Spring – Page 4

Hunger and Thanks

Sunday, April 24, 2022

God Provides For the Birds of the Air and Water

And for Us,

As No One Other Can!

Habakkuk 3:17-19

Though the fig tree does not blossom, and no fruit is on the vines;

though the produce of the olive fails and the fields yield no food;

though the flock is cut off from the fold and there is no herd in the stalls,

yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will exult in the God of my salvation.

God, the Lord, is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, and makes me tread upon the heights.

Luke 10:20

Nevertheless, do not rejoice at this, that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.

Words of Grace For Today

There are a great many natural disasters that occur. Now with climate change there are even more. Each previous year’s extremes have become the next year’s normals. How the wind howls! How the polar ice caps melt! How the flood waters rise and swamp so much. How the wildfires roar. How the earthquakes shake the foundations of all we’ve built. How the volcanoes spew forth their venom and ashen poisons for thousands of miles.

We no longer survive because of the production from our own land, our own backyards, our own flocks and herds. Instead we allow the produce from far and wide to arrive, mostly by truck and airplane, to arrive onto our grocery shelves and therefrom fill our baskets and stomachs.

Except, as Covid has demonstrated quite clearly, that supply chain is very vulnerable, easily disrupted and a real concern for our futures (and billions of humans current every day) is food security … or simply put, the reliability that we will have enough food today and tomorrow and next year.

Can we understand God’s Grace for us so fully as to say with Habakkuk though the fields yield no food [and the grocery shelves are bare] yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will exult in the God of my salvation.

Most of us will complain mightily to God should this come to pass!

Some of us are privileged and burdened to live in the spirits of each day, and to know how they affect us and others around us, and to be caught in the wonders of God providing for our spirits each day in so many ways.

The disciples of Jesus encounter this when they go out preaching, healing and baptizing … and return amazed that the spirits submitted to them!

Yet Jesus says this wonder is of no lasting worth. They (we) should not relish that kind of power. Instead they (we) should celebrate the power of Jesus’ sacrificial love, which nets them (us) a place in God’s Graces. Their (our) names are written in heaven and God promises to walk with them (us) and welcome them (us) home when they (we) die.

There is nothing reliable about anything we humans construct to provide for our own futures. The only security available to anyone is that of God’s promises, God’s Grace, and God’s breathing hope into us, no matter what may come our way.

When we wake each day and remember our place, beggars at best for God’s Grace, then we can say with Habakkuk: God, the Lord, is my (our) strength; God makes my (our) feet like the feet of a deer, and makes me (us) tread upon the heights.

That is a sure place to start the day, any day, every day.

Labourers and Labours of Love

Friday, April 22, 2022

The Results of God’s Labours:

New Life

and

Light.

1 Chronicles 22:15-16

You have an abundance of workers: stonecutters, masons, carpenters, and all kinds of artisans without number, skilled in working gold, silver, bronze, and iron. Now begin the work, and the Lord be with you.

Acts 4:33

With great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all.

Words of Grace For Today

Labour.

It is one of the necessities of life, well … not just any old labour, but meaningful labour.

When one builds a house or church or temple or mosque, even today, there are many different specialized crews that show up (hopefully on time and necessarily in the right order): surface prep earth movers, utilities installers (usually underground, leaving stubs above ground ‘at the curb’), a track hoe and maybe a dump truck to haul away the extra dirt, foundation builders, concrete crews (today with fewer wheelbarrows to move the concrete into place and one big cement pump truck that can deliver concrete anywhere in a 50’-75’ radius,) basement framers, concrete crews again, framers or insulate block assemblers (depending on the style of house, wood framed or insulated blocks filled with concrete), and on it goes with roofers for everything from rafters to shingles, eavestroughers, siding installers and/or parge and stucco appliers, carpenters to build the inside walls electricians, plumbers, drywallers, painters, cabinet makers, floor installers, and interior designers. Maybe one needs specialized trades to install a heat pump, in-floor heating, ventilation, and computer power and internet connections.

When Solomon starts to build the temple the list is shorter, the work much more muscle intensive and the materials considerably heavier, starting with stones for the foundations and walls.

That was labour intensive.

It was not labour that Solomon likely engaged in other than to give the orders for the work to commence and be done, if even that.

