Category: Summer

Mighty in Gentle Service

Tuesday, December 21, 2021

Choose to

See the Pen of God Writing in the Heavens

‘Forgive and Heal and Love One Another’

or

see only the smoke that clouds our eyes of the beauty of reality.

Which will we choose to see today?

Psalm 24:8

Who is the King of glory?
The Lord, strong and mighty,
the Lord, mighty in battle.

Matthew 21:9

The crowds that went ahead of him and that followed were shouting,
‘Hosanna to the Son of David!
Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!
Hosanna in the highest heaven!’

Words of Grace For Today

We have this vision from the earliest of times that God is mighty as we are mighty, when we are mighty (or think we are), namely when we are violent and fight in battles to make our way in the world.

So God (in our shared fictional image) is a mighty warrior who show God’s strength in fighting more mightily than we ever can.

Jesus, God’s son born in a most humble way to poor parents (not the privilege and comfort that so many enjoy and would demand their Saviour be born into as well), teaches and heals the people God’s way, God love, God strength in service and forgiveness. The people, having that image of God from of old as a mighty warrior, see Jesus taking over the ruling of the country, staging a revolution like many before have tried and failed to do. Jesus enters Jerusalem and the people are ready to throw off the injustice and oppression of their foreign and home-grown corrupt rulers, political and religious.

They throw down their palm leaves and garments for Jesus’ donkey to walk on as he enters Jerusalem. No one is wealthy enough to have found a horse for this ‘new king’?

No, that is not it. God is not about conquering our mighty corruption of the goodness of creation by being like us. Jesus enters as a humble ‘king’, a peasant at most, a teacher and guide, a healer, riding a small donkey.

It matters not really how we imagine Jesus enters our lives, enters our world. What matters is that God is not mighty as a warrior, for God created and rules the universe. God need not defeat any enemy. It is already accomplished. The work God seeks to accomplish is to let us, free willed creatures that God created us to be, God seeks to have us choose freely to love God and each other and all creation. That is a work that violent might simply cannot begin to accomplish.

Our choosing can only be accomplished by inspiring us to not be mighty in violence, but rather mighty in meekness, service, healing, and forgiving one another.

It’s your God-given choice! What will it be today?

Words to Inspire

Tuesday, December 14, 2021

The WORD That Makes The Mix

Of Life

Precious

Psalm 119:19

I live as an alien in the land; do not hide your commandments from me.

Ephesians 5:15-16

Be careful then how you live, not as unwise people but as wise, making the most of the time, because the days are evil.

Words of Grace For Today

Wise words and free advice usually end in people trying to fool themselves they are good enough as they destory their neighbours and the aliens in their land: their contributions to the days being evil abound.

Words of free advice and wise words are like rules; whether most people admit it or not the human stance on rules is that they are good. Others ought to follow them all. Themselves are allowed all sorts of exceptions and ‘understandings’ and leaways so that all their bending and breaking of rules is acceptable.

The challenge in life is not really to know what one must not do and what one must do. The challenge in life is to have an attitude towards others and all creation that brings one to deal with it all wisely, as followers of Jesus, as faithful people, as good people, as those who live grateful for everything that is.

To inspire humans to live such lives requires more than admonishments, exhortations, and pithy wise words on how to live. The Word must reach deep in the heart and transform it from greedy to generous. That takes a miracle.

A miracle it is that only God can bring to be for each person.

Jesus’ story is that God does that for each person.

Take that to heart, no matter what the day brings.

Advent Darkness, Advent Light

Thursday, December 2, 2021

What Little Truth There Is

What Little Hope There Is

What Little Life There Is

…

Christ’s Light

Has Come,

Is Come, and

Will Come Again

Isaiah 51:4

Listen to me, my people, and give heed to me, my nation; for a teaching will go out from me, and my justice for a light to the peoples.

1 John 2:8

Yet I am writing you a new commandment that is true in him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining.

Words of Grace For Today

The daylight grows shorter each day, at this latitude markedly, as we are only 20 days from the winter solstice. When clouds and precipitation block the light during the few hours the sun is above the horizon the drear and darkness grows on us, as if the end of time were approaching though we trust that is not so. In these times the winter darkness teaches us well what we may or may not know so well from our own experience: that injustice of the nation is prevalent, here and now for so many people, and the injustice of the world order (or chaos as it really is) tears so many people from life, and even more from living a life respected as a full human being.

Then we read the promise that God will bring words of truth to bear on our world, that Christ’s Light shines already bright for all people. We read these words of promise and hope with eager hearts, though hardly more so than the billions who suffer the chaos of injustice worked for the privilege, comfort, and power of the few.

