Summer – Page 14

God’s Temple

Saturday, January 29, 2022

As Wonders Abound,

None Are More Wondrous

Than the Holy Temple,

The Holy Vessels

God Made Us To Be.

Ezekiel 37:23

They shall never again defile themselves with their idols and their detestable things, or with any of their transgressions. I will save them from all the apostasies into which they have fallen, and will cleanse them. Then they shall be my people, and I will be their God.

1 Corinthians 3:16

Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?

Words of Grace For Today

There are innumerable examples of how we have perverted life into something that is a zero-sum game, and we’ve taken it for all we can, mostly from others, as if that were our right. Some have perverted the image they have of themselves into an image of a godlet, and excluded God from their lives (as if that were possible anyway.) Others have turned themselves to pursue [fill in any thing, or pleasure, or position, or wealth, or … ] as if attaining enough of it would fill their lives, and all sorts of perverse things happen to them and the people around them because of their pursuits.

God simply created us with freewill, and we make a mess of it, a terrible mess of it, we certainly do, we do.

God does not leave us there, in the damnable places and conditions we create for ourselves. God comes, as demonstrated in Jesus’ story, to cleanse us, and to restore us as God’s people … so that we once again can be people who fear and love God above all else. We see again that God is with us always, that God has poured God’s Spirit into us, made us vessels that hold the holy of holies, so that we can be and do God’s generous, unconditional, love and grace for all people.

You, and I, and each person, are/am/is a holy temple; and our treatment of ourselves and of others as holy is properly warranted.

God don’t make no junk.

God just makes all things blessed, and us, God made holy.

Get used to it.

Be it, with gratitude.

Lost?

Friday, January 28, 2022

Caught In The Weeds Of Life

By What Do We Orient Ourselves?

Psalm 62:6

He alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress; I shall not be shaken.

Matthew 11:15

Let anyone with ears listen!

Words of Grace For Today

There are many things that we count on to keep ourselves oriented in life as we progress through each day, day after day. We might be tempted to compare our journey each day to a hiker on a trail to a mountain top where the view extends in all directions over the ice covered peaks of a magnificent mountain range. One goal, one path, and we trod on, climb on, take breaks to drink and to eat maybe even to sleep a night or two … always onward to that one goal and that one glorious view. That hiker orients their progress on a map, by GPS or compass, by landmarks, by the moss on the tree trunks, and then above the treeline by the sun or by the moon and the stars. Maybe a better comparison, we might think, would be to an adventurer on a trek to the north pole across the deteriorating ice, looking for so many work-arounds and water crossings, not being able to rely on a compass (and not having GPS to make that a non-issue).

Life is so much more complicated than a single path towards a single destination and a glorious view, so the comparison doesn’t help much to consider how we orient ourselves amidst each day’s challenges, complications, set backs, victories and rewards, and … and all the distractions or … or are the distractions not all distractions? Are not some of them the real gist of life?

How do we orient ourselves? By some distant goal or achievement? By some earned fame or landmark of wealth or accumulation of power? By some undocumentable attitude? By the love we receive from family, from children and grandchildren?

God created us for this journey, though it certainly is not on one path, not even one path for each of us 7 some billion on earth today. It certainly is not towards one goal either.

Describing life in it’s full colour, assailed by challenges and enemies, the Psalmist knows well the pains, sufferings, triumphs, losses, rewards, and joys of life … and with the imagery of being under attack assures us that God alone is our rock and our salvation, our fortress; We shall not be shaken.

The paths we take this day will be like many before, and perhaps like none we’ve seen. We can hope for a summit with a view to life all around us, but we are as likely going to be caught in the Devil’s deceptive net that shows us the world, and yet shows us nothing of reality at all, not at all.

God’s Word is spoken, sent out, brings unconditional love, renewed life, and a mission to be and share God’s Word, Grace, Love, and Hope with all people. We were all made with ears that can hear God’s Word. As we journey onward on our mission, Let anyone with ears listen! For in the Word of God we have all the orientation to the goodness and purpose of life that is possible.

Conditional or Unconditional Love?

Thursday, January 27, 2022

A Short Section of the Shovelled Portions

After the Daylight is Spent

as Well as My Capacity,

Energy, and

Back

are

Done.

Psalm 103:17-18

But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him, and his righteousness to children’s children, to those who keep his covenant and remember to do his commandments.

Hebrews 13:8

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and for ever.

Words of Grace For Today

The drive in here, into the meadow in the woods by the lake, from the gravel road that is maintained by the MD is nearly a kilometre long.

