God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.’
1 Corinthians 3:22-23
Whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all belong to you [as God’s Temple, God’s Spirit dwelling in you], and you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God.
Words of Grace For Today
1 Corinthians 2:18 reads: Do not deceive yourselves. If you think that you are wise in this age, you should become fools so that you may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God.
Blessed to have dominion over every living thing we humans have thoroughly deceived ourselves as if we owned and could do with the creatures and creation what we pleased, even if that meant ruining earth as a habitable planet for other species and even ourselves.
Everything is from God.
We are all God’s.
God’s Spirit lives in us.
We are blessed to be blessings to others, not to wreak havoc on others and the rest of creation.
Our dominion over anything is always as stewards, and stewards for a God that created everything, declared it GOOD!, and loves creation and all creatures in it.
It’s all about reality.
First and ultimate always is we are God’s.
We are not some other human’s possession or work.
We are not independent beings.
We are ALL in this together, as Covid 19 has taught us.
While we are not in the same boat, some are in a few people in each luxury yacht and some are bailing to save everyone in their overloaded leaky dinghies, and some are hanging on to flotsam for dear life.
God gives us dominion in order that everyone can live even through a pandemic (when the circumstances of life for each and all become more obvious) in a save boat.
We have lots to do, and always it is futile to proceed as if we were anything less or more or other than God’s stewards.
My hand laid the foundation of the earth, and my right hand spread out the heavens; when I summon them, they stand at attention.
John 1:1-3
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.
Words of Grace For Today
God, who comes to our rescue, who delivers us again and again, who sanctifies us making us holy and thus wholly capable of bearing the Good News of Grace to all people … God, who loves us, is the One who spoke a Word in the beginning before anything including time, spread out a right hand to create the heavens, laid the foundation of the earth.
The universe was not created by some godlet. Nor is our God some inconsequential being, to be ignored or dismissed.
It’s more than ‘turtles all the way down’ that the earth is founded on; it is founded on unconditional love.
In the beginning was the Word. We later came to know this Word as Jesus, the communication from God in a human life; the language we can understand.
The heavens and earth may come to attention when God summons them. God did not create us so bound to God’s Word. We get to really mess up terribly, ignoring the Creator and the Word if we so choose … which we humans do all too often.
The Word came to communicate that God accounted for our rebellion and sin and evil. God forgives us our rebellion and sin and evil, and sets us right with God our Creator and Sustainer. Thus we may forge ahead each day, each minute, not hounded and horrified by the depth and breadth of our past rebellion and sin and evil. We may live free of that, and bind ourselves anew to receiving God’s blessings in such an abundance that they spill off us to those around us; they flow through us to others even emptying us … purifying us and taking the life right out of us as we become the bearers of God’s Good News of Grace to all people: God loves us!
Now with God standing with us, why would not the hoards of armies surrender to us making noise? Why would the walls of Jericho not crumble at our trumpets’ calls? Why would the chaos of un-creation void (the ocean waters) and the storms of chaos breaking in through the heavens not obey the Word spoken: ‘Be still!’
May our hearts be also stilled this and each day, from the chaos of fear, false pride, jealousy, and greed, so that we can calmly face the challenges of each day, even if it is one day among many of a pandemic.
Breathe deeply
Relax
Meet the challenges with patience and assurance that God is with us, saving us, guiding us, inspiring us to do holy things for all peoples.
Keep my statutes, and observe them; I am the Lord; I sanctify you.
Matthew 7:24
Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock.
Words of Grace For Today
God gives commands.
People receive the commands and reinterpret them as the necessary things to be done to be acceptable to God.
God corrects the reinterpretations back to God’s Grace: God acts for us first, bridging the whole gap between divine and finite humans. Then we get to act as sanctified people … and we still sin.
How do we wish to live, always running from goodness, or in a house built on a rock, the rock of God’s Grace for us?
The human mind plans the way, but the Lord directs the steps.
2 Corinthians 3:5
Not that we are competent of ourselves to claim anything as coming from us; our competence is from God.
Words of Grace For Today
Who are we?
