For thus says the Lord: Your hurt is incurable, your wound is grievous. There is no one to uphold your cause, no medicine for your wound, no healing for you. All your lovers have forgotten you; they care nothing for you; for I have dealt you the blow of an enemy, the punishment of a merciless foe, because your guilt is great, because your sins are so numerous. Why do you cry out over your hurt? Your pain is incurable. Because your guilt is great, because your sins are so numerous, I have done these things to you.
Therefore all who devour you shall be devoured, and all your foes, every one of them, shall go into captivity; those who plunder you shall be plundered, and all who prey on you I will make a prey. For I will restore health to you, and your wounds I will heal, says the Lord, because they have called you an outcast: ‘It is Zion; no one cares for her!’
1 Peter 2:24
He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that, free from sins, we might live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed.
Words of Grace For Today
If we spent everyday counting our sins …
we would have no time for anything else.
If God spent any time counting our sins and letting us pay for them,
we would have no time for anything else.
God’s attitude towards us and our sins is made clear in Jeremiah’s words with one word: therefore.
It seems to be unexpected. It would not be the way we are with those who sin beyond count in such despicable ways.
Yet this therefore is for God the way God is. The way God is for us.
For God sees our incurable countless sins and …
and therefore God defeats our foes that do us woe. We who were called outcasts, are called most blessed.
God turns our sins into opportunities for us to learn of God’s mercy. Jesus’ story is God bearing our sins on the cross, so that we can live free, healed, and even righteous.
Foreigners shall build up your walls, and their kings shall minister to you; for in my wrath I struck you down, but in my favour I have had mercy on you.
Colossians 2:13-14
When you were dead in trespasses … God made you alive together with him, when he forgave us all our trespasses, erasing the record that stood against us with its legal demands. He set this aside, nailing it to the cross.
Words of Grace For Today
God has a beef with us, and (in the terms of today’s many times corrupt courts) issues a warrant for our arrest and incarceration in hell forever.
God finds us, and leaves us at the mercies of our evil enemies, who control us and take our lives as opportunities for their perverse desires. This is indeed hell.
…
Thank God that is not the last God has to do with us, for God is clear in judgment against all who sin, who turn away from him, not just our evil enemies but us as well. Even more so God is loving and merciful to all people. God takes that writ and the consequences of our suffering in hell for eternity and nails it to the cross of Jesus, God’s only Son.
And there it stays …
and
when we again turn away from God another writ is issued, we suffer, and then God relents and forgives us and nails that writ on the cross.
So it continues through all time
as the cross
is weighed down with writs so countless not even the stars nor all the particles of the universe are so many.
This is how powerful and enduring God’s love is, God’s mercy is, God’s Grace is.
Thus (despite the chippiness of so many people around us because Covid continues with all it’s variants of concern to threaten and thus governments and wise people -no more so than us ourselves continue to restrict our lives) we wake to each new day thankful for all that God provides that contributes to our survival one more day, so blessed are we by God. In this our enemies’ and their destructive deceit withers up like crab apples left to be pecked at by birds and to rot on the trees until they freeze and drop as fertilizer for another summer’s growth.
God’s justice, mercy, and love have reigned, do reign, and will always reign supreme.
It is he who made the earth by his power, who established the world by his wisdom, and by his understanding stretched out the heavens.
Hebrews 11:3
By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the Word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible.
Words of Grace For Today
In the Beginning was the Word.
God’s Word.
God created with Word.
Words are powerful, and
when words belong to God they are the ultimate power.
So many people through all time have wanted proof that God exists and that God created.
God created us so that we can imagine other realities than God … and though they are fiction we are fully capable of losing track of reality and living as if our fictions are actually real. So much so that we have
fake news,
fake science,
science deniers,
antivaxxers,
conspiracy theories,
governments that do conspire to lie and thus control populations,
international corporations that conspire to ‘own’ our private information, lie about everything, and thus control populations and governments,
women and men who gaslight others, especially the ones who love them,
pastors and bishops and religious leaders of all kinds who use religious words to control people and gain an advantage for themselves and their families and their kind (of wacky followers of faked religious words),
judges and lawyers for whom dark is light, light is dark, good is evil, evil is good, and their chaos allows them to continue to issue fake facts, fake decisions, and fake convictions to control hurt, destroy and destory people using the force of the state, which destabilizes society with this barbaric use of force, inviting chaos to overrun society,
and
Covidiots (who with their stupidity are ready to kill so many people and even themselves!)
…
and people who are ready to act illegally for no good reason other than that they can, like cops, bullies, and … well so many people thinking they must get more for themselves to be secure.
All of this fiction lived as reality seems to work …
until it doesn’t and
God’s Word,
God’s Creation,
and
God’s Steadfast Love
start to mess with their supposed ‘advantage’, ‘privilege’, ‘comfort’, ‘status’, ‘power’.