Most years the snow and rain make it challenging though not impossible to make the trek when needed to get supplies, food, and water.

Today that seems to have changed and to find out whether that has changed is to risk getting stuck in hard, cold, soft and freezing and hard frozen ice and snow smothered with rain over the last few hours.

Whether I can make transit that fist kilometre or not is entirely up to what I do in preparation. It is at least a two week task to try to shovel the worst parts free and clear down to the hard packed snow-ice that has developed over the last months from November on. There is no need to wish I had shovelled it regularly as the snows fell. First I had lots of other work to do to survive the winter so far, with it’s plentiful snow and it’s deep hard cold for days below -35⁰ and weeks below -25⁰. Second, the task of shovelling that kilometre once would take about a week of constant work, pushing my old body to it’s limits each day. By then the next snow would have fallen and I’d have had to start all over again … meaning I would have been shovelling snow constantly for months now and doing little else … when there is lots that has to be done to survive without a home in the woods next to a lake, even if that is all a huge blessing from God. So no regrets that I drove that kilometre as I could, dragged two logs behind to bounce a bit of the snow to the side and pack the remaining in a hardened roadway that I could drive over.

With the warming to above zero and the accompanying thaw, with the rain that has drenched the snow and with the freeze coming again that will turn it all into slippery ice, that kilometre will not be ‘miraculously’ ‘fahrbar’ (drive-able). The drive-ability of that kilometre depends now almost entirely on how much I shovel, where I shovel, how far down I shovel and if I survive (no heart attack or stroke or back spasms laying me flat in the snow for days while I freeze to death, or any other of a host of ways that shovelling could put me down.)

That’s a reality that is conditional, conditional on what I do.

God’s grace, forgiveness, claim on us, and mission that we are sent back into the world to work at is not conditional at all. God’s blessings and favour are not conditional on anything we do. That God blesses us and favours us is entirely unconditional! It depends only on God’s steadfast, never changing, never failing love and grace.

We humans do not like to be so dependent on any one or thing other than ourselves. So we, along with great words of God’s grace and steadfast love, have repeatedly perverted God’s promises into being conditional on our responses to God’s grace and steadfast love. Thus Psalm that teaches (wrongly) that God’s blessings and favour for us and our children and their children and all people is conditional on us keeping his covenant and remembering to do his commandments.

That condition sets us up to strive to be and do what we cannot be or do: perfect. And it gives control of our lives over to others who interpret our being and doing as sufficiently good enough or not.

God’s grace and steadfast love are not conditional.

God sends us out to be and do that same unconditional grace and love for all people.

Are we up to the mission? It does take every bit of life we have in us, and often more.

Night Vision Always

Monday, January 24, 2022

No Matter How Darkness Arrives

in Our Lives,

God Sees Clearly

and Guides Us to Live Well!

Psalm 139:11-12

If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light around me become night’, even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to 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

God knows we know what it is like

to have darkness overtake us,

and

to have the light disappear on us while we progress through our work that requires light to finish.

We are thankful that for God there is no darkness that is dark. For God the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you.

God does not need night vision googles to deal with what we experience as darkness, for even as the sun sets, and even as we succumb to illness God sees clearly what we need to be healthy. God sees perfectly, and

through the gifts of the Holy Spirit,

God gives us sight to see what is hidden by the darkness of sin and evil, and to be the ones who bring Christ’ balm to heal any who [are] sick with various kinds of diseases.

So we can rest assured, even as the darkness grows around us and envelops us, that God sees all that we need to live, and to live abundant lives.

It Only Takes …

Saturday, January 22, 2022

It’s quite simple to be

the Light of Christ

For those caught in Darkness.

…

Smile.

Isaiah 9:4

For the yoke of their burden, and the bar across their shoulders, the rod of their oppressor, you have broken as on the day of Midian.

Luke 1:78-79

By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.

Words of Grace For Today

It only takes a smile …

It only takes a smile to express the greatest things in life …

It only takes a smile to express the greatest things in life, which are to know that God has delivered us, and will deliver us,

for God has broken the rod of the oppressor. With tender compassion God has brought light to those who live in darkness and those who live in the shadow of death. God guides our feet (and our whole being) into the way of peace.

It only takes a smile to express thanks to God,

especially when that smile is given freely to strangers in need of hope,

especially when that smile comes flowing from the heart,

especially when that smile is followed by the hand and feet of the body of Christ freeing, and moulding, and assembling all that is needed to provide the basics of life to those who have nothing,

especially when that smile carries a promise that God’s favour is forever and always present in the generous, gracious gifts that share life abundant.