We are fallible and arrogant, needing reminders regularly of how fragile our grasp on reality, truth, and goodness are.
We are able to give God all God is due: our lives in service to others so that they may experience and know the Grace of God which gives us renewed life, even though we deserve nothing but condemnation and expulsion to the emptiness of the Void.
Rather than giving us what we are due, God forgives us, redeems us, renews us and sanctifies us so that we can reflect the Light of the World to all in need.
It is only because God so constantly renews us and makes us holy (sanctifies us) that we are able to do anything good.
The human tendency is to forget God, God’s gifts, and claim all that is good is our own doing. This is a foolish error that costs us so much each day, and it costs so many other people so much each day.
We may think we make plans that we are capable of carrying out. So it is only with sinful plans! Any good plans we make, as well as the steps we take, are possible only because God has saved us from ourselves and through the Holy Spirit permeating our being inspires us to things so much better than we could ever do or imagine on our own.
God does not control us like a puppeteer. God inspires us, and if Luther is correct, we can at most surrender to doing what God asks of us and moves us to be and do. We, on the other hand, have free will (not to do good) only to do sinful and evil things, selfish things, destructive things, common things … and then lie to ourselves about how ‘good’ our evil ways are.
Oh, God, save us from our own sin, and the deceptions that allow us to think we can be anything without you! (Like thinking we can plan our own good way.)
God, help us to see the wonders of being and doing as you inspire and enable us.
God, help us extend this same Grace to all other people, sinful and evil as they are.
Philip said to him, ‘Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, “Show us the Father”?
Words of Grace For Today
Since the beginning of time people have wanted to ‘see’ God, and in seeing be the one to control what others heard about God, thus ruling over others.
Others like Moses, when God calls them, want to be shown that the one calling them is really God. They are preparing to ‘lay it on the line’ and they want some reassurances. Nothing like the Glory of God to convince one to answer God’s call to serve.
Others like the disciples, Philip among them (who speaks up this time), are called to serve by Jesus and they want to know that Jesus, the human they see in front of them, is able to call on God and have God show ‘himself’ (for they thought of God as a father). Then they will be satisfied, or so they think and say.
But seeing God’s Glory is not likely going to satisfy anyone who is not already satisfied seeing and living in God’s presence, in God’s creation, day after day. Those people are sacramental mystics, and that is what we can see of God’s Glory.
That and God’s work (including sending Jesus to live among us as a full human, full God) to demonstrate that God’s creation works for us when we live out the same gracious generosity that God shows us in giving us life abundant in this miracle of creation.
“Show us God!” we say with so many before us.
God responds with miracle after miracle of meeting our sins with Grace. Grace is God’s unconditional love demonstrated with forgiveness, redemption, more abundant life, and sanctification!
When we rest in God’s Grace, then we can build the best life we can for us and ours, and all our neighbours, AND we can serve Christ by being God’s Grace for others.
Asa went out to meet him, and they drew up their lines of battle in the valley of Zephathah at Mareshah.
2 Corinthians 12:9
But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.’ So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me.
Words of Grace For Today
We humans are so ready to test our strength against others, to draw up the battle lines, to commence fighting to gain what we want.
We do not need warriors or real war. We create battles, with battle lines, against those who stand in our way. So it is in a world run on greed.
Our world runs on greed.
God’s creation, the Kingdom of God, runs otherwise. It is not our strength that wins us anything. It is God’s strength that brings life to all people, not just mere struggling to survive kind of life, but life abundant. God does this by giving away God’s favour freely, generously, unconditionally.
The way God’s way of living, by Grace alone, becomes clear to us living in a world of greed only when we allow our weaknesses to be the opportunities that God’s strength is made obvious for all.
God accepts our weaknesses, pays whatever price we think needs be paid, and sets us on our way to be renewed, living in God’s favour. Thus we are able to reflect in our way of living the Grace and unconditional love that God created the world to live on.
In today’s world the greedy and ‘strong’ prey on those who are ‘weak’ to gain advantage for themselves. In today’s Kingdom of God the saints pray for the greedy and the weak that they will see God’s Grace at work in life all around them, and join the work of the saints in light.
