Spring – Page 7

Dressed for the Day

Thursday, November 4, 2021

A New Day at 6:41

May Look Like All the Brokenness Left from All Our Yesterdays

Doch

God, Robes All the Saints,

In New and Righteous Garments,

So That We Rejoice in God’s Grace That We Get to Share

With Everyone

Isaiah 61:10

I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my whole being shall exult in my God; for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation, he has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself with a garland, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.

Acts 8:39

When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away; the eunuch saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing.

Words of Grace For Today

As she’d gotten older, year by year, month by month, even week by week, Jill had spent more and more time getting ready for the day. What started as a simple wash and run in her 20’s, by the time she was 50 was a thorough wash, application of 5 different ‘cleansing’ and ‘preserving’ soaps and lotions, followed by a ten minute exercise routine, then three different pills (a medication for GERDS, a vitamin for women 50+, and a glucosamine for arthritis), a breakfast with Omega3 and antioxidants, and a careful dressing for the day to ensure she did not leave something showing that should not be showing, and then when she was in her 60’s each year there was another thing added to the routine, and the medications at night were added and taken away, exercises, added or increased and removed, then added again, then replaced with others, and the arthritis demanded more and more medications (or additives to food, and the simple glucosamine was now a cocktail of additives that relieved the pain for a few hours, and dressing was always painful. Her wardrobe had to change depending on whether she could get her arms into a sweater, or she needed a button or zipper up front, or whether she could bend her legs and hips enough to get into something proper looking or she had to lay down to edge her way into something quite loose and comfortable, but a bit ghastly looking.

When she read the passage from Isaiah she thought about how her clothing had changed, and how getting dressed had become a major production in the last few months, worse than ever before. What a spectacular image: God has clothed me with the garments of salvation, God has covered me with the robe of righteousness.

Were getting dressed so easy and simple. Just let God do it. If that were her morning routine then she’d wear her ‘birthday suit’ everyday all day long, and that was not a pretty site anymore if it ever had been.

Still this assurance that God robed her in righteousness struck her to the core, and she involuntarily gave God thanks. Then noticing Isaiah’s words again, she realized that these ancient words from so many generations ago reported the same reaction in the writer. Because of the grace of God the writer greatly rejoiced in the Lord, my whole being exulted in my God.

Sometimes it was the simple ancient words that connect us to all the saints, those who have gone before us, those living now on earth, and all those yet to come in the generations of the future. What we experience, knowing we share so much with all the saints of all time, is what the eunuch experienced after Philip baptized him: as he joined the saints through baptism, and after Philip was there with him no more, he went on his way rejoicing.

So also this day, Jill thought, we saints, all of us, have so many reasons to rejoice, but none is more earth shaking and life altering than that God chooses us and clothes us in garments of salvation, in robes of righteousness.

Obedience to Earn Healing? Doch!

Saturday, October 30, 2021

As Winter Cold Approaches

We Trust God’s Promises

To Heal Us Graciously

And Give Us New Life

With Christ’ Marvellous Touch

Exodus 15:26

He said, ‘If you will listen carefully to the voice of the Lord your God, and do what is right in his sight, and give heed to his commandments and keep all his statutes, I will not bring upon you any of the diseases that I brought upon the Egyptians; for I am the Lord who heals you.’

Luke 4:40

As the sun was setting, all those who had any who were sick with various kinds of diseases brought them to him; and he laid his hands on each of them and cured them.

Words of Grace For Today

If we are obedient to God, then God will not strike us with diseases, but will heal us. So reads the text from Exodus.

Any and all came with those who were sick with various diseases, and Jesus laid hands on them and cured them. So reads the Gospel from Luke.

God’s promises are always given as a statement of God’s stance towards humans, both righteous and waywardly sinful and evil humans. Jesus’ story is God’s communication to us of God’s stance towards us, which is in a word Grace. That is God saves us from our sin while we are yet sinful, not because or in response to what we have done right, but rather as a response to what we have done that is sinful! God not only saves us from our sins, but God cures us of our every illness, renews life in us, and then sends us back out into the world, that wretched place of evil and sin and corruption and greed and lies and destruction …. God sends us back out into the world, that wonderful place of God’s good creation, of beauty, Grace, love and hope. God sends us out to be, in the midst of all that evil, the one’s who embody God’s Grace, beauty, love, and hope for all people.