When people recognize the Light of Christ, the world chaos can but fail as Christ’s way replaces human greed.

For this day we wait, for freedom from darkness, for freedom from blatant injustice, for freedom from all evil, and for freedom to serve Christ fully, without reserve, with our whole hearts, minds and strength. For this day we wait. On that day we will celebrate the coming of Christ as we have not ever yet.

This is the advent of awareness: that Christ has come, is come, and will come again, to bring into the light all that is done now as if in darkness, all that is done to throw others as captives into darkness, all that is done to supposedly ‘set things right’ when the actions are more unjust than those they pretend to correct.

This our advent. Advent as we prepare to celebrate Christ’s coming, again.

Let Your Face Shine

Tuesday, November 30, 2021

We Are the Ones

Who Shine

With Christ’s Light

As Snow Sparkles Between the Shadows

Psalm 31:16

Let your face shine upon your servant; save me in your steadfast love.

Luke 12:25

Can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?

Words of Grace For Today

On the coin of money is inscribed ‘In God We Trust.’

This is one of the more blatant and dreadful ironies of our lives: the world seeks coin to enable the collection of resources (through payment with the coin) and to ensure the bidding of the holder is done by others (through payment with the coin).

Those of us who cannot or do not have enough coin, worry about our futures: can we keep at bay the despair of hunger, the life-ending extremes of the environment, the decay of life without good medical care, or the loss of sanity as we are isolated (as an easy target for our enemies and separated from the social fabric of life.)

This worry motivates us to work, and to work hard, to ensure some kind of safety in our future, some kind of food supply in our days to come, some kind of health care so that what ails us can be discovered, diagnosed and treated, some healthy connection with other humans who do not wish us harm. Our worry itself does nothing. It adds not even a minute to the span of our lives. What we do to work through our worry may or may not succeed in providing life and life abundant for us.

Life in all its great goodness that God created us to enjoy does not require any of this that we can work for, though. Life abundant requires only one thing and that is God’s steadfast love.

God’s steadfast love moves us from worrying.

God’s steadfast love moves us from worrying about ourselves.

God’s steadfast love moves us from worrying about ourselves to working to be God’s love for others.

God’s steadfast love moves us from worrying about ourselves and on to knowing that we are marked with the cross of Christ, which does not just mark us like coins with the greatest irony of all times. The mark on us changes us from the root of our being to the last days we live in God’s good creation: we become God-made saints.

When our enemies or our shortcomings or the lack of things we require to stay alive threaten our future we can pray: Let your face shine upon your servants; save us in your steadfast love.

Like the sun rising for a new day, sparkling, dazzling in a field of snow, God renews Christ’s light in us, and we shine, and we sparkle, and we transform the world from misery to happiness, from despair to joy, from hunger to nourished … from lost to found.

Blessings, Joy, then Obedience

Monday, November 29, 2021

Because God Blesses Us to Know Beauty

no matter the tangles of life the intrude on our days

Therefore We are Able to Be God’s Blessings for Others

Deuteronomy 28:1-6

If you will only obey the Lord your God, by diligently observing all his commandments that I am commanding you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth; all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, if you obey the Lord your God:

Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the field.

Blessed shall be the fruit of your womb, the fruit of your ground, and the fruit of your livestock, both the increase of your cattle and the issue of your flock.

Blessed shall be your basket and your kneading-bowl.

Blessed shall you be when you come in, and blessed shall you be when you go out.

Matthew 12:50

For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.

Words of Grace For Today

Both passages say clearly enough that it is all up to us: if we do the right things, if we obey all God’s commandments, if we do God’s will, then

then we will be blessed in all ways,

then we will be Jesus’ brother, sister or mother.

That certainly is how the world works and how religious authorities have parsed God’s blessings in their attempts to control their followers.

God is not so parsed, not correctly anyway.

God’s blessings are not so parsed, not correctly anyway.

Jesus’ brothers and sisters and mother are not so determined, not correctly anyway.

But this is the way of the world, and it is our self-centred, familiar, assuring and futile way of working God’s will in our world.

Trouble is, it’s not us that works God’s will and this is God’s world.

God’s way, clearly demonstrated in the story of Jesus’ life, ministry, death and resurrection, is that God blesses us, and we either can surrender to that, or work our way out of the blessings by going our own way. Even then God pursues us, relentlessly, promising to forgive us, give us re-newed lives, and send us out again to be God’s blessings for others.