There is other labour that many people engage in, labours less of one’s hands and more of one’s mind, like writing, teaching, researching, inventing, designing, exploring, serving, healing, protecting, leading, buying and selling, and the list goes on. (There are also many bogus labours that try to cheat people of their some or all of their lives.)

One additional one is mentioned in the second verse for today: preaching (or giving testimony about Jesus.)

What is odd is the description given for how the apostles preached, ‘with great power.’ This is odd because everything about Jesus was that he called for us to take note that the ‘power’ we used in this world is not the kind of ‘power’ that God intends for us to use. God’s power (made so clear by Jesus’ life, ministry to forgive and heal, death, and resurrection) is the power of serving others with unconditional love and forgiveness that offers renewed life to all people over and over and over again.

With Great Power, the power of sacrificial love, to give witness in thoughts, words and deeds, to God’s intended manner of us living in this good creation.

That is the labour of all faithful people.

This kind of labour may net one nothing, or even cost one greatly, even costing one one’s own life! This is the basis of love, the unconditional love of God that God intends for us to BE for one another.

And that is hard labour!

That is a very special kind of labour.

That is a labour that we carry on as we work at our meaningful labours of contributing to a good society around us.

Now begin the work, and the Lord be with you.

Hear the Word

Wednesday, April 20, 2022

Even In Our Darkest Darkness God’s Light Guides Us, If We But Hear …

God Help Us Hear!

Jeremiah 31:10

Hear the word of the Lord, O nations, and declare it in the coastlands far away;
say, ‘He who scattered Israel will gather him, and will keep him as a shepherd a flock.’

John 17:20-21

‘I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.

Words of Grace For Today

Humans always have a difficult time hearing God.

Maybe it is primarily because we want to hear something that God does not say.

Because we do not want to hear what God does say.

Because we are so afraid of what we do hear!

Because we’ve let the Devil fill our ears with temptations and promises that actually suck the life right out of us!

God provides lots of guidance, even what we see as punishments (like being exiled from our home lands as Israel has been many times), in order to ‘get through’ our thick skins, stiff necks, and thicker heads what God intends for us, God’s unconditional love, forgiveness, and blessed renewed purposeful life.

God does not merely work to get us to see, hear and trust God. God works so that the whole world will know how God deals with us and all the people of God’s good creation.

God wants us to be as one, without division, without conflict between ourselves, blatant witnesses to God’s good and generous grace, which overcomes all challenges to a blessed life.

Living in community, trying to be guided by the Spirit, is no simple feat, and success is never achieved. It is at best approximated, striven for, and hoped for, as a guiding light in our darkness.

This darkness God works to get through to us, that God walks with us through all of life’s challenges, and that our conflict with one another does nothing for us, that our forgiveness of one another is the key to living well in this God’s good creation.

As we forgive, we stand like bright lights for the world to see: this is how God deals with us, so that likewise, we can deal with others.

Now for this day … what will come our way?

Thirsting for the Light

Tuesday, April 19, 2022

Breaking Into Our Darkness God’s Light Invites Us to God’s Feast

of the Bread of Life and the Water of Eternal Life

Which Satisfy Us As We Were Created to Be.

Psalm 143:6

I stretch out my hands to you; my soul thirsts for you like a parched land. Selah

Revelation 22:17

The Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come.’
And let everyone who hears say, ‘Come.’
And let everyone who is thirsty come.
Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift.

Words of Grace For Today

There are gifts that we give each other, some are things. They bear preciousness less in how much they can be sold for, as they are an object not unlike a savings account.

Though, as an aside, a ‘savings account’ that can be mobile and carried with one as one runs for one’s life, as refugees of many kinds do and as war has forced so many to do … these ‘mobile savings accounts’ can make the difference between life and death. The value therein can be bartered for the necessities of life as one runs … and/or one’s life can be taken by someone who wants to steal the ‘thing of value.’

The gift that God gives freely, generously, prodigiously cannot be taken from us. It is the water of life that satisfies our thirsts.

So we thirst for God.

We thirst for God like people trying to cross a great desert, a great parched land as our lives too often become.

We thirst in the wilderness of our hearts and souls for God.

We thirst from within our parched bodies, hearts and minds for God.

We plead with God to come.

We plead for God to come now and

to make right what is done wrongly to us,

to make right what is done wrongly to others,

to make right what we have done wrongly to ourselves and to others.

And God comes, breaking in on us like the heavens parting to shower light on a darkened world.