The saints work is to be the faith that will give hope to the coming generations; our weaknesses do not separate us from God. As Leonard Cohen penned well enough in his song Anthem, “It’s through the cracks the Light gets in.”
For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.
Colossians 1:19-20
For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.
Words of Grace For Today
Calm
Breathe and Relax
Be Calm
A year ago as Covid 19 spreading across the globe started to invade our lives we were afraid, unsure, perturbed and disturbed though without any focus of at what except an invisible thing that was coming for us! In Lent suddenly we could no longer gather for worship. We stopped and thought we’d start again in a month, right? It was just a temporary restriction, a temporary closure!
A year later, again in Lent, we think we have seen it all, and with vaccines being distributed slowly we hope that it will soon come to an end, though we are dreading what may come first, or almost never voiced, we dread most of all that it might never end. We dread now what we know is not just a very painful death, but even with mild symptoms the effects of the virus’ invasion into our body can leave long term ‘scars’ or scares, as strokes, organ failure and even heart and brain failure, strike without warning. Long-haulers refers to those who get sick, quite sick, but recover only sort of as they remain incapable of working, functioning, or thinking straight for fatigue and pain and …. The cost to all humans is more devastating than we could have imagined. Now the variants spread more quickly, perhaps more deadly, perhaps more devastating in the long-term disruption to our bodies’ functioning.
This is our life, suddenly foisted upon us, whether we were settled and bored or at least boring in our privileged lives, or whether we struggled to survive each day as our very lives were under threat of war’s violence, starvation or dying of thirst for lack of water … or whether our lives were already lost to an existential thirst for living water. No matter where or how or what we were before, now Covid 19 is upon us and has been for quite some time now, still an unknown quantity despite all we have collectively learned about it.
God remains.
God remains as always with us.
God remains as always with us and for us.
God has plans for our welfare and not for harm, to give us a future with hope.
To demonstrate God’s intentions and plans for us, Jesus lived as one of us, and as we (not God as some would claim) demand payment for sins God sacrificed Jesus’ life to our jealous, sinful, greedy, corrupt injustice.
Through him God was pleased to reconcile to God’s self all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of Jesus’ cross.
What lengths God goes to. What lengths we need God to go to, in order that we may be convinced that God’s attitude toward us is reconciliation, forgiveness, redemption, sanctification, and renewed life!
There are countless reasons to panic, to be in dread, to be overwhelmed with angst.
There is one ultimate reason to be calm.
God is with us and for us, and spares nothing to convince us that our future is good; we have every reason to hope.
For all will be well, all will be well, all manner of things will be well.
Relax.
Breathe.
Be Calm.
Be God-made saints (though we remain simultaneously sinners.)
Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?’ And I said, ‘Here am I; send me!’
2 Corinthians 5:20
So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.
Words of Grace For Today
God’s Kingdom is never a static, accomplished, passive, settled thing. God’s Kingdom is God’s rule over God’s creation and all the creatures in it, including us very sinful and loving and stubbornly arrogant and gracious and cruel and kind and ….
God’s rule over us responds to our vagaries, pulling, twisting, diving, climbing, enveloping, releasing, disciplining, celebrating [and fill in everything God does in response to us] us.
God does not do this at a disinterested distance. God walks with us. Significantly God works in creation through us. God needs ambassadors of God’s will, as well as engineers, healers, teachers, gandy-dancers, architects, poets, and [fill in all we humans can be and do] of God’s will.
Always God is looking for volunteers. While God can easily voluntell us to go, God more often waits, patiently, for us to respond to God’s pleas ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?’
The temptation for us is to ignore God, for history teaches us well that those who respond most often are disparaged, persecuted, and even killed for their trouble.
When we listen to God’s history told as a complete history of life, Creator and creation and creatures all together, then we begin to understand that there is no life with as much value and reward and joy and hope and love as a life lived in response to God’s call, ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?’