It only takes a smile that flows from the heart to the other person’s heart to say

I love you

and

God loves you.

Free up a smile or two or ten thousand today, add a twinkle from your heart … and make the world bright with hope.

“I Chose You!”

Friday, January 21, 2022

In the Beginning God Created

At Our Beginnings God Created Us

Before Each Moment of Our Days

God Creates Faith In Us

A Gift

We Can Deny or Acknowledge

With Gratitude!

And Generosity Towards All Creation.

Isaiah 64:7

There is no one who calls on your name, or attempts to take hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us, and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity.

John 15:16

You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name.

Words of Grace For Today

All this reaching for …

… for viral posts,

… for glory,

… for fame,

… for wealth,

… for power,

… for … well for anything that will fill the emptiness in our being, an emptiness of being separated from God,

All of it is futile, and most of it fills us – not with what we want, but deceptive as it is instead we get filled right up with shtako, and it sucks the life right out of us as we reach ever more desperately.

Most futile of all are all the human efforts spent (wasted) reaching for God.

The games we create to try to convince ourselves that we have reached God: all the piety, all the restrictions on our lives, all the condemnations of others to make ourselves look good (in God’s eyes, as if!), all the hate for ourselves and others that builds and comes out as self-righteousness and bullying. All these games are so life-sucking that we are soon left as mere shells of the life that God created us to enjoy. And even then we reach and reach and reach for something, anything, to fill our overwhelming emptiness. All sorts of addictions follow: to alcohol (God’s gift so abused), to drugs (ingenuity of humans so perverted), to gambling (the gift of the necessities of life severely abused), sex (the gift of intimacy perverted by and into base self-indulgence and licentious promiscuity), work (the gift of labour perverted into an obsession that denies everything good in life), and on and on and on the addictions are numbered, not least of all the addiction to religiosity and piety (perverted from worshipping God, to worshipping one’s own efforts).

God’s gift to us of faith is exactly like the gift of life: only God can give it, we cannot reproduce it, nor even can we meet God part way to receive it. But oh, have we figured out ways to pervert, subvert, and deny it as God’s gift to us!

If God chooses to hide God’s presence from us then our prayers should well begin with Isaiah’s words, “There is no one who calls on your name, or attempts to take hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us, and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity.” To which we should add: “SAVE US!”

So God is not.

As baptized saints we trust that Jesus came to demonstrate that we may often think God has abandoned us, Doch, God never does. God walks with us. God’s presence is not our choosing or in response to our doing or not doing, believing or not believing. God chooses us, to create us, to sustain us, to forgive us, to renew us, to make us saints able to be God’s Grace on earth.

As Jesus says, “You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last.”

This day, what fruit, what Grace, has Jesus led us to harvest from God’s great abundance, so that we have much to share with all around, especially the poor?

It is Fitting …

Monday, January 17, 2022

Moonset,

Waiting for Sunrise,

Trusting God’s Gifts,

Singing God’s Praise

As It Is Fitting!

Psalm 147:1

Praise the Lord! How good it is to sing praises to our God; for he is gracious, and a song of praise is fitting.

Ephesians 5:19

Sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves, singing and making melody to the Lord in your hearts.

Words of Grace For Today

Cell phones across the world produce pictures and videos at an astounding rate each day.

From Statista: “In 2021, the number of mobile devices operating worldwide stood at almost 15 billion….” https://www.statista.com/statistics/245501/multiple-mobile-device-ownership-worldwide/

This means that we have an overwhelming plethora of images of our world, manipulated to look better than reality by software written and rewritten by programmers … so much so that our imagination of what the world is has been bent, skewed, and perverted to such an extent that experiencing the real world has become extra-ordinary. Some find it marvellous to experience the real world. Others (those so disconnected from reality through their reliance on digital ‘connections’) find it outright daunting and even frightening.

The music of the spheres, as it was named centuries ago, plays through the universe, from the deepest points in space to the tiniest piece of creation on earth …

and

we are privileged to be able to sing along

with

wondrous praise

for the Creator of this magnificent creation

in which we were created to live, flourish, love, hope, and find connection with each other and with creation.

A great photo (in comparison to a snapshot or picture or video) uses all the tools at hand (in the camera and available to the photographer) and

imagines

the wonders that can be produced from a particular perspective of creation,

in order to create (as God made us able to be creative, not mere tools manipulated by software)

an image that speaks volumes

(of praise)

about

the Creator, us creatures, and this amazing planet we live on (and some of us are so privileged to have shelter to call home on.)