God comes, breaking into the cacophony we’ve allowed our lives to become in this noisy, information saturated world … with stillness, with calm, with silence.

God’s silence absorbs the cacophony of drivel and evil and lands us in a peace which is beyond our comprehension abilities.

God invites us to the fountain of the water of life, and says, “Drink and take all that you need.”

The wonders of life well watered can only overwhelm our senses, our thoughts, our histories, our stories, our minds and our hearts.

And we say a quiet thanks, allowing God’s generosity to pour over us on to those around us who are so parched they do not even know they are thirsty.

Into this day we go, swimming in the Light that no one can ignore, even though many deny it, wishing to hide their deceptions, schemes, and destruction of people and God’s creation.

Into this day we go, with a peace that deflects the noise of distraction from life.

Into this day we go, full of wonder and gratitude.

How else could it be, for us, who are so blessed by God’s many gifts?

Blizzard Fools

Thursday, April 14, 2022

Is This the Path, The Life, That Christ Calls Us To?

Where from Comes Our Strength to Carry on

Into the Wilderness?

Only from God Who Walks with Us!

Isaiah 45:23-24

By myself I have sworn,
from my mouth has gone forth in righteousness
a word that shall not return:
‘To me every knee shall bow,
every tongue shall swear.’
Only in the Lord, it shall be said of me,
are righteousness and strength;
all who were incensed against him
shall come to him and be ashamed.

John 6:51

I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live for ever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.’

Words of Grace For Today

Yesterday the snow started in SE Saskatchewan, cm and cm fell. Then the wind up to 90km/hour blew it around like a chauffeur on meth.

The CBC article was well organized. A truck headed east to Brandon stopped to wait out the storm. Not his life, not his cargo is worth the risk of piling it up in the ditch or worse into other vehicles.

A young couple from Brandon travelled to a concert in Regina and they are on their way back, interviewed at the same spot the trucker has parked his rig, along with a collection of 18-wheelers. Who goes to a concert now in Covid times when all the restrictions are lifted leaving everyone so vulnerably exposed!?! A photo from the RCMP shows the visibility, which is forecast to get worse out of SE Saskatchewan into Manitoba. The road disappears into the white of snow and cloud ahead at 100 feet at most. The young couple says they are going to keep heading east until they come across a barrier across the road, or they simply cannot go further.

They are hell bent on getting back home.

What a contrast to the trucker who wisely sits out the danger of killing himself or others.

The arrogant leader portrayed in Isaiah at least knows where from his righteousness and strength come from: it comes from the Lord. I suppose that kind of arrogance could see him head out into a blizzard, ‘knowing’ that God calls him to travel!

But not likely.

For no matter how haughty we humans become, and even foolish, for those who recognize that their only righteousness and strength is not their own but that given as a gift to them by God, do not test fate for little to no reason. Risks are taken only to do God’s work.

So we know, that our lives are not anything, in fact we would not still be breathing, except that God has fed us the bread of life, Christ’ body. In him there is no darkness at all, the night and the day are all alike. In him we do not succumb to the fear of life, the fear of having to make our own way, the fear that we must achieve in order to have value. We know that our value is given in Christ’ body, and no one can take it from us. We are free and forever righteous and full of strength!

Therefore we follow Christ’ example: ministering to the poor, the marginalized, those whose voices have been taken from them. We bring God’s promise of life abundant, in sacrifice, giving life to others.

Come what may, blizzard or heat wave, floods or drought, war or barbarians ruining peace, we know that we live to Christ. We will die to Christ. And then we will live again with Christ.

So now we trust that God walks with us, and rests with us, as we stop to wait out the blizzards of life.

Sweet Swaps

Monday, April 11, 2022

No Matter How Dark It Becomes Christ Brings Light

and Light Burdens

to Our Lives

Psalm 31:24

Be strong, and let your heart take courage, all you who wait for the Lord.

Romans 5:1-2

Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God.

Words of Grace For Today

Waiting in hope, taking courage, having received grace … What is this all about?

Paul N. Hanson provided this snippet as an illustration:

Skip-Bo is a simple game for all ages. A bit simplified: cards are drawn, and unloaded to the discard piles matching a top card by number or colour. Special cards in the deck spice up the play: “Draw 4,” “Skip the next player,” “Trade hands” with another player. You win by emptying your hand. We four parents and four kids sat to play. Then the burdens grew too great for my youngest and his little eyes poured out tears. His small hands could not hold all the cards he was stuck with. The other dad, holding only two cards, drew the “Trade hands” card. He announced he would swap his two cards for my boy’s twenty. Imagine my son’s reaction!

