O sing to the Lord a new song, for he has done marvellous things. His right hand and his holy arm have gained him victory.
Colossians 3:16
Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God.
Words of Grace For Today
When we recognize how great God’s deeds are for us and all other people, there is nothing else to do, than to sing songs to God.
When we recognize for the million-times-millionth time how gracious God is to us, though we certainly do not deserve any of it, the old songs simply will not do. God will give us new songs to sing so that we can tell once again the old, old story of Jesus and his love.
We have so many new songs, a million-times-million, … and today we have yet another new reason to sing!
What is your new song today? Is it like the twins studying their dreams, or Maggie’s parent’s enjoying their dream home?
Or is yours, like mine, a simple song of surviving another day: dreaming as I breathe, eat, drink, rest, work and love enough to make a life abundant, as God walks with me, even though I am too old to study and I am homeless and attacked by relentless enemies who are afraid of truth, for they have built their lives on their lies about me?
It is never too late, as long as you are breathing, to sing a new song in thanks for God’s grace and mercy!
He has gained renown by his wonderful deeds; the Lord is gracious and merciful.
Luke 24:30-31
When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight.
Words of Grace For Today
There are so many things that people do to others that are so hideous one can hardly believe we humans are capable of such things. There are so many things that people do to others that no one ever finds out about. Some are so evil that every effort is made to conceal them from all time. Others are so marvellous, and yet no one gets to celebrate that at least every once in a while a human being is actually capable of doing something to others that is a gracious and merciful … and generous … as God is with us all.
We can sit to eat with someone and not know what evil things that person has done. They have concealed them well enough from us.
We can sit to eat with someone and not know what great things that person has done. Somehow we do not put two and two together.
Fifty five year old Joe had never married. He was not gay, or mean, or uninteresting, or poor. Nor was he wealthy, addicted to chemicals or work or anything at all. He was just plain, not aggressive, not driven. He was an introvert so life alone did not bother him at all. He was well educated and still he found work as he could doing this and that, never for much more than a simple living. He loved the outdoors, not shooting at it or fishing food from it, just to be in it. He hiked mountains to find solitude. He took photos of some magnificent things in nature, moving and still, large and so small though he rarely shared them with anyone.
When Maggie met him climbing a mountain taking photos of a pair of eagles playing in the sky they hit it off right away. They shared a love of being in nature, enjoying the solitude, finding beauty in unexpected corners. They spent months out in nature together, and it did not matter to either that he was 15 years older than she … they fell in love. Despite her children from her deceased husband and her parents not approving at all, they were married.
Her parents had been looking for a home of their own for decades. Maggie, as the only child, knew exactly their mantra of what they wanted: a three bedroom house, with a garden and shed out back for her mom to grow a garden of vegetables and flowers. A garage large enough for their small car and a boat on a trailer for her father to use fishing. A few months after the wedding, which her parents did not go to, one of their oft-contacted-realtors called them. They’d found the perfect house for them. They thought for sure they could not afford it, but the realtor said that it was listed at a rather unbelievable price for a fast sale, and they could afford it. They bought it and moved in within the week.
Maggie’s twin daughter and son each had their eye on different colleges, but neither could afford it. They applied and were accepted. Both were offered financial packages that made it possible for them. So off they went to their dream studies.
Then Maggie was diagnosed with cancer; she battled it with Joe at her side. Her children and her parents came once early on and then stayed away, showing their judgment against Joe. Within a month she died, the pain only somewhat mitigated by the large morphine doses.
Her children and her parents openly blamed Joe, though there was little reality in it. They were angry, looking for someone to blame. Joe was devastated to have lost his only love in his life.
Three years after her death Joe invited Maggie’s parents and twins over for a coffee at his simple house. When they sat to drink tea and coffee, Joe asked about the garden and the boat, and about the twin’s studies. It was not until they had finished their coffees and teas, along with homemade cake and ginger snaps that they realized the details of Joe’s questions could only be asked by someone who knew so much more than they had told Maggie about even before their marriage. It was minutes later as they said good bye and walked to their cars that it became clear: Joe and Maggie together had made the parent’s house and the twins studies possible.
As the parents and children had condemned the two, they had responded with grace and generosity to give them their dreams … and they had only discovered it years later after Maggie’s death … and after they had blamed Joe for Maggie’s death.