So why the conditional given in Exodus and so many other places in the Bible, both Old and New Testaments? Simply because Grace is such a difficult reality for arrogant humans to swallow that we turn it around, pervert it, into to something we can earn. That is the story we are accustom to living with and it is comfortable even in the extreme as we recognize that it is the ultimate illness and disease by which we will die, by which we are dying, by which we have died and yet still walk as shells of humans on earth.

It is also the religious story, so commonly used in so many traditions, by the ‘priests’ or those who pretend to lead others, in order to control their followers. It is exactly the means the Devil uses to corrupt and pervert us and live all around us.

Jesus comes to heal us and to live a story we can understand … so we can understand and trust (amidst all the sick evil around and in us) that:

Grace still abounds, as does beauty, love, and hope.

Thankfully these abound for all the children who have grown up by those so perverted they cannot see Grace at all, yet alone beauty, love or hope.

Thanks be to God.

What Measure?

Friday, October 29, 2021

How do we measure

all we see

and experience

and know?

What is the colour of the sunset?

It’s true measure is only Grace.

1 Chronicles 29:11

Yours, O Lord, are the greatness, the power, the glory, the victory, and the majesty; for all that is in the heavens and on the earth is yours; yours is the kingdom, O Lord, and you are exalted as head above all.

Hebrews 4:16

Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

Words of Grace For Today

How do we measure all that we measure?

How do we measure what angle the sun is at, so that the solar panels produce most efficiently through all the year (helping reduce our carbon footprint for everyone’s benefit, especially future generations), or so that we know when to wake up to be outside before dawn breaks to take photos of the magnificence of creation (to share and inspire others, who cannot see this beauty in person, to celebrate God’s blessings), or so that we know when to start our work for the most efficient use of our bodies’ capabilities since the warmth of the sun protects against injury and further degeneration of ‘this limited resource’ we each have?

How do we measure the wealth that we possess, or the wealth that others have, or the wealth that governments control (and waste through bungling and favouritism and fraud), or the wealth that is needed to deal with the challenges we personally, or collectively (in our local area, our country, or together in this whole wide world), face this day and can anticipate we will face in the coming days, weeks, months and decades (of climate change, breakdown of global supply lines, on-going pandemics)?

How do we measure the needs of our stomachs, our minds, our hearts, and our spirits?

We can choose many different ‘yard sticks’: our or other’s bank accounts as our/their worthiness of living and living in comfort; scientific facts and theories that inform us of creation and how it ‘works’; the needs (real and addiction created or imagined) we feel each day or each minute allowing them to dictate what we do to satisfy our ‘hungers’.

There is no measure that will give us life other than placing the universe or rather our perspective of it in order at the very beginning of each of our considerations:

As Martin Luther wrote in the Catechisms again and again: We are to love and fear God so that ….

It is in that fear and love as the beginning point that all other measures make sense of life being blessed for us and for all other people.

There will be no end of need, dire need, on our part; our stomachs, our minds, our hearts, and our spirits all have needs that need be met for life to continue well for us. There is no end of evil and sin that permeates the world, disrupting the meeting of those needs for us and for all people. There is no end of hungry stomachs, minds, hearts and spirits; desperately hunger grips more of us than not at any moment!

Knowing that God rules over all though our best efforts, our best measures, our best science, our best collaborations, and our greatest wealth will be demanded of us to meet the hunger that grips all people. None of that will do much good, though, if we try to go it alone, and working with others requires something of us that we can barely generate on our own: cooperation with those so different than us. Before we begin then we needs must therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

Grace, that is God’s attitude towards us and all people that has the power to overcome all challenges we will ever face. It can be our attitude on God’s behalf towards all people that we work with and for whom we work each day, ourselves, families and friends, our neighbours, strangers and aliens far from us, and even our enemies. God’s grace is sufficient for all people. And God equips us God-made saints to be those who spread it liberally everywhere, to all people.

As the sun continues it’s dance with the darkness and the moon do-si-do-s around the earth, all motion of bodies celestial and corporeal, all minds great and small, all hearts generous and restrained, all spirits of every colour … all motion of everything is a dance of Grace, a dance of Grace started by God at creation and continued each day as God creates new time and reality for us all.

The Blessed, Beautiful, Fiery Monster

Wednesday, October 27, 2021

God’s Promises Are Sure!

After the coming winter, I will see another Spring

with all it’s sunsets

God’s Promises Are Sure!

After the coming winter, I will see another Spring

as surely as the sun rises!

Psalm 34:4

I sought the Lord, and he answered me, and delivered me from all my fears.