So we sing songs of praise that are fitting to the gifts God gives us, and we sing and make melody to the Lord in our hearts.

What will we do this day with all God’s gifts?

Will we selfishly destroy and destory other people’s connection to reality in order that we can ‘get ahead’ or

will we sing God’s praises?

What will you do this day with all God’s gifts?

Will you selfishly destroy and destory other people’s connection to reality in order that you can ‘get ahead’ or

will you sing God’s praises?

Choose as you will, but as for me and mine, we will serve the Lord, and sing and sing and sing God’s praises in our hearts and in all we do each day, as God makes us saints able.

Father and Mother, What is Special About This …

Sunday, January 9, 2022

Only A Moose Makes Tracks

Across the -30⁰ and Colder Lake,

While We Remember What We Have Heard

Of God’s Word.

What is special, is that we remember how God ….

Isaiah 31:1

Alas for those who go down to Egypt for help and who rely on horses, who trust in chariots because they are many and in horsemen because they are very strong, but do not look to the Holy One of Israel or consult the Lord!

Hebrews 2:1

Therefore we must pay greater attention to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away from it.

Words of Grace For Today

Rest.

Today instead of looking to ‘Egypt of might and horses many and chariots strong’, not even when these things of might, many and strength in our lives are carried by so many and various ways of working, of securing money, favour, and power, of being our own people, today

yes

today

we rest.

We rest in the Promises of God,

The Gifts of God,

The Saints of God,

The Forgiveness of God,

The Grace of God,

The Generosity of God,

The Love of God,

The Faith given to us by God,

and

The hope, that

…

that all things will be well, all things will be well, all manner of things will be well,

because,

All manner of things are already, today, by God’s Word that Creates, Sustains, and Renews,

by God’s Will, all things are already today well, quite well,

quite well indeed.

Faith, Hope … and Life Now!

Saturday, January 8, 2022

Tracks Lead Us To Places Unknown

Always We Walk Not Alone,

for God Walks with Us.

Job 16:19

Even now, in fact, my witness is in heaven, and he that vouches for me is on high.

Hebrews 11:1

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

Words of Grace For Today

It’s a quiet day ahead, for a cold winter Saturday, following many cold, cold days …

and not a little frustration with people who live by full disregard for truth, and who seek my death, sooner than later, but slowly so the suffering continues and they can be pleased with their sadistic efforts. It’s one thing to have one’s ex after you, it’s another to have the courts helping her. There is always more injustice than justice, more evil than good, and more death of good people (and not enough of evil people?)

How to remain hopeful that the future will be better?

…

Well, that is actually a futilely placed question,

for one cannot hope that the future will be better.

The only thing one can do is live well in the present, in the face of evil to be gracious and good. In the face of those who wish one dead, to live joyously.

The moments are not rare when the spectacular works of God can be seen here and now, they require only that one has ears to hear and eyes to see … and hearts to celebrate life with gratitude.

We have faith and hold to it as the future moves into the present and then the past. That faith is not something we conjure up or make or assemble … no in any way.

Faith is a gift … a gift freely given by God to us. Therefore it will never fail, nor succumb to evil of any kind or quantity.

Facing evil, God vouches for us saints, and there is no surer witness. More we do not need.

Therefore we see the future, not as something that need be better, but rather as more of the present gifts God gives us: that we are vouched for, and we can live gracious and gratefully and generously …

in this present moment

each moment

of each day, even today.

Cleansing and Enough

Thursday, January 6, 2022

If it is enough,

Fly Baby Fly!

Jeremiah 33:8

I will cleanse them from all the guilt of their sin against me, and I will forgive all the guilt of their sin and rebellion against me.

1 John 2:2

He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.

Words of Grace For Today

To have enough,

Not too much,

and

not to litle,

and

to know one has enough,

and though one could use more and dream of that perhaps, to still know

that for today, this is enough:

That is the gift God gives the saints.

…

One may think that has to do with things, food, property, profitable work, toys, power, reputation … or a host of other things.

Yet, none of that is all that important: one may consider air, water, food, clothing, shelter, meaningful labour, and love more important than the others.

What we need enough of is God’s love,

and forgiveness,

and promise of renewed life.

Enough is not that we have God’s gifts and promises, but enough is to know that God provides these essentials for life for all people.

That is enough.

That is enough for this day.

That is enough for any day for any person.

Thanks be to God for giving us enough.