By faith alone, we trust God’s Word …
to have created all that is,
to forgive all that is sinful,
to offer renewed life to all sinners,
to accompany us no matter where or how we journey in life,
and
to promise that all will be well, all will be well, all manner of things will be well.
And we are able to live grateful for everything, beginning with our very breath each minute.
Then he said, ‘Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.’
Hebrews 12:28
Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us give thanks, by which we offer to God an acceptable worship with reverence and awe.
Words of Grace For Today
It was 2 am, and every sensible person was asleep or working the graveyard shift. Not Porgy. An alcoholic for decades with more than enough DUI’s to prove it, was drinking with his friends and when they all left at midnight he kept up by himself on the way home. At home he grabbed the left over beer and shifted from his pickup truck to his jeep. He set out to ‘run the muck around’ on crown land, except it was a foot and a half deep with snow. The better the challenge and the more fun.
He had toured all through the regular routes and left the run out to the hermit’s place for last. At 2 am his headlights off he winds onto the high road, now no longer on crown land for a ways, and follows the tracks that wind around an old basement filled with garbage and 20 year old trees, past the blocked off road above the illegal campsite sitting just 10 feet from the water of the lake, a road that can still be walked and from which the best views of sunset and fishers are enjoyed and captured by the hermit photographer. As he rounds the old deserted and abandoned camper and add-a-shack for a wood stove he guns the engine to ensure he wakes up the sleeping hermit and 50 yards later drives right through a wire that the hermit setup to slow down quads stealing wood from him. Up in the hermit’s wood yard Porgy’s jeep suddenly dies. It just stops. There Porgy sits, tries to turn the key to start the jeep but everything is black, dead, quiet.
The hermitage is holy ground. (Porgy has forgotten everything about ‘removing his sandals’ or giving God God’s due. God reminds Porgy by disabling his old jeep.)
Porgy has heard the ground is holy and not given it much credence. Now, completely dark, shut down silent, Porgy reconsiders. A light flashes down out of the sky. Porgy jumps out of his skin and prays earnestly for the first time since the last time he was drunk, “God save me!”
God has found a way to ‘speak’ to Porgy, even in his drunken haze.
It’s actually a military helicopter on an exercise, testing electronic surveillance, that God has put to use. Knowing all about Porgy’s DUI’s and alcoholism, the helicopter crew has been following his truck and then jeep for the last half hour, and having heard that the hermitage is holy ground they decide to play a bit with Porgy. They’ve remotely, temporarily shut off the jeep when they’ve known it would be safe. It was a good test of their equipment, logged and certified as effective at 500 metres.
As if in response to Porgy’s desperate prayer, the jeep lights up again. He starts it, and drives out as quietly as he can. Within days everyone hears a version of the story, Porgy’s version, how he went to visit the hermit in the evening and how God shut down his jeep as soon as he got on to the hermitage. He told everyone it must be holy ground.
Within days the military few know a different story, and they hear the story from Porgy. Only a faithful few realize that they played a part in it all, but God was at work. They realize that the hermitage really is holy ground. Humans (from his ex, the girls, the lay-pastor and bishop, the wealthiest people in town, the cops, lawyers, and more than 2 dozen judges) have sought to destroy a good, kind, and honest man, and they have only created a holy martyr, a hermit more safe from Covid than anyone of them, more blessed every day than any of them. Their practice surveillance of the area has long since established the hermit’s hard work to survive, his ingenuity, and his kindness to anyone who treads on that holy ground … and his efforts to save anyone from intruding in unholy ways on the holy ground. Their investigations of records they ‘practice’ accessing for ‘national security’ have given them enough of the completely unjustifiable effort of many different people to financially ruin him, to drive him deep into debt and poverty, and to even kill him … and the hermit’s blessed response of forgiveness to his mentally ill ex and the children and the binding of everyone else’s sins – putting their deeds over to God for judgment and offering them forgiveness if they would only but confess.
No one is holding their breath for that, since all the guilty people think no one will ever know who has done what or how.
But God knows, and a few intelligence people know, and a few honest people who listen carefully, and a whole lot of guilty people know.
That morning at 2 am, the hermit did wake up to the jeep’s engine noise, look out the window, and saw the jeep, and the light. He heard the near by helicopter and then saw Porgy start the jeep and drive away. When daylight came he went out and repaired the wire. All along, as for so many other things, the hermit gave God thanks, knowing that since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, we can give thanks, by which we offer to God an acceptable worship with reverence and awe.
You, Israel, are saved by the Lord with everlasting salvation; you shall not be put to shame or confounded to all eternity.
Matthew 13:43
The righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Let anyone with ears listen!