God does not let us go on and on without recognizing the wonder of God’s deeds of grace and mercy for us. So after Jesus has spent the day with the disciples teaching them everything (and they do not recognize him because he has died) when Jesus was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him.
By God’s grace and mercy we know all that God needs us to know of his wondrous deeds.
The question of our lives each day is this:
What are we going to do, since God equips us to be the doers of such generous grace and mercy?
The days of our life are seventy years, or perhaps eighty, if we are strong; even then their span is only toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away.
2 Thessalonians 2:16-17
Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and through grace gave us eternal comfort and good hope, comfort your hearts and strengthen them in every good work and word.
Words of Grace For Today
Though we strive for to secure our lives as we imagine they should be, these struggles matter very little in the end. We have 70 years or perhaps 80 or more, and only sometimes we are strong. The least desired, least by me, is to remain alive, though not healthy of body, unable to move and provide care for the world around me, or worse to be alive in body but to suffer some disease of the brain, so that my ability to think (a treasure my whole life) is gone.
What far are all these concerns, these fears, and all the struggle to avoid what will come regardless of what I or you or anyone else do. We all die, and dying is seldom comfortable or as we wish it would be. Death comes our way, the time, day and year we cannot know.
All our toils and troubles are for not.
What for then is life given to us?
Re-orient our thinking, our approach to life and death, to our doing. We are not given life to secure a good life for ourselves, though that may well be something that drives us onward day after day. We are given life to provide what has been provided to us, God’s Grace and Love.
That then may well include great and difficult work to ensure we have the basics of life, in order that we are alive to share the basics of life with others … and in that sharing to provide also what we have received, God’s blessing.
As the seasons turn, from frozen to greening, and life in suspension, hibernation, or in new seeds and eggs starts to inhabit the woods, the grasses, the air and the waters, we recognize that (in spite of the restrictions of Covid 19 and the 3rd wave’s illnesses, death and lockdowns – and irresponsibly dangerous protests) we also turn each morning to our God, pleading for mercy, renewal, love, and hope.
So as also God renews this season our hearts, minds and strength we pray: May our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and through grace gave us eternal comfort and good hope, comfort our and your hearts and strengthen them in every good work and word.
We have no time to languish. God has work for us, and for you! There are so many people who need from us to experience God’s mercy, renewal, love, and hope. On this foundation of Grace we live, allowing our hearts, minds, and souls to bask in the renewing light of the Son.
You who live in the shelter of the Most High, who abide in the shadow of the Almighty, will say to the Lord, ‘My refuge and my fortress; my God, in whom I trust.’
1 John 5:14
This is the boldness we have in him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.
Words of Grace For Today
The greatest danger in life is fear, which drives us to instinctive responses, and schemes to secure our own lives and our own futures.
Seeking such security is a futile effort, and it always will be.
Only God can provide us such security.
What we can do is give every once of energy and life we have received in providing life abundant for other people, all other people, not just our chosen few!
Trusting that God hears our pleas, God abides in us, and we abide in the shadow of the Almighty brings us to live with a boldness that is the beginning of worshipping God, serving God, and loving all other people as God loves us.
We know where our refuge and my fortress is; God is with us, no matter what.
We can face every danger, every evil, every challenge with grace-filled hearts, breath to spare, and grateful generosity. We can be generous with all God has entrusted to us, as God is generous with us.
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.
Colossians 2:2-3
I want their hearts to be encouraged and united in love, so that they may have all the riches of assured understanding and have the knowledge of God’s mystery, that is, Christ himself, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
Words of Grace For Today
Here we find God’s truth. God is all powerful and to be feared more than anyone or anything else!
Without that fear there is no path to find knowledge, wisdom, truth. Without fear of God all our efforts will be bent, perverted, and misguided. Without fear of God our paths begin on a foundation that will shift and disappear out from underneath us.
Fear will not do it alone. The pseudo Paul who wrote Colossians (a disciple of Paul most likely) got this right. We need our hearts and minds encouraged and built up, united in love. With fear of God but without the love of God (bringing us to love God, all people, and all creation) we walk a dismal path where understanding is only partial, and that part is treacherous. Love brings us to understand life as God intends us to live it. Love enables us to move beyond understanding to contributing to God’s work in this world among us here and now.