When we respond, ‘Here am I; send me!’, then we become ambassadors for Christ who entreat all people on behalf of Christ to be reconciled to God. In response … well the responses are all over the map of possibilities given our sinfulness and love and stubbornly arrogance and graciousness and cruelty and kindness, our success will appear to be minimal at best, and the demands Covid 19 places on us are nothing compared to those creatures and Creator will place on us.
And our all our hope will be fulfilled, our joy complete, and our love will be made whole … even as we sin yet again and require God to step in to graciously forgive us, redeem us, and send more ambassadors to us to teach us how to be reconciled to God.
God’s rule requires everything from us, especially creativity in being God’s gracious, unconditional, and unending love and joy for others.
Streams Like This Have Flowed Since Earliest Times
Just as God’s Blessings and Wisdom Have Flowed
Even in Difficult Times.
They Flow to Us in Our Traditions.
1 Samuel 1:11
Hannah made this vow: ‘O Lord of hosts, if only you will look on the misery of your servant, and remember me, and not forget your servant, but will give to your servant a male child, then I will set him before you as a Nazirite until the day of his death. He shall drink neither wine nor intoxicants, and no razor shall touch his head.’
Luke 1:46-48
Mary said, ‘My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour, for he has looked with favour on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed’
Words of Grace For Today
Hannah is barren, unable to have children. Her husband shows her great favour, loves her deeply. But her husband’s second wife (who has borne him many children) persecutes Hannah because she is barren. Like faithful people of every age, Hannah turns to God and prays for a son, and vows in exchange for a son she will offer him to serve God, raised in the temple by a priest.
Out of Hannah’s suffering, her vow bartering with God, and God’s Grace, God gave us Samuel, a faithful servant of God who anointed and guided kings and rulers of Israel through his lifetime, including a king no less than David.
Out of our suffering God works wonders to bring about great things, greater than we could have imagined possible.
Mary, mother of Jesus, recognizes the blessings God bestows on her, as she is chosen to bear God’s own Son, giving him life in this world as one of us. Mary is remembered as blessed, all these many generations later. She will be as long as Jesus is remembered, which we trust will be for as long as humans live. That is a great honour, an honour that God bestows on a young woman, really barely a woman. A young woman caught in the poverty of a backwater eddy of life’s flow through Israel’s history and geography, Nazareth.
The blessings come at a huge cost to Mary. She will be shunned as a pregnant girl not yet married. Joseph in marrying her will take on her shame as well. Together they will struggle in poverty, and when Herod catches wind that there is a king born among the children around Bethlehem, they will have to run for their lives to Egypt. Herod will slaughter all the children of Jesus’ age in the area. That is just the beginning of Mary’s sufferings which continue until Mary will see her own son accused, condemned and tortuously crucified for crimes he did not commit.
There is no end of heartache for Mary, and we remember her for that, and for God blessing her.
When God blesses us, there is hardly any guarantee or example in our faith stories that this will mean we will live a ‘normal’ life, a comfortable life, a life of anything less than one filled with huge challenges.
We think we suffer greatly in this time of Covid 19. There have been many, much worse pandemics before. The church, and individual Christians in it, have been persecuted much worst many times over in our history. Now as then we are forced to be creative. Life is not as comfortable as before. We have to learn to be practical in entirely new ways. We have to learn to worship in new ways.
Along the way we see how little some leaders have valued the long-and-hard-won traditions we have inherited. Instead, feeling this is the first time anyone has faced any challenges as God’s faithful people, leaders are making up new words. Were those words profound and as meaningful as the words our ancestors of faith had written, edited, and refined through so many ‘difficult times’ that would be one thing. Unfortunately many of these words end up merely as trite and pithy as mass marketed greeting cards.
Our traditions are not weak, nor wrong, nor set in stone. They exist for us to tap, to adapt, and from which to create new and continuing traditions from.
That requires a deep and broad knowledge of our history and traditions, a profound wisdom about faith and the world, and a great humility that allows an ongoing confession of one’s own and our collective sins, from which God saves us again and again.
We pray (with no first born to offer to God in barter) that God will give us all we need, so that we will not set to ruin the church that we have inherited, the faith that we live in, and the awareness of God’s presence among us … especially in difficult times such as these with which Covid 19 presents us.