Words of Grace For Today
Since God has done such great things for us,
Since God has saved us with a salvation without end and promised that we shall never be put to shame or be confounded,
Since we have ears to hear, and we hear God promises that we, the righteous (made so only by Grace), will shine like the sun in God’s Kingdom.
Therefore, no matter the challenges that we face in this real and messy world, we shine with the light of Christ for all to see.
And the truth shines through all efforts to hide, pervert, and deceive in the all too common methods of ‘getting ahead’ which are really paths straight out of healthy life into the abyss of the Devil’s ways.
For once one lies and relies on it, all grounding in reality is up for grabs and it will slip away from one slowly and quickly until one has no bearings for what is real. Then the nightmares begin.
For us, who shine with the Light of Christ, our bearings to reality are sure and forever reliable, for our guide is God and God’s Grace.
Listen to me, my people, and give heed to me, my nation; for a teaching will go out from me, and my justice for a light to the peoples.
1 John 2:8
Yet I am writing you a new commandment that is true in him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining.
Words of Grace For Today
The daylight grows shorter each day, at this latitude markedly, as we are only 20 days from the winter solstice. When clouds and precipitation block the light during the few hours the sun is above the horizon the drear and darkness grows on us, as if the end of time were approaching though we trust that is not so. In these times the winter darkness teaches us well what we may or may not know so well from our own experience: that injustice of the nation is prevalent, here and now for so many people, and the injustice of the world order (or chaos as it really is) tears so many people from life, and even more from living a life respected as a full human being.
Then we read the promise that God will bring words of truth to bear on our world, that Christ’s Light shines already bright for all people. We read these words of promise and hope with eager hearts, though hardly more so than the billions who suffer the chaos of injustice worked for the privilege, comfort, and power of the few.
When people recognize the Light of Christ, the world chaos can but fail as Christ’s way replaces human greed.
For this day we wait, for freedom from darkness, for freedom from blatant injustice, for freedom from all evil, and for freedom to serve Christ fully, without reserve, with our whole hearts, minds and strength. For this day we wait. On that day we will celebrate the coming of Christ as we have not ever yet.
This is the advent of awareness: that Christ has come, is come, and will come again, to bring into the light all that is done now as if in darkness, all that is done to throw others as captives into darkness, all that is done to supposedly ‘set things right’ when the actions are more unjust than those they pretend to correct.
This our advent. Advent as we prepare to celebrate Christ’s coming, again.
Moses said to the Lord, ‘If your presence will not go, do not carry us up from here.’
John 10:4
When the shepherd has brought out all his own sheep, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice.
Words of Grace For Today
God sends Moses and the people from Mount Sinai up into the land flowing with milk and honey. God sends Moses and the people and will not go with them, for if God does, the people are a stiff-necked people and God’s presence will consume them.
That does not bode well for the people. From here on they will have to proceed without God’s presence, which has accompanied them since they gathered to leave to cross the Red Sea and come all those years through the wilderness. This is a tremendous change, a change not for the better.
Moses understands, having spent time on the mount with God, collecting the commandments on rock tablets, has wisdom about what the people will loose if God does not continue to accompany them.
God promises to walk with us always, no matter what. So why does God want to send the people on their way … and not go with them? Are the people really so far gone, so stiff-necked that even God cannot fix it, or go with them?
The rest of the story, which is indeed worth knowing, is that Moses convinces God to go with the people, and God does. God is good for God’s promises.
The shepherd, Jesus, continues to fulfill God’s promise to us. More than that Jesus gathers his people from among all the people, and, because we know Jesus’ voice we follow Jesus.
Where we go, Jesus goes with us. More than that we know how to follow Jesus where Jesus leads us. There is nothing more blessed for us.
Let your face shine upon your servant; save me in your steadfast love.
Luke 12:25
Can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?
Words of Grace For Today
On the coin of money is inscribed ‘In God We Trust.’
This is one of the more blatant and dreadful ironies of our lives: the world seeks coin to enable the collection of resources (through payment with the coin) and to ensure the bidding of the holder is done by others (through payment with the coin).
Those of us who cannot or do not have enough coin, worry about our futures: can we keep at bay the despair of hunger, the life-ending extremes of the environment, the decay of life without good medical care, or the loss of sanity as we are isolated (as an easy target for our enemies and separated from the social fabric of life.)
This worry motivates us to work, and to work hard, to ensure some kind of safety in our future, some kind of food supply in our days to come, some kind of health care so that what ails us can be discovered, diagnosed and treated, some healthy connection with other humans who do not wish us harm. Our worry itself does nothing. It adds not even a minute to the span of our lives. What we do to work through our worry may or may not succeed in providing life and life abundant for us.
Life in all its great goodness that God created us to enjoy does not require any of this that we can work for, though. Life abundant requires only one thing and that is God’s steadfast love.