2 Corinthians 1:20

For in him every one of God’s promises is a ‘Yes.’ For this reason it is through him that we say the ‘Amen’, to the glory of God.

Words of Grace For Today

At 3:32 I wake and go out to stoke the fire. As the smoke clears from the shelter, I walk outside in the moonlight and the stars bright. A wondrous nightscape, an early morning, blows across this vision to the universe though there is nary a breeze or rustle as silent smoke paints a dark swath across the grass and tarp covering the stacked wood, all piled in order by diameter, scraggly pieces piled high by the door to be burned before hard cold gripes the meadow, tosses it out of the land of living things, and buries it from sight under frozen white water. For now in these mild autumn days and nights the deer feast on the lush grass growing from the old barnyard waste broken down by natures’ recycler into nutrients galore, and I smile and labour away gathering, cutting, stacking, and splitting wood, or rest my back strained and spasming in the chill.

All that in one moment’s view into the night’s semidarkness, before I return to the fiery monster devouring wood and belching smoke into the night air high and away, closing the ash door that once opened livens the monster, the shelter door that has let in fresh air, and the smoke vent that has expelled smoke to rise with the chimney pointed at the stars.

This will be my twice nightly routine for the next 4 to 6 months, rising to stoke the monster in order that the warmth it creates will save me from freezing. I give God thanks whether or not there is a spectacular view to the universe outside as I wait for the smoke to clear, the inevitable smoke that spews out of the monster into the shelter when the door is opened to feed it more wood, for this monster and the routine of feeding it is easier to deal with than bugs and mosquitoes and wasps, and the cold keeps the dangerous animals away, especially the most dangerous, unpredictable two-legged kind.

For I sought the Lord, and he answered me, and delivered me from all my fears.

And I know that I am delivered into the freedom of living as a God-made saint not on my own merit but by Grace, most generously and freely poured out on us all. In this I know, as all the saints know, that in Christ Jesus every one of God’s promises is a ‘Yes.’ For this reason it is through him that we say the ‘Amen’, to the glory of God.

This ‘Amen’ is as Martin Luther taught us, our saying to God and each other, ‘this is most certainly true!’

What visions of majesty and goodness God gives to us, so that we may know the promises given to us through Jesus the Christ are already true: God blesses me, God blesses all the saints, with beauty and the presence of God.

Even in the dark of night that could bring fears to be monsters that eat at one’s soul.

Even in the solitude that could be loneliness which opens the door to the Devil’s temptations.

Even in the poverty that is the result of others’ lies, that could lead to starvation.

Even in the homelessness, a result of other’s lies leading to poverty, that could lead to my freezing to death.

For God has provided all I need so that my enemies cannot kill me; God has provided even a fiery monster that consumes wood, so that I am not cold, even in the coldest night of winter.

Justly so, I say with all the saints: thanks and glory be to God!

What about you? What are you doing this winter in the middle of the spectacular nights?

We ARE In The Same Boat

Thursday, October 21, 2021

Our Shared Boat,

Christ

Has Space for All,

Light for All,

Hope for All.

Ruth 1:16

But Ruth said, ‘Do not press me to leave you or to turn back from following you! Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God.

Galatians 3:28

There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.

Words of Grace For Today

Often said of Covid-19 pandemic is that we are all in the same boat on this one. Everyone needs to get vaccinated in order for any of us to be safe. That means everyone in the world.

We are not in the same boat, though. We are all dumped out onto the ocean, that is true. The problem is some of us are in private luxury yachts burning diesel to manoeuvre with chefs preparing 3 meals a day with coffee, snacks, and an open bar tea at all hours, others are in luxury sail boats eating gourmet foods, some of us are in smaller boats on survival rations handed out by our governments, and many, many people are hanging on flotsam praying for their very lives.

Naomi is an elderly widow in a foreign country whose two sons have also died. She is leaving to find her way back to her homeland, in hopes of living out her remaining years there. Ruth, one of her widowed daughters-in-law will not abandon her even though Naomi directs the two daughters-in-law to return to their mothers to seek new husbands there.

Ruth promises, even in this hopeless, bleak culmination of time and events, to stay with Naomi, to adopt her homeland, her people, and her God. There is not much hope in any of that, now is there. Not at that time when women had no standing or property or ability to be gainfully employed (with notable exceptions). So Ruth accompanies Naomi and together the two make history, enough that the Bible contains the Book of Ruth.

What would the world look like if we were not so able to abandon all those people hanging on to flotsam in the pandemic of Covid-19?

