeys, or sub-journeys of life, that we embark on or simply end up on rather unplanned.

I’m not sure if any humans just walking through a valley can make that a place of springs! That would be to reach deep in the ground, make pathways for the water through the ground, and direct the water to follow those pathways to the surface where springs would appear.

That’s right up there with terra-forming barren worlds so that they can support human life.

We need water, that is for sure. A valley filled with springs would provide good, naturally filtered water (unless the ground has been fracked, in which case no ground water is safe: even if one day it tests good, the next it may be poisonous.)

This day is another sub-journey, yesterday’s is past, tomorrow’s is yet to come. Today is now. Whether we think or hope to direct our journey is moot. We cannot and do not; at best we fool ourselves.

The guide for this day’s journey, as for every other day’s journey, is to stay alert, to stand firm in our faith, to be courageous, and to be strong, strong with the power of Jesus’ self-sacrificial, unconditional love.

As we face each day, strong in our faith and inspired to love unconditionally, then we will see the Light of Christ in each person’s face whom we encounter; we will see the wonder and beauty of God’s creation in all that surrounds us; we will feast on the nourishing presence of Christ and share that feast with all other people.

Truth and Fools

Tuesday, February 15, 2022

The Truth Is

No Matter How Straggly

We Think

Our Lives Have Become,

Christ’s Light

Shines In Us

And Through Us to The World

Psalm 14:1

Fools say in their hearts, ‘There is no God.’ They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds; they say there is no one who does good.

1 John 5:20

We know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding so that we may know him who is true; and we are in him who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life.

Words of Grace For Today

Fools have long since pretended to be wise saying that God does not exist, and that, in their corruption and abominations that no one does any good.

Fools we are, all of us, though we are fools by a different measure. Those are the true fools who measure us as fools because of our faith in Christ, and our unlimited capacity to suffer and still trust God and rejoice with God among us, in us, God suffering with us. We are gladly, according to the ‘norm’ of perverse thinkers and doers, to be called fools for Christ.

In Christ we have come to know that there is truth that God gifts us with the ability to recognize, discern and separate out from what people call ‘your truth’, relative truth, or situational truth. This truth enables us to clearly discern lies told by true fools.

This truth enables us to clearly know Christ Jesus, and the promises God makes to be with us always, now on earth and into all eternity.

Truth is as valuable as love, and it is so readily corrupted by those who are corrupted themselves, in an effort to hide their corruption. Doch, God is not fooled. God demonstrates truth and true love in the life, ministry, healing, suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Truth is so powerful as love is so powerful, that they give us life, even when our enemies would leave us to die.

Fools think that they can live as if God does not exist.

Fools for Christ know we live only because God exists, and chooses to love us unconditionally.

And that’s the truth that brings life as a free gift to all.

Love Me Tenderly, Love Me True …

Monday, February 14, 2022

Love

Colours

Our Worlds

Golden and Good!

Psalm 108:2

Awake, O harp and lyre! I will awake the dawn.

Colossians 1:11-12

May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience, while joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light.

Words of Grace For Today

Valentine’s Day.

The day we celebrate love,

Sharing special times with our beloved.

…

And praying for those who use love as a cover for greed, avarice, and predatorily making their way through life, no matter the cost to others.

Love.

Love is a tremendous things.

Love is a terribly powerful thing that can defeat death and grief and hopelessness or

Love is a terribly powerful thing that abused can defeat life itself and all that is good in it.

The thing to note is that though a person who used love as a weapon against others certainly destroys many, many other lives, but first … first that person destroys their own life and everything that makes life worthwhile, which leaves them swinging at whatever they can hit to try to establish that they exist at all … which destroys even more of life in and around them.

Love, though embraced with awe and gentleness gives life to oneself and one’s beloved and so to all who witness this love, not least of all to the children who absorb into their lives that love is possible and life is good, and gratitude rather than greed is the key to life’s success and indeed to it is the key to life itself.

Today we celebrate Valentine’s Day.

Today we celebrate love,

Sharing special times with our beloved,

As God has shared all of life with us.

Who Can Endure? Who Will Feast?

Sunday, February 13, 2022

See

and

Hear

Folded Hands in Prayer of Thanks.

Malachi 3:2

But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap.

Revelation 3:20

Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me.