We pray, God save us. God guide us. God help us mourn what is lost. God help us rejoice at what is left. God help us celebrate what is new to us again, as it was to many who have gone before us.
Let these words of mine, with which I pleaded before the Lord, be near to the Lord our God day and night, and may he maintain the cause of his servant and the cause of his people Israel, as each day requires; so that all the peoples of the earth may know that the Lord is God; there is no other.
Revelation 15:4
Lord, who will not fear and glorify your name? For you alone are holy. All nations will come and worship before you, for your judgments have been revealed.
Words of Grace For Today
We bring our petitions to God each day, praying for justice. Many people think of countries far away, where we hear reports, believable reports of war and genocide, of intentional starvation and deprivation of populations in opposition to or of different ethnicity than those in power, gender and sexual orientation based violence and murder. We pray indeed that God will bring justice to these places around the globe, for we know that we are all in this together.
Covid 19 has taught us that there is no population anywhere on earth that can be separated from the rest of us, denied safety measures and care, without that allowing Covid 19 to multiply, mutated and spread faster, deadlier to all of us on this planet. The effects from infection are deadly to the elderly, at first. Now we learn that for all others, even those with minor symptoms the ravages of this virus can be chronic and debilitating, or give rise to sudden deadly mis-health events like stroke, heart attack, and sudden death. No age, no degree of health before the infection seems to be ‘safe’. We are all in this together, whether we like it or not, whether we admit it or not.
It is good that we pray for many peoples far and wide. Our petitions for justice closer to home are harder to pray. We are right in the middle of horrendous injustices. We call for awareness of women killed by violent men; and we ignore that ten times more men are killed by violence than women. Why?
It is good that we pray for the vulnerable, for women, for children, for elderly, for the poor, for those caught in systemic prejudice, for the homeless, for those now caught by Covid 19 restrictions and tossed into poverty, for the disabled, and for those of different faiths, customs, genders, sexual orientation, colour, nationalities, and abilities. It is not nearly enough for we ignore so much reality when we pray only these prayers, when we work to bring God’s justice only to these people.
We need to pray for those with privilege, power, influence, and wealth. They perpetrate injustices while hiding from themselves perhaps and definitely from others their complicity in and complacence to injustice which helps guarantee their continued privilege, power, influence, and wealth. We need to pray not just for our government leaders, and all in government, elected and hired. We need to pray not just for those in business, large and small, who benefit greatly from the greed based economy of the world. We need to pray not just for those who serve as police, enforcing injustice as much as they enforce law and order. We need to pray for judges and justices who determine how laws are applied, or as it is in Alberta, how laws are ignored along with truth, as they knowingly, gleefully, and even cruelly hand down decisions that are irrational, unjust, and favour those with connections, influence, and wealth.
Bill Hordern wrote:
Therefore, as Reinhold Niebuhr saw so clearly, governments are never simply a protection against injustice, they are also strongholds of injustice. Although the Christians ought to seek to have the government protect the weak from the strong, in fact most governments tend to protect the strong from the weak. The sword is wielded to maintain the status quo and all its inequities. Therefore, we should be prepared to see that service to God rather than to man may sometimes bring us into conflict with the rulers over many more matters than just the niceties of theological doctrine or ecclesiastical practice. (Living by Grace p.195)
These words were quoted by a now bishop in a text study decades ago. This year a good pastor added: Hence the wisdom from the theology of the survivors of WW2, and the wisdom of the Civil rights warriors like John Lewis who said: ‘Get into good trouble!’
We need to pray everyday that God’s day of judgment will come soon, and save us all. So we plead with our ancestors:
Let these words of mine, with which I pleaded before the Lord, be near to the Lord our God day and night, and may he maintain the cause of his servant and the cause of his people Israel, as each day requires; so that all the peoples of the earth may know that the Lord is God; there is no other.
and
Lord, who will not fear and glorify your name? For you alone are holy. All nations will come and worship before you, for your judgments have been revealed.