What would it take for us truly to be united as one kind of people, on privilege of people, on status and wealth of people?

God would have to come and forgive us all our sins, making us equally acceptable before God, based solely on God’s Grace. Then God would have to send us forgiven people out into this wonderful and terribly broken and overcrowded creation to extend that same equal and unconditional forgiveness and love to each other. We would finally be united as beggar-sinners, blessed by God’s own generosity towards us all.

And this God demonstrated with Jesus’ story is exactly what God did do for us all.

So we are united as one under Christ, without distinction, without class or privilege or wealth differences. When it counts we are all in the same boat … with Christ making our way across the dead sea of our sins and past evils that still hold us in bondage.

When it counts we are all in the same boat … the trouble is we continue to sin, and cannot stop ourselves, so that some are climbing out of our shared boat with Jesus into their private luxury yachts, others are tossing people out of Jesus’ boat into the open ocean to die, and yet others are jumping ‘free’ because they cannot stand the thought that they are at best beggars for God’s mercies.

When it counts those of us who are saved by Christ and follow Christ … we are all in the same boat … and we work hard as we are, knowing we are God-made saints, and simultaneously still sinners, yet inspired by the Holy Spirit to be God’s love and grace for those around us.

We certainly are in the same boat and the rations are not fancy. The seating is crowded. Yet we are still afloat … by Grace alone.

Thanks be to God.

Hey There! You! … Yes, You!

Wednesday, October 13, 2021

From the Clouds in the Heavens

to the Depths of the Waters

God is with Us.

1 Samuel 3:4

Then the Lord called, ‘Samuel! Samuel!’ and he said, ‘Here I am!’

Acts 18:9-10

One night the Lord said to Paul in a vision, ‘Do not be afraid, but speak and do not be silent; for I am with you, and no one will lay a hand on you to harm you, for there are many in this city who are my people.’

Words of Grace For Today

God calls us in many and various ways, each individually called and promised that God is with us already, and that God will walk with us each day of our lives.

We do not need to answer at all, and God will still walk with us. If we turn about towards God and follow Jesus, God will walk with us. If we turn away from God to follow some other hollow way of living, filling ourselves with all the variety of creation’s possibilities, God will walk with us still … and suffer what we do to ourselves and to others around us.

God calls us and knows that we will be afraid, and that we cannot help but be afraid. God asks that we order our fears under God’s promise to be with us: That ought to inspire a greater fear of God than any other fear possible in this world, even the fear of the Devil, the Great Deceiver, grasping at our very being with promises of all kinds, yet all of them empty of life abundant for us and for people around us.

Our fear of God, subsumed under God’s promise to walk with us, to protect us (even in death) from all harm, and to forgive us, give us new life, and send us out with the purpose we were created to fulfill (namely being God’s unconditional love for all people so that they have life abundant) gives birth to a more powerful love for God, more powerful than even our fear of God.

God calls us in many and various ways. When we say, ‘Here I am! Send me!’ we tell God nothing God has not known since before time existed. What we do with these words is recognize God’s wondrous reality for us: God walks with us and knows where we are all the time, and knows what plays in our hearts, what fears consume us, what nightmares haunt us, what evil shreds at our being …. Still God loves us, heals us, and sends us out scars and all …

to be unconditional love for others.

It is a small task that encompasses not only our whole lives; it encompasses the entire universe.

God calls us in many and various ways …. and we answer if we dare! No matter, God walks with us.

‘Logic’? Have Mercy!

Tuesday, October 12, 2021

Those are trees,

no matter how much you may wish to say it isn’t so

they remain trees,

until they die

and cease to be even dead trees.

Daniel 9:18

Incline your ear, O my God, and hear. Open your eyes and look at our desolation and the city that bears your name. We do not present our supplication before you on the ground of our righteousness, but on the ground of your great mercies.

Ephesians 3:12

In [Christ Jesus our Lord] we have access to God in boldness and confidence through faith in him.

Words of Grace For Today

We do not bring supplications to God on the grounds of our own righteousness, which is barely enough to notice, but on the ground of God’s own great mercies …

for by God’s mercies, by Grace, we have come to believe in Jesus our Lord and Saviour, and by that faith alone we are bold and confident that God hears us when we cry.

With Covid 19 in it’s fourth wave here, overfilling our hospitals and ICU capacity so that surgeries of all kinds are cancelled for lack of staff and space to support the surgeries and the patients, we do cry to God for help.