God’s blessings are not tied to how powerful, wealthy, or famous we are. God’s blessings are contained in the God given ability to be able to love, and love completely and unconditionally. For is love, starting with fear and love for God, and then love for ourselves, our neighbours and our enemies … in love we find life, life’s meaning and purpose and a joy that cannot be marred by circumstances, no matter how bad they may be.

The joy that God gives us is familiar to most people. It is like living life being in love. Some know it as a teenager’s 1st love, or as a young adult knowing this is the one person to marry, or as holding your new born infant, or as guiding children as they grow up, or as playing with grandchildren, or as growing old together and sharing memories as you deal with new challenges.

Most all of us experience that being in love, and loving others, gives us a profound joy.

Being in love with God, fearing and loving God, gives us an even more profound joy. All our times of being in love come to an end. Some endings leave us lost, as if the pathways and walls of life itself have crumbled out from under us.

Being in love and fearing God is markedly different because that love never comes to an end since it is determined not by our capacity to love, but by God’s promises to love us always. God loves us always, no matter the twists and turns we take in life. Trusting that God loves us gives a pervasive joy, a foundational joy.

Today we pray, may we live fearing and loving God as God loves us. May we be God’s love for all other people, so that we do not forget how precious God’s love is.

Waiting for Comfort

Sunday, November 28, 2021

God Uses Every Means

to Get Us to Listen and Prepare Us

(even Morse code)

for the Coming Days

Of Celebrating Christ’s Birth

Psalm 119:76

Let your steadfast love become my comfort according to your promise to your servant.

Luke 2:25

Now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon; this man was righteous and devout, looking forward to the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit rested on him.

Words of Grace For Today

Waiting.

Waiting for an event that is so much more than just another everyday occurrence.

Waiting for an event that is so much more than the greatest thing in one’s life.

Waiting for …

Waiting for God to break into the life of humans, and make a statement so clear about God’s love that it will shake all the foundations that humans build on, for everything that humans build.

Waiting for God to reveal how God relates to us, in our broken, sinful, destructive lives, which we seem incapable of setting right.

We wait.

We wait again this Advent.

We wait again this Advent for the celebration of our Saviour’s birth.

We wait.

Yet there is no way that we can wait idly for this celebration, just ticking off the days, eating the chocolates out of the advent calendar, and hoping that this celebration will bring life to us again, renewed life, and God’s favour … after all that we do as humans to one another.

We wait for our enemies to be converted to reasonable, truth abiding, honourable humans once again, if they ever were such people.

We wait … and the Holy Spirit works in us, helping us to see …

Helping us to see beyond the portents of this time, as storms increase in magnitude month by month, as temperatures rise so that glaciers recede at record rates, and so that ice caps melt and ocean levels rise covering islands and seashore cities, as wildfires burn away forests protecting mountainsides and rivers, as earthquakes increase, as droughts grip whole agricultural areas leaving farmers with no crops to sell and people without food to eat, and as rainstorms pour water in record amounts on dry and vulnerable areas flooding homes, roads, and whole cities, and whole mountainsides give way to mudslides that block off roadways halting transport of goods in its tracks, leaving retailers shelves thin, and Christmas wishes changed from a special gift to a wish that our lives and the lives of our loved ones will be preserved.

Helping us to hear beyond the news of these disasters and the ever- mutating and more dangerous variants of Covid spreading to our areas.

Helping us to trust …

Helping us to trust God’s promise that God’s steadfast love will be our comfort …

a comfort like no other.

Thus comforted we are able to reach out to save many people, people we know, people we do not know and people who are our enemies …

saving people from disaster with needed, real-time help,

saving people from the wiles of the Great Deceiver with needed, real-time love and hope.

Helping others to trust God’s promise that God’s steadfast love will be their comfort …

a comfort like no other.

Living to Tell the Truth

Saturday, November 27, 2021

The Cold Hard Truth Is:

Where We’ve Walked

Is the Past

That No Lie Can Change

Psalm 17:7

Wondrously show your steadfast love, O Saviour of those who seek refuge from their adversaries at your right hand.

1 Thessalonians 5:23

May the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Words of Grace For Today

The movie Blood Diamonds, the story of Solomon Vandy, ends with a simple lesson: let us applaud those who live to tell the truth … in a world where lies reign over so many hearts, where greed drives people to perversions that move them beyond love, hope and life.

There is, as histories told, and truth written in literature and scientific studies bears witness, no end to the people who would destroy others in a vain attempt to get ahead. Ahead of what is not important other than to those who sacrifice their lives to those insignificant markers of gain, which is gain that so easily disappears, which gain eats at the hearts of those seeking it until they have no heart to love, hope or live left. Then live, a shells of humans, that only destroy and accumulate … and do not die soon enough.