The fear and love of God brings us to trust God with everything we are and have and can do. We begin to get glimpses of God’s mystery revealed in Jesus, the Christ.
We begin to live a life guided by true wisdom, a gift of the Holy Spirit for us at our baptisms.
That life is not a life of comfort. It is not a life of ease. It is not a life of capitulation to evil, or evil forces, or evil in others directed at us, or even to evil in ourselves.
This life is a difficult, seemingly chaotic (though by the Spirit very ordered), seemingly risky path that winds hither and yon. This is a life that gets us in to trouble, good trouble, trouble for Christ, trouble for the children, for the outcasts, for the poor, and for the condemned.
This is life, wisely lived life, life abundant, life blessed, and the life that God intends for us.
What are you waiting for?
The Son of God to come and give you directions, to die for you, and to be risen back to life thus conquering death and all evil for us?
He subdues the ancient gods, shatters the forces of old; he drove out the enemy before you, and said, ‘Destroy!’
Luke 1:50
His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation.
Words of Grace For Today
Lord have mercy on us!
The people, led by Joshua, move across the Jordan into the Promised Land. They are going to take it, occupy it, and claim it as their God given right. They have something of a claim to some of the land, for this is where Abraham and Sarah raised first Ishmael and then Isaac, and their grandchildren, Jacob and Esau, and after them the great grandchildren including Joseph. The 2nd generation of those who ran from Pharaoh’s slavery to be delivered into the Wilderness are all there is left, for those that were delivered from Pharaoh’s chariots and army through the Red Sea, turned against God at Sinai, made a godlet, an idol of their own gold in the form of a calf, and worshipped it.
Now, the story is told that God has subdued the ancient gods, shattered the forces of old, driven out the enemy before them and called on them to ‘Destroy.’
For the Love of God, how can we mess up God’s story for us so badly.
And then Luke continues in the same vein, for it is not a seldom embraced idea that somehow ‘we’ are good or at least ‘chosen’ and ‘blessed by God’ and they (or all others) are bad and not chosen and not blessed, and here as it reads are destroyed.
First off we ought to notice with open minds that the ancient gods are not subdued. They and their supports in force have risen up in the form of ‘new age’ religions.
Second off we ought to notice that God has not driven off the enemy before us. The enemy is still here, doing great damage to so many people. Further, the greatest enemy is not those that work against us; it is ourselves working against God who give power to evil from others and from within ourselves. We end up worshipping that ‘golden calf’ of our own making from our own ‘gold’. We turn from God as fast and thoroughly as any of God’s people ever have!
Third off we ought to notice that humans have used God as an excuse to ‘destroy’ since the beginning of time. The story of Jesus, the old, old story of Jesus and God’s love does not include destroying our enemies. It teaches us that we, like God does for us and all people, are called to love, forgive, and hope that God can save our enemies, as God has saved us.
Lastly we ought to notice that God’s mercy, in so much of Jesus’ story this is made blatantly obvious, extends not to just a chosen few, not to just those who fear and trust God, but to all people, even our worst enemies! God’s mercy extends to all people, from generation to generation.
Those who God has saved, as we are, received abundant life. That is not a life of comfort and abundance. It is life lived, no matter our circumstances, blessed with God’s truth, with God’s Promise, and with the call to extend Grace and life abundant to as many people as we possibly can in our ‘3 score, ten’ that we breathe.
Rise up, come to our help. Redeem us for the sake of your steadfast love.
Luke 17:21
Nor will they say, “Look, here it is!” or “There it is!” For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you.
Words of Grace For Today
As the slings and arrows fly at us, we are desperate for God to save us, not only from the things piercing the air so near us, some not passing us by. We need to be saved from ourselves. One only needs to recognize how we have dealt with the beauty of creation around, in and among us to know that we really do screw things up good. Or bad as it were.
So we require God’s salvation, and we cry ‘Rise up, come to our help. Redeem us for the sake of your steadfast love,’for it is not on our own merit that we can possibly hope God will redeem us. We need God’s grace provided to us; we are solely dependent on God’s steadfast love as the reason God would save us.
So God provides all we need.
Further we need not look. We need not seek somewhere else. For the kingdom of God is here among us!