With Covidiots and Antivaxxers leading ‘the charge’ into the ICU beds for an average of 6 weeks each and then too often the morgues we are left dumbstruck by the Querdenken (the Skewed Thinking) that brings Covidiots and Antivaxxers to exist at all, we do cry to God for help.

Friday evening of Thanksgiving weekend I took a walk on to crown land into the random camping area, which has emptied after a summer of campers staying for months, parties of hundreds, and multiple households regularly sharing space and buffet style meals (all against the laws concerning random camping on crown land and health regulations in effect at the time – as if breaking the law were the purpose of coming out to this crown land). I met two boater pulling their boat out of the lake and securing the motor before driving away, and then a single camper (actually a drinker.) He started on a rant about Covid after I declined his invitation to come and sit beside him on his truck tailgate.

I think his logic can be summarized like this:

At work for an oil company they are testing everyone everyday [after huge infection rates that caused work disruptions, not to mention hospitalizations, ICU overloads and deaths] he is not vaccinated. Others he works for are vaccinated. They tested positive and he tested negative. Therefore the vaccines do not work and they are a hoax.

The scientists who tell us about vaccines are saying whatever it takes to get research grants, but they do not do anything real. It’s all fake. If it were real then there would be a cure for cancer [meaning a singular disease for all the things that are covered by the term cancer] but there is no cure.

The scientists say whatever they need to say in order to get more research grants in order to have a Mercedes in the driveway.

As he downed a beer, and tossed the can on a pile of more than 2 dozen empties, as he sat on the tailgate of that old, old pickup truck with mix matched cab and bed, ‘warming’ himself by the smoke of a fire stacked with huge logs enough to produce a 12’ high flame which were fortunately not burning because they were fresh cut green trees, beneath which was one birch dried piece of wood that was burning. It is illegal to drink alcohol on this piece of crown land, unless one has a campsite (which requires at least a tent) and one remains in that campsite.

My response to his ‘logic’:

If one wants to dismiss scientific research as real and disconnect oneself from reality (vaccinations never were purported to stop infections, but to stop the large majority of – not all – hospitalizations and deaths) then ANYTHING can be accepted as reality … and one is vulnerable to all fear-mongers and fear-based-power-takers, including the ruling party of this province.

So we cry to God, save us from this kind of ‘logic’ that endangers us all, as many, many people now wait for life-saving and life-restoring operations, which are displaced by the need for extra ICU beds to deal with people shot through with this kind of ‘logic’ and fear based hiding from reality.

We are so bold to cry to God, for it is not on our own merits that we are so bold, but by God’s own Grace exercised for us through Jesus Christ and made clear to us by Jesus’ story.

Lord save us from those who claim their freedom includes putting everyone else’s lives at risk.

Rending Our Hearts

Wednesday, October 6, 2021

God rends ice

as our hearts

and assembles us whole.

Joel 2:13

Rend your hearts and not your clothing. Return to the Lord, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and relents from punishing.

1 Thessalonians 5:9-10

For God has destined us not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, so that whether we are awake or asleep we may live with him.

Words of Grace For Today

Rending one’s clothing was a way of symbolically taking apart the life that had gone wrong, and allowing God to reassemble life in harmony with God’s will.

Like many of our religious practices we have reduced rending of clothing to a superficial act that really has no impact on our actual lives. So Joel calls people to not just rend their clothing, but to rend their hearts, and thereby to allow God to reassemble life to be in harmony with God’s will.

This simple act changes us at our foundations.

Jesus provides us God’s way forward for us: we rely solely on the Grace of Jesus the Christ, so that whether we are awake or asleep we may live … and live with him.

Living by Grace alone we have no place for wrath.

We embody God’s Grace. As God is, so God makes us saints gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and relents from punishing. This is quite the life, in which rending our hearts is a small and yet complete act of love.

Mercy, Mercy! How Can We Be Bored?

Tuesday, September 14, 2021

The Tree

The Same Tree

The Same Old Tree

How Can Beauty

Being Merciful

Ever Be Boring?

Psalm 41:2

The Lord protects them and keeps them alive; they are called happy in the land. The Lord does not give them up to the will of their enemies.

Matthew 5:7

Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.

Words of Grace For Today

Yesterday’s headline was “Trouble in the Prairies as surgeries postponed in Alberta, Saskatchewan due to COVID’s hospital burden.”