For those who live as we do to tell the truth, we pray Wondrously show your steadfast love, O Saviour to those who seek refuge from their adversaries at your right hand. For to live to tell the truth is to seek refuge in God’s hands.

The temptations are so great, to stoop to the level of those who use lies and destruction to accumulate their gain; gain that provides power, pseudo-security, comforts, and hedonistic excesses as it gulps down their hearts, minds, and strength. The temptations are great, for who would not want just a bit more control, security, comfort, and pleasure in life. Resistance is exactly like that to the Borg, it is said to be futile, until one calls on the one source of power that can save one from such temptations: God’s own blessings. Therefore …

Each day, each hour, we pray: May the God of peace himself sanctify us entirely; and may our spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

We also pray that God would save our enemies, so that their perverse and relentless need to destroy us and the truth would cease, and so that they could learn to love, hope, and live again.

Where Do You Put Your Heart?

Thursday, November 25, 2021

Looking Up,

Do You See the Trees,

Or

the Heavens Above?

…

The Forest or the View to God’s Grace?

Zephaniah 3:16-17

On that day it shall be said to Jerusalem: Do not fear, O Zion; do not let your hands grow weak. The Lord, your God, is in your midst, a warrior who gives victory; he will rejoice over you with gladness, he will renew you in his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.

Ephesians 2:19

You are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God.

Words of Grace For Today

What do we need today,

a warrior who gives us victory over our enemies?

Or

to be renewed in God’s love?

There is, among all the things that occupy us in this life, only one thing that counts: our relationship with God.

Those that lie to the courts which have acted unjustly on their lies will have their lies turn back on them. There will be no escape for those that live by the lie, and try to kill by the lie.

Those that fear and love God, know God and God’s presence every day.

We are no longer strangers and aliens in God’s Kingdom. We are citizens with all the other God-made saints of all times, together children of God, members of God’s house.

Here we live.

Here our enemies’ lies have no meaning …

Here our enemies’ use of the unjust courts have no meaning, except

…

except their lies and perverse use of the unjust courts define them as God’s enemies.

That is no place to be on this planet, for there is no escape from God and God’s justice.

For us, there is home, always home in God’s blessed care.

Therefore we do not fear, no matter what lies our enemies threaten us with.

For we are God’s own people, God’s own blessed people, God’s own holy people.

About to Go Hungry …

Tuesday, November 23, 2021

God Places Pathways Before Us

That Will Return Us to Grace

and the Feast for All People,

If We But Only Look to See,

A Little Further to the Left.

Hosea 14:4

I will heal their disloyalty; I will love them freely, for my anger has turned from them.

John 21:3-4

Simon Peter said to them, ‘I am going fishing.’ They said to him, ‘We will go with you.’ They went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing. Just after daybreak, Jesus stood on the beach; but the disciples did not know that it was Jesus.

Words of Grace For Today

When our efforts come up empty, failed, and we are about to go hungry …

When we have turned from God, served other gods, and ourselves as godlets, chased after futile dreams, and knowingly made deals with the Devil to achieve our selfish goals (even those we see as ‘trickling down’ benefits to others!) …

When we have known God’s Grace, lost sight of God walking with us, and turned back to our old self-sustaining, self-serving, self-centred ways …

What is a person to do after all, when God disappears on us, when the promises God makes are slow in being fulfilled, when enemies are knocking at our doors, or have us in custody already, or are in our heads and hearts creating intolerable anxiety? Should we not head out on our own in this beautiful, wonderful creation to make our own way, to provide for ourselves reaping bountiful rewards for our own efforts, enabling ourselves to escape the daily struggles to survive, to enjoy the comforts and luxuries we’ve earned (at others’ expense, even at the expense of other’s lives, even those who loved us!), and to gain status among the people?

When we return to our selfish, self-centred ways, we turn our back on God, God’s promises, and the Grace that saves us from our own sin giving us renewed life at Jesus’ expense. We ask, as if to justify what we know is wrong, what is a person to do? Surely we can be our own godlets, determine our own lives, and make a future for ourselves and our offspring for generations to come.

Then the cost for our selfish, self-centred ways becomes apparent and no denial of the cost is believable by any sane person any more. Nature rebels, angrily kicking up more and more extreme storms, fires, floods, eruptions, and mudslides. Our self-made security dissolves before our eyes, and often our loved ones, our offspring, with it.

How does God react to our rebellious, self-centred, selfish, destructive ways?