God’s steadfast love moves us from worrying.
God’s steadfast love moves us from worrying about ourselves.
God’s steadfast love moves us from worrying about ourselves to working to be God’s love for others.
God’s steadfast love moves us from worrying about ourselves and on to knowing that we are marked with the cross of Christ, which does not just mark us like coins with the greatest irony of all times. The mark on us changes us from the root of our being to the last days we live in God’s good creation: we become God-made saints.
When our enemies or our shortcomings or the lack of things we require to stay alive threaten our future we can pray: Let your face shine upon your servants; save us in your steadfast love.
Like the sun rising for a new day, sparkling, dazzling in a field of snow, God renews Christ’s light in us, and we shine, and we sparkle, and we transform the world from misery to happiness, from despair to joy, from hunger to nourished … from lost to found.
Let your steadfast love become my comfort according to your promise to your servant.
Luke 2:25
Now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon; this man was righteous and devout, looking forward to the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit rested on him.
Words of Grace For Today
Waiting.
Waiting for an event that is so much more than just another everyday occurrence.
Waiting for an event that is so much more than the greatest thing in one’s life.
Waiting for …
Waiting for God to break into the life of humans, and make a statement so clear about God’s love that it will shake all the foundations that humans build on, for everything that humans build.
Waiting for God to reveal how God relates to us, in our broken, sinful, destructive lives, which we seem incapable of setting right.
We wait.
We wait again this Advent.
We wait again this Advent for the celebration of our Saviour’s birth.
We wait.
Yet there is no way that we can wait idly for this celebration, just ticking off the days, eating the chocolates out of the advent calendar, and hoping that this celebration will bring life to us again, renewed life, and God’s favour … after all that we do as humans to one another.
We wait for our enemies to be converted to reasonable, truth abiding, honourable humans once again, if they ever were such people.
We wait … and the Holy Spirit works in us, helping us to see …
Helping us to see beyond the portents of this time, as storms increase in magnitude month by month, as temperatures rise so that glaciers recede at record rates, and so that ice caps melt and ocean levels rise covering islands and seashore cities, as wildfires burn away forests protecting mountainsides and rivers, as earthquakes increase, as droughts grip whole agricultural areas leaving farmers with no crops to sell and people without food to eat, and as rainstorms pour water in record amounts on dry and vulnerable areas flooding homes, roads, and whole cities, and whole mountainsides give way to mudslides that block off roadways halting transport of goods in its tracks, leaving retailers shelves thin, and Christmas wishes changed from a special gift to a wish that our lives and the lives of our loved ones will be preserved.
Helping us to hear beyond the news of these disasters and the ever- mutating and more dangerous variants of Covid spreading to our areas.
Helping us to trust …
Helping us to trust God’s promise that God’s steadfast love will be our comfort …
a comfort like no other.
Thus comforted we are able to reach out to save many people, people we know, people we do not know and people who are our enemies …
saving people from disaster with needed, real-time help,
saving people from the wiles of the Great Deceiver with needed, real-time love and hope.
Helping others to trust God’s promise that God’s steadfast love will be their comfort …
Wondrously show your steadfast love, O Saviour of those who seek refuge from their adversaries at your right hand.
1 Thessalonians 5:23
May the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Words of Grace For Today
The movie Blood Diamonds, the story of Solomon Vandy, ends with a simple lesson: let us applaud those who live to tell the truth … in a world where lies reign over so many hearts, where greed drives people to perversions that move them beyond love, hope and life.
There is, as histories told, and truth written in literature and scientific studies bears witness, no end to the people who would destroy others in a vain attempt to get ahead. Ahead of what is not important other than to those who sacrifice their lives to those insignificant markers of gain, which is gain that so easily disappears, which gain eats at the hearts of those seeking it until they have no heart to love, hope or live left. Then live, a shells of humans, that only destroy and accumulate … and do not die soon enough.
For those who live as we do to tell the truth, we pray Wondrously show your steadfast love, O Saviour to those who seek refuge from their adversaries at your right hand. For to live to tell the truth is to seek refuge in God’s hands.
The temptations are so great, to stoop to the level of those who use lies and destruction to accumulate their gain; gain that provides power, pseudo-security, comforts, and hedonistic excesses as it gulps down their hearts, minds, and strength. The temptations are great, for who would not want just a bit more control, security, comfort, and pleasure in life. Resistance is exactly like that to the Borg, it is said to be futile, until one calls on the one source of power that can save one from such temptations: God’s own blessings. Therefore …
Each day, each hour, we pray: May the God of peace himself sanctify us entirely; and may our spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
We also pray that God would save our enemies, so that their perverse and relentless need to destroy us and the truth would cease, and so that they could learn to love, hope, and live again.