What a sweet exchange! Christ emptied Himself, took our burdens, even our deaths, and gave us renewed life. Christ sets us free! (Luther Seminary God Pause – reworked by TL)

Now that we are free we have lots to be thankful for. We no longer hold the losing hand, so great a hand it is that we cannot even bear to shoulder the burden and make our way through the day. We no longer have to unload some of our guilt and debts on to others.

Jesus takes our burdens from us, not just once, and thereafter we’d better get it together to avoid another losing hand! No! In fact, no matter how hard we try, give anyone of us a little time and we accumulate another burden of shtako so heavy that our lives just stink like hades. Jesus comes and walks with us, and continually offers to swap loads with us, freeing us so that we can offer God’s unending blessings of forgiveness and renewed life to everyone we encounter.

What a sweet exchange! Over and Over and Over again.

We boast, not in how little our burden now is, nor in the loads we’ve been relieved of, but in the Grace of God that is expressed in Jesus continually swapping burdens with us!

What a song we have to sing!

What a story we have to share!

What Time Is It?!

Sunday, April 10, 2022

What Time Is It?

Spring Snow Heavy Falling Time.

Waiting for Summer?

Living in the Wonders of Spring?

Isaiah 8:17

I will wait for the Lord, who is hiding his face from the house of Jacob, and I will hope in him.

Titus 2:13-14

… while we wait for the blessed hope and the manifestation of the glory of our great God and Saviour, Jesus Christ. He it is who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify for himself a people of his own who are zealous for good deeds.

Words of Grace For Today

Enlyn Ott, Executive Director of Healthy Congregations, wrote early on in the Covid Pandemic (16 April 2020) in her invitation to her then upcoming workshop:

Constant change, new models and numbers are a way of life for us now. Regular patterns are upended. Relationships need to be maintained in new ways. Technology is used in places that never considered it a possibility before, raising issues of inadequacy as well as a sense of accomplishment. Death and illness are only a breath away.

I have decided to take a line from Winston Churchill for my workshop at the upcoming Navigating the Rapids conference. It is entitled “For Such a Time as This.” What time is this? And what kind of time is it calling us to?

Isaiah begins, I will wait …

Titus continues a previous thought with while we wait …

This ongoing, perhaps never quite ending, Covid Pandemic, among so many other things has taught us again that we wait. We must wait. We must wait for the day when we can rush out with no thought of protecting ourselves and others. While we wait for ‘normal’ to return, we need to protect ourselves and other by physically maintaining distance, by wearing the best masks we can get, by improving ventilation and avoiding areas with poor ventilation, by constantly washing and sanitizing our hands, and ‘staying the blazes home!’ when we do not need to go out.

What is this ‘normal’ that we wait for?

Is it worth the wait!?

There is no advantage to anyone by disregarding reality, denying reality, and pretending that Covid is not here and here with a vengeance, and coming yet again with new and more contagious and deadly variants. The real problem we all have is that while we wait we have to know what we are waiting for! Otherwise we can go mad, and like so many, head out without waiting, without caution, without protection for ourselves and others … and with our denial of it’s reality we make the reality of the pandemic last and last and last … and kill and maim more and more people.

On this Psalm – Passion Sunday we remember Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem so celebrated by people, by people fervent with hope, but hoping for a saviour that was and is never to come, a political, a military, a worldly saviour to lead us into our own cruel and evil ways of living off the backs of others, instead of continuing as it is now when others live off our backs, while 2% of the 7 billion on earth live off the backs of the 70% who have next to nothing, and off the backs of the other 25% who believe they have lots, but have so little. The other 3% are God’s saints. Maybe the percentage is larger. One cannot know.

This Sunday we remember how Jesus rode into Jerusalem, and we remember what followed.

Confrontation

Celebration

Betrayal

False Charges

False Conviction

Capital Torture the Sentence

Cruel Taunting

Death

What kind of a saviour suffers these things, and willingly?

The Saviour of the world

Our Saviour

Our Saviour who redeems us from all iniquity and purifies for himself a people of his own.

The ‘normal’ we wait for is certainly not the return of what was ‘normal’ prior to the Covid pandemic and all it’s changes to our lives.