Words of Grace For Today

Each day, each moment of decision, we can respond to all that challenges or threatens us with our wits and strength, ready to fight for ourselves,

or we meet all challenges and threats first resigning to God’s Will.

In our resignation we can either expect the almighty God’s wrath to wipe us off our feet with a mighty cleansing fire, leaving little left of us,

OR we can resign and expect to celebrate and feast with Christ.

The choice seems simple: struggle and death or feasting and celebrating with God!

Yet we cannot on our own make the choice other than to engage our wits and strength. That requires trusting God, whom we think we cannot see, whom we know will let us suffer defeat and death for we have seen so much defeat and so many friends meeting their death.

So how is it that we can hear Jesus knocking and actually open the door? That is the question of life … or death!

It is only possible for us to hear and answer if God has given us faith to hear, faith to trust, faith to know how to resign ourselves to God’s way of unconditional love and forgiveness and blessing and gratitude and generosity and living abundantly … no matter our circumstances, no matter the challenges we face, no matter the threats made against us.

Thank God daily for the faith given to us, for we hear and see the door opened … by faith. And we feast with Christ each day.

Hearts and Words

Saturday, February 12, 2022

Our Words

Reflect

the Curve of Our Hearts,

Bold and Generous,

Or Selfishly Destructive.

The Light of Christ Shows Us What Is in the Curves.

Psalm 71:8

My mouth is filled with your praise, and with your glory all day long.

Matthew 12:34

You brood of vipers! How can you speak good things, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.

Words of Grace For Today

What fills our hearts erupts inevitably from our mouths.

I know, the stomach empties its contents normally down the digestive track, but in rebellion it disgorges its contents up and out the mouth.

But when it comes to words, weeeell, our words inevitably (even for practised liars) reflect what is in our hearts, whether our hearts are consumed by greed, self-interests, destruction of others, and all sorts of evil OR our hearts bask regularly in God’s Word and as blessed saints become the embodiment of God’s Grace, unconditional love, and promises for all people.

Our words say it all. They speak less what we try to accomplish, and more what slavery we have bartered ourselves into with the Devil, or freedom we are gifted by God.

So we pray, Lord save us from the Devil and all the Devil’s wiles. Help us so that we can honestly and with gratitude say: My mouth is filled with your praise, and with your glory all day long.

For then, all will be well, all will be well, all manner of things will be well … and indeed all manner of things is already well, with us and with God’s creation.

Recklessly Love God!

Friday, February 11, 2022

Boldly Catching the Curve

Following God’s Inspiration

and Blessings

Joshua 23:11

Be very careful, therefore, to love the Lord your God.

John 14:23

Jesus answered him, ‘Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.’

Words of Grace For Today

I am not at all sure that being careful is part of loving the Lord our God.

My experience and reading tells me that loving the Lord our God requires a foolish, even reckless, boldness, fuelled by a wonderful faith (given as free gift by God to us).

There is simply no way to get through life without sinning, though one can do one’s best not to hurt others, and to do one’s best to let God inspire and lead one to be a blessing for others.

God’s promise is that we are not alone. Even in Covid isolation and staying smart about it, we do not live alone. God walks right with us and ‘makes God’s home with us!’

Being careful?

Rather be bold, being all that God created and inspires you to be!

Dominion, As Created, Not Won.

Wednesday, February 9, 2022

God’s Dominion

Leaves No one Lacking,

Needing to ‘Make It’ on Their Own.

Peace Permeates Everything

and Every Heart.

Zechariah 9:10

He will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the warhorse from Jerusalem; and the battle-bow shall be cut off, and he shall command peace to the nations; his dominion shall be from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth.

Philippians 2:9-10

Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth.

Words of Grace For Today

The chariot and the warhorse and the battle bow are all instruments of war.

These God cuts off. They will no longer continue.

Along with them one could also list fighter jets, drones, nuclear bombs and bombs of all kinds, RPGs, explosives of all kinds, missiles of all kinds, artillery and tanks, machine guns and rifles and hand guns of all kinds, and knives used as weapons … and ammunitions of all kinds and the list goes on seemingly without end.

The meaning is much broader: all instruments of getting the best of others, or using others as means to get ahead, all need to defend oneself against attack … all kinds of aggression and competition and zero-sum-game-winning … and the list goes on and on and on without end …. Doch God will bring it all to an end.