For weeks now the reports are that the large majority of those people burdening the hospitals with their Covid crises are those that have chosen not to be vaccinated. Meanwhile there are protests against vaccine passports required in order to gain access to events that are perhaps safe, but not if unvaccinated people attend. They put both themselves and others at great risk of being infected, the transmission rates go up (or rather wild) as vaccinated people also spread the virus, and the hospitals are overburdened. The results are catastrophic for so many people. Those with Covid in hospital suffer and die or more likely suffer for years from long Covid (further burdening the health care system). The overburdened hospitals push ‘elective’ surgeries off to an unknown future time, and those they do not result in immediate death, many postponements do contribute to more severe suffering and then earlier death.

The real tragedy is that children under 12 cannot be vaccinated, they are (because of those over 12 who choose not to be vaccinated) infected in greater numbers, and their suffering and death – and the fear of suffering and death – increase dramatically, a fear shared by their families and friends.

One has to ask why we do not gather those who choose to go un-vaccinated, line them up, and shoot them …

the first thought is with lead,

but mercy would dictate that we use needles and vaccinations,

and then many of us realize that we ought only shoot them

…

with a camera, post their photos on the internet, and let the chips fall as they may.

And

there ought to be a Canada-wide mandate that Covid vaccination passports must be established by all provinces and territories, and those without passports or exemptions due to health be barred from gatherings or services or business that they could not access during the height of Covid 19 lockdowns.

We probably will do nothing like that, for the political fallout would be great, where as the political fallout for doing nothing (and refusing to accept scientific guidance) seems to be less (and in some parties it seems to win political support – for fools are in no shortage.)

In these Covid times, we do not need a personal enemy to have our lives put at great risk. The Covidiots are doing that with great efficacy to us all.

So we trust that God protects us and keeps us alive. We know that God does not give us up to the will of our enemies, therefore we are called happy in the land.

No matter the Covid fools that endanger us all. No matter the personal enemies that attack us based on lies told about us to cover the liars’ own terrible sins. No matter the real likelihood that, even vaccinated we will be infected and suffer long Covid in some form or another. No matter how poor health care becomes because the system is overburdened by Covidiots’ and their victims, both intentional and unintentional. No matter the real fear we suffer that our children will contract Covid and suffer or die.

No matter what comes our way, we remain ‘happy in the land’ because we know that God walks with us.

No matter what comes our way, we remain ‘happy in the land’ because we know that God is always merciful with us, and God enables and motivates us to be merciful to all other people.

We have many challenging days ahead (only some of it is responding to Covidiots) never leaving us an excuse to be at all bored. Thanks be to God!

Not On Our Own!

Monday, September 13, 2021

All that Grows

Grows as God’s Blessing

for All

Isaiah 45:8

Shower, O heavens, from above, and let the skies rain down righteousness; let the earth open, that salvation may spring up, and let it cause righteousness to sprout up also; I the Lord have created it.

2 Corinthians 9:10

He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness.

Words of Grace For Today

After a cold hard-frozen winter, the thaw of spring arrives giving respite for hearts and bodies. As the cool spring days lengthen melting the snow pack, the ground thaws and seeds await the soft May rains and warm sun to germinate, we anticipate the new growth of wild and cultured seeds into plants to provide food for the many creatures of the earth, including us humans.

We trust that God will provide, in these days, throughout the whole earth, enough warmth, sun, and soft rain to feed the 7.4 billion humans who inhabit the earth. Climate change challenges the growth of enough to feed us all, though even in the many years when there is enough to feed everyone, we fail to distribute the food to all so that no one goes hungry. Indeed millions starve each year!

Food to eat is essential to life.

As we see each day, food is not enough. Food is not even the most essential thing for life. Much more essential is that we live in God’s blessings and respond to God’s Grace with justice based on truth, loving words and actions based on righteousness, and unconditional love for all people (a love that reflects God’s grace for us sinners).

Often our work, on Christ’s behalf in this world, is often described with images of seeds sprouting, growing, and producing a harvest to feed all people.

So it is that, while we give our greatest will and efforts towards fulfilling Christ’s call to reflect God’s love for us in our efforts for all people, we know that we cannot complete this work on our own. In fact, just as the seeds do not exist, nor can they begin to germinate, until God provides warm sun and sufficient moisture (not to mention that in previous years the harvest must have produced enough to provide seeds for the new spring.)

So we pray, God, creator of all that is, plant in us the seeds of righteousness, that with the warmth of Christ’s Light and the moisture in the Holy Spirit’s breathing into us, your Word may grow in us, and that our lives (our thoughts, words and actions) may reflect what we cannot even see on our own, namely your love and grace for all people.