What we wait for is life,

blessed life, as one of Christ’s own, redeemed and purified, still sinners and always saints.

Constant change …. What time is this? And what kind of time is it calling us to?

This is, as always, God’s time, God’s blessed time for us. Our blessed time in God’s time, in God’s blessed creation.

This time, like all time for all generations, calls us to return to Christ, to confess the reality of our lives, the inevitable brokenness of our lives, and to give thanks for the blessings that flow over us so abundantly, waiting

waiting for us to share them with all other peoples.

Righteousness and Peace and Joy?

Saturday, April 9, 2022

_{Taken on June 19, 2021, for The New York Times, Amber Bracken’s photo titled Kamloops Residential School was named World Press Photo of the Year on Thursday[7 April 2022]. (Amber Bracken for The New York Times/World Press Photo via AP, via CBC)}

Psalm 97:1

The Lord is king! Let the earth rejoice; let the many coastlands be glad!

Romans 14:17

For the kingdom of God is not food and drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.

Words of Grace For Today

If we live now in God’s Kingdom, not for food and drink, but for righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, then how can we think that God’s Kingdom is here already – or ever -, when such things happen as genocide through the kidnapping, jailing in ‘enlightened schools’, and indoctrination or death of young indigenous children, and the so many other blatant injustices that are perpetrated by our leaders, our own police, our own courts, and of course everywhere else in the world as well??!

On that hillside near Kamloops, the evening specular light of the sunset and the rainbow set in the sky speaks more loudly than we can think possible. Therein we see a clue.

While the dark past is marked having been discovered and uncovered and declared and denounced loudly around the world, God provides the specular light of beautiful life, the rainbow of hope, and the talent of photographer A. Braken at the right time to capture all in one photo the horror of the past and the goodness of the present and the hope for our future.

We would like to see perfect beauty all around: NO MORE destruction of other humans, no more war, no more violence, no more lies and deceit and destorying of people. Yet God provides us freewill. From that always flows the possibilities that we humans seem incapable of passing up, the possibility to try to get ahead at other people’s expense, death, and extinction.

Thank God for specular light.

Thank God for rainbows.

Thank God for photographers of great dedication and talent, and so many others, who remind us of the goodness of life and of the hope for our future in the face of …

… well, in the face evil,

especially evil in us, which we see most clearly as reflections in others’ evil deeds.

Today, why not: let us work diligently and intensely to live righteousness and peace and joy

remembering always that such living is only possible in the Holy Spirit.

Images of Blessings and Dangers to Life Itself

Thursday, April 7, 2022

Spring Snow Falls Heavy on Rust Leaves That Forgot To Let Go Last Fall

Are We Also Out of Sync with Creation

Has God Blessed Us Beyond All Imagination or Image of Blessing?

Genesis 49:22-26

‘Joseph is a fruitful bough,

a fruitful bough by a spring;

his branches run over the wall.

The archers fiercely attacked him;
they shot at him and pressed him hard.

Yet his bow remained taut,
and his arms were made agile

by the hands of the Mighty One of Jacob,
by the name of the Shepherd, the Rock of Israel,

by the God of your father, who will help you,
by the Almighty who will bless you
with blessings of heaven above,

blessings of the deep that lies beneath,
blessings of the breasts and of the womb.

The blessings of your father
are stronger than the blessings of the eternal mountains,

the bounties of the everlasting hills;
may they be on the head of Joseph,
on the brow of him who was set apart from his brothers.

by the God of your father, who will help you, by the Almighty who will bless you with blessings of heaven above, blessings of the deep that lies beneath, blessings of the breasts and of the womb.

1 John 3:18-20

Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action. And by this we will know that we are from the truth and will reassure our hearts before him whenever our hearts condemn us; for God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.

Words of Grace For Today

Images of God’s blessings reflect the world of the writer.

These passages from Genesis use the image of the bow held taut, arrows shot at one by one’s enemies who press hard against one (seeking one’s death), in counterpoint to God’s blessings of heaven above, blessings of the deep that lies beneath, blessings of the breasts and of the womb, blessings that are stronger than the blessings of the eternal mountains, the bounties of the everlasting hills.