Great that it is, a life dependent on God’s Grace, on God’s steadfast love only.
…
until we collectively and individually screw it up so royally again and the slings and arrows of others’ misplaced anger start piercing the air around and toward us.
So we cry to God to save us
…
again and again we repeat this, and God, for the sake only of God’s steadfast love, continues to save us.
Lead me in your truth, and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation; for you I wait all day long.
1 John 5:15
If we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have obtained the requests made of him.
Words of Grace For Today
There are so many choices we must make each day or make by trying to not make the choices; they catch us no matter.
The wiser we get, hopefully before we get too old, the more we notice how little we know of everything we need to know. We see how desperately we need help.
So we learn to plead to God for help: lead us in your truth, and teach us.
Where else are we to ask for what we need?
Where else in this world of corruption from top to bottom are we to find truth, about us, about others, and about God?
We know when we ask God, God will provide what we need.
This is God’s promise, which we can trust.
There is no more we need from life than what God provides, for it give us everything worth waiting for; God’s truth that is irrefutable.
Trusting God’s truth gives us life in the face of so many lies about ourselves, about others, about what God is and is not.
Trusting God’s truth gives us life, life abundant.
The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food in due season. You open your hand, satisfying the desire of every living thing.
Luke 12:22-24
Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing. Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds!’
Words of Grace For Today
I am not sure about this:
You open your hand, satisfying the desire of every living thing.
We humans have a way of ‘desiring’ so much more no matter how much we have.
Further the birds, bees, and beasts, and not to forget the fish, struggle under the effects of our ‘possessing the land’, ‘dominating it’, and destroying ecosystems that have taken millions of years to establish!
So?
The truth is God created the world quite capable of sustaining all the life created on it, satisfying the desire of every living thing. God promises to provide for the needs those desires are given to life of all kinds, in order that all life can continue on God’s good earth.
That includes our desires that God gave us so that we could continue to live among all the life on this planet.
How did we screw it up so badly!?!
Well, God loved us, wanted us to be able to love, which means we need to be able to choose to love or not, and …
Well so much of the time we humans have chosen, do choose, and forever will choose to do other than love! Youch, what a price!
We are destroying what provides us the ability to live on earth! It’ll take us maybe 100 or so, maybe only 25 or 5 years, to unmake the earth capable of sustaining life, something God created in 6 days, or millions of years measured in our time.
What power we have … to destroy!
And what power we have, as well, to love, when we so choose. Choosing to love is possible, for any one, for every one, of us … though only as God makes us able.
The beginning of God making us able is to promise that God values us greatly. Knowing that we can choose to act responsibly and responsively to that unconditional, life-giving and life-renewing love!
God willing and ‘the creek not rising’ (maybe it ought to be ‘the oceans not rising’) we may still live on planet earth in 1000 years and more!
God’s Word started this all. God’s Word sustains us all. Certainly God’s Word is able to bring us to that miracle of miracles.
So what are we going to do today, with God’s love?
It is I who by my great power and my outstretched arm have made the earth, with the people and animals that are on the earth, and I give it to whomsoever I please.
Matthew 5:5
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
Words of Grace For Today
We work so hard to survive.
And when that is accomplished or given to us by our station at birth or by sheer insane luck, stupidity, or corruption we humans always look to have more from life. We measure it in what is ours! not theirs.
Yet God created this earth not for us to divide it up among ourselves. God created it good, sufficient for all, held together by love, renewed by Grace, and sanctified to be wondrous – including us!
The bold seem to win the most at this inane game of possessing what cannot be possessed, love, land, security, hope and the future.
Jeremiah and Jesus puts it clearly that God is the creator and the one who gives the earth to stewards, and those stewards are not the bold and victorious in our inane human games we have reduced life to.
The meek will inherit the earth.
After we are done ruining it, the victorious will not want it. They will move on to other planets, other challenges, other inane games that they can use to ‘prove’ they are significant.
Only God determines who is significant and for what we are significant.
Have you any clear idea for what we are significant?
Or who is significant to God?
What does the old, old story of Jesus and his love teach us about for what we are significant and who is included in this ‘we’?
…
Right, all are included (even the deluded ‘victorious’) for we are significant at all to God, solely because …