God is faithful.

God is faithful to God’s promises.

God is faithful to God’s promises and God heals our every illness.

God is faithful to God’s promises and God stands at the edge of un-creation that could easily consume us, or from which we could gather live-sustaining food for so many bodies, minds, and hearts.

God heals us, and guides us to fish the bounty of God’s blessings for all that we require to live and to live truly abundantly (not over-consuming luxuries while others starve, not resting in comfort when their is Christ’ work for us to do, nor building our hopeless securities that always fail falling around our ears.)

God does not disappear on us, ever. Our vision fails to see God when we turn in on ourselves and forget to see Christ in every person we meet.

God does not disappear on us, ever.

As God promises us, God does not disappear on us, ever.

What is a Person to Do

Saturday, November 20, 2021

When Scapegoating Destorys One

Leaving One In Poverty and

All Goodness in One’s Accusers

Goes Up In Smoke

What is a Person to Do?

Proverbs 3:27

Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, when it is in your power to do it.

2 Thessalonians 3:13

Brothers and sisters, do not be weary in doing what is right.

Words of Grace For Today

What is a person to do?

A megalomaniac hired me to fly and do ministry to native people (as we honourably referred to them back then), and because some in the ministry looked to change the direction from the paternalistic method the megalomaniac had developed (supported by ensuring chaos reigned among all those working for him so that he could dictate whatever he wanted to) to a ministry which was responsive to the people’s direction. I followed their direction and worked to develop relationships that would support that ministry. Progress was slow. It did not take the megalomaniac long to figure out he’d lost control of my ministry and that he was incapable of raising enough money to support the ministry even if I had followed his patronizing methods of ministry. I was fired. That was not enough. He and those that supported him had to grab a rumour going around the congregation where I worked 1/4 time (along with a full time senior pastor) that the pastor was gay. Mid 1980’s and that would spell the end of anyone’s career as a pastor. They applied the rumour to me, along with many people in the congregation. That was not enough. As I had tried to make sense of the chaos that the megalomaniac created I spent hours tracking his communications and directions and all else that he produced. None of it made sense, unless one allowed that he was trying to create chaos. That was more evil than I was able to imagine back then, fresh out of seminary as I was, so the time I spent was attributed to me having gone crazy. This is a common method for those who try to use chaos in order to gain and maintain control: they blame good, honest, honourable people with insanity. From his position of power in that organization there was little anyone could do to defend me, and no one stepped up to try in the face of the charge that I was both gay and crazy.

What is a good person to do?

A good person could try to fight back. A good person, other than me, could have stood up to defend me, knowing it would have cost them their job with the organization. A good bishop could have sent someone to defend me, but that didn’t happen. I did not even realize what I was being accused of until long after it was all done.

Then came truth came out: the senior pastor was discovered, murdered, naked along with a male prostitute in the city. The congregational president, whose gay brother had recently died in Vancouver of AIDS, quickly sold his car dealership and moved far away. I was on a trip for the church in Europe and found out about this over the following months.

None of the truth made any difference. I was supposedly gay. I was supposedly crazy of some kind. Every congregation I served as a pastor would have some kind of power issue among themselves and they’d scapegoat me to resolve their conflict with each other, using the rumours against me. I thought there was something wrong with the way I did ministry. There wasn’t unless one counts that as a pastor one has to be more than good, honest, gracious, and capable of sharing God’s Word in all one does. One has to be complicit, scheming, devious, and manipulative of the people with power in the congregation to keep them from using you as a scapegoat for their own sinful issues with each other. And one needs to be fortunate to have people of power willing to step up to protect one, so that one can continue in ministry.

What is a good, honest, gracious, and very capable person to do?

Some say: get one’s vengeance. Destroy those who would destroy you.

Others say: make sure you have more power than anyone else.

Others say: just give up and let the false accusations happen. Find other work. Move to some other town. Eventually the rumours will die out.

Jesus calls us to something different. As the passages today remind us, in the face of evil what a person is called to do is not withhold good from those to whom it is due, when it is in your power to do it, and do not be weary in doing what is right.

People still make those false accusations about me, that I am gay or that I am crazy.

The people who do so reveal themselves as working for the Devil. They are the people and pastors and bishops, congregational leaders, cops, ex, step children, lawyers, and plenty of judges and justices who are not good, kind, gracious, nor honest.

What is a person to do?

What a person is to do is to continue to do good, speak the truth, receive all people with kindness, and pray that God will soon bring the scapegoating to an end.

What is a person to do? God will do enough, soon enough.