The bow and arrow are no longer common in the arsenal used to kill us by our enemies. Mighty warships with great guns, fighter jets with smart missiles, drones for surveillance and armed with missiles and guns, automatic rifles, RPGs, tanks and artillery, fighter helicopters, nuclear submarines, silent submarines, radar, sonar, anti tank missiles, anti-aircraft missiles, and propaganda. Closer to home the weapons are hunting rifles, shotguns, poisons, deadly-wrongly-provided health care, webs of lies and deceptions, and corrupt police, lawyers, prosecutors and judges.

The deadliest, the least detected or spoken of, are always the psychological assaults, most destructively spun by one’s who have pursued, won, and spoken of love, though love is so far from their capability. Their self-interests are everything to them, and the lies told never end until one is dead and gone and hopefully forgotten … for if and when the truth is known the false-love persons are most detested and shamed … for they attack under the guise of what all know (even if they pretend not to accept): namely that love is the one precious piece of life that God gives us so that we can overcome all other challenges to life, and with love press on to live honest, honourable, and holy lives.

So we say with the writer of 1 John: Let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action. And by this we will know that we are from the truth and will reassure our hearts before him whenever our hearts condemn us; for God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.

In love we see God’s attitude toward us and all creation, and by love we are emboldened to live and live abundantly, blessed with all blessings ever imagined, including God’s blessings of heaven above, blessings of the deep that lies beneath, blessings of the breasts and of the womb, blessings that are stronger than the blessings of the eternal mountains, the bounties of the everlasting hills.

God’s Music for Us All

Tuesday, April 5, 2022

Looking Up at The Iguazu Falls

Looking Down at The Largest Falls on Earth!

Barriers

Beauty:

Our Creator’s Visible Music

Ezra 3:11

They sang responsively, praising and giving thanks to the Lord, ‘For he is good, for his steadfast love endures for ever towards Israel.’ And all the people responded with a great shout when they praised the Lord, because the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid.

Mark 14:26

When they had sung the hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives.

Words of Grace For Today

Music carries the human heart when all other modes of expression and communication fail.

A great moment is reached for the Israelis as Solomon has taken on the task of building a temple for their God, though God had many times said that there was to be no temple. Settling in the Promised Land transformed the people’s understanding of God’s needs (and their needs hidden therein). So Solomon starts building. Or rather a great number of the people, under orders from Solomon, start building, starting with the foundation.

Foundations are important not just in construction of buildings, but in life, and in relationships.

The 1986 movie The Mission portrays the Jesuit’s work to bring the Christian Gospel (as good news, life giving news) to the natives in South America where Brazil, northeastern Argentina and eastern Paraguayan meet today. Their outreach to the Guaraní natives, isolated beyond the Iguazu Falls, the largest falls in the world, has failed, resulting in the deaths of every priests who has ventured above the falls.

Father Gabriel, having ordered the last priest up the falls to his death, climbs the cliffs next to the falls, knowing full well he is likely to also be sent tied to a cross back down the falls to his death. He brings with him one more tool for outreach, his oboe. As he senses that he is being stalked by the Guaraní he pulls out his oboe and plays Morricone’s “Gabriel’s Oboe” (or Gabriel’s Oboe) a haunting, loving, profound piece of music. Father Gabriel’s stalkers are moved from aggression to curiosity to …. Though one warrior grabs the oboe and breaks it, the others take Gabriel and his broken oboe to their chief. Father Gabriel is left unharmed, and later one of the natives returns the oboe to him, repaired.

This lays the foundation for a very fruitful relationship between Father Gabriel and the Guaraní … until, like all things good, the devil breaks it all to pieces. This time European and Papal politics, in the Treaty of Madrid (1750), transfer the area the Jesuits have worked in from the Spanish to the Portuguese. The Portuguese allow slavery. The Portuguese destroy the Jesuit Missions that, under the protection of the Spanish, have brought education and music as the bearers of Christian faith to the peoples below and above the falls.

Still, today, as in every generation, music carries the Gospel beyond what words and actions can. Music permeates our lives down to the foundations, and helps the Holy Spirit rebuild our foundations on that which created and sustains the universe, God’s unconditional steadfast love and generous Grace.

Exactly what so many poets and thinkers have expressed in words that have been put to music, for example Dietrich Bonhöffer’s Von Guten Mächten Wunderbar Verborgen to Siegfried Fietz’ music here Fietz’ limited English translation

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.

(When now the silence permeates deep around us
let us hear those full sounds
of the world, invisibly spreading everywhere:
all your children’s hymns of high praise.)

…

So we raise our voices in the unending chorus ….