The model of life as God created us to live it is given to us in Jesus’ story: one serves others, teaching, inspiring, self-sacrificing, serving, healing, and equipping … all with unconditional love.

This is what peace is created out of … and even when the world around us roils in aggression, violence, and warring, even with the noise loud in our ears, we are able to live at peace, in peace, and with our gracious and grateful attitude towards all we create peace for those who wish to embrace it with us.

God provides this to us in God’s Kingdom. God’s rule extends from before all time to after all time, from the reaches beyond the universe in all directions and encompasses all that can be in our hearts and minds.

So we pray, Come Lord Jesus, Give us your peace. Shine your light in our days and through our nights so that we do not descend into the violence that the world so easily embraces. Help us, we pray, to acknowledge the gifts we have receive from you far out shine anything we might try to achieve ourselves or for ourselves in this world. In our days, which appear to be short, brutal, and of our own making, help us to rely solely on you as the Giver of Life.

Von guten Mächten wunderbar geborgen

Sheltered Wonderfully by God’s Loving Powers

Monday, February 7, 2022

In Every Darkness

Surrounded silently by faithful powers of goodness

Psalm 91:4

He will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness is a shield and buckler.

Philippians 4:7

May the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Words of Grace For Today

There are days when one must wonder about the dark present God has brought one to, and what the future may hold. Many people have such days. Many more people have had such days.

Then one is reminded of words by a man imprisoned and likely soon to be killed (as he was in fact, to our great loss), words that friends shared so many years ago in East Germany, words that carry God’s blessings and hope into every dark corner (under his wings you will find refuge):

Von guten Mächten treu und still umgeben,
behütet und getröstet wunderbar,
so will ich diese Tage mit euch leben
und mit euch gehen in ein neues Jahr.

(Surrounded silently by faithful loving powers
protected and comforted wonderfully
thus I would live these days with you all
and go with you into a new year.)

[Kehrvers:]

Von guten Mächten wunderbar geborgen,
erwarten wir getrost, was kommen mag.
Gott ist bei uns am Abend und am Morgen
und ganz gewiß an jedem neuen Tag.

(Sheltered wonderfully by God’s loving powers
We are looking forward confidently to what may come
God is with us in the evening and in the morning
and surely on every new day.)

Noch will das alte unsre Herzen quälen,
noch drückt uns böser Tage schwere Last.
Ach Herr, gib unsern aufgeschreckten Seelen
das Heil, für das du uns geschaffen hast.

(Still the past would torment our hearts
Still the heavy load of evil days weighs on us.
Oh Lord, for our angst-struck souls
prepare the health for which you have made us.)

[Kehrvers]

Und reichst du uns den schweren Kelch, den bittern
des Leids, gefüllt bis an den höchsten Rand,
so nehmen wir ihn dankbar ohne Zittern
aus deiner guten und geliebten Hand.

(And if you offer the heavy cup, the bitterness
of grief, filled to the very rim,
we´ll take it thankfully without trembling
from your good and beloved hand.)

[Kehrvers]

Doch willst du uns noch einmal Freude schenken
an dieser Welt und ihrer Sonne Glanz,
dann wolln wir des Vergangenen gedenken,
und dann gehört dir unser Leben ganz.

(But if you choose to give us your joy once more
for this world and the splendour of its sun
then we will choose to remember all this past
and that our whole lives belong to you.)

[Kehrvers]

Laß warm und hell die Kerzen heute flammen,
die du in unsre Dunkelheit gebracht,
führ, wenn es sein kann, wieder uns zusammen.
Wir wissen es, dein Licht scheint in der Nacht.

(Let the candles that you brought into our darkness
burn warm and bright today.
If possible bring us back together again.
We know this, your light shines in the night.)

[Kehrvers]

Wenn sich die Stille nun tief um uns breitet,
so laß uns hören jenen vollen Klang
der Welt, die unsichtbar sich um uns weitet,
all deiner Kinder hohen Lobgesang.

(As the silence now spreads thick around us
let us hear those full sounds of the world
which permeate invisibly all around us,
all your children raising hymns of praise.)

[Kehrvers]

These were, of course, Dietrich Bonhöffer’s words, and now they are one of God’s many gifts for us … to share.

May the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

…

The music for the beloved hymn was written by Siegfried Fietz. He sings the first few verse here.

The translation started with that at https://lyricstranslate.com but I worked further on it.