Summer – Page 17

God Works. We Have Hope!

Monday, November 15, 2021

As the Snow Covers Everything Announcing Winter’s Dark-Cold’s A’comin’

We Remember God’s Work in Our Past

And Know

That Spring Will Come.

So God Will Melt Our Hard Hearts

To Give Us New Life.

Ezekiel 36:36

Then the nations that are left all around you shall know that I, the Lord, have rebuilt the ruined places, and replanted that which was desolate; I, the Lord, have spoken, and I will do it.

Acts 11:20-21

But among them were some men of Cyprus and Cyrene who, on coming to Antioch, spoke to the Hellenists also, proclaiming the Lord Jesus. The hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number became believers and turned to the Lord.

Words of Grace For Today

God works.

We work.

When God works we often do not see anything happen.

When we work, especially in committees, we often do not see anything happen.

When I work and I don’t see anything happen as a result, it’s a bad, bad day, because my work is all the about the basics of staying alive: gathering wood, building shelter, building systems to support life, hauling supplies like water and food, cutting and splitting wood, feeding the ‘monster’ wood so it produces heat, repairing systems that support life that will stop supporting life if they are not fixed or already have not only stopped but started to endanger life because they are broken, reading and writing so that my spirit does not succumb to my enemies attacks on me, praying, celebrating, resting and sleeping (though the last are hardly work per se.)

When God works, and we open our eyes, sometimes we see the results: nations are moved, mountains are levelled or reformed, planets and stars are created or destroyed or transformed, hearts are enlivened after being hard as granite, people eat and drink and celebrate who were thirsting and starving to death, people are healed and given new life, saints are called home and given their reward for eternity, and the beauty of creation comes crashing into our minds transforming us from despairing to caught in wonder.

When we work and we see results, our efforts and results are minuscule in comparison. We sell things to people with pets, or without. We buy things that we need or do not need. We use or abuse resources and are renewable or non-renewable. We pollute ourselves to death burning coal and natural gas, consuming disposable plastics, or setting radioactive atoms to react hopefully always in a controlled manner but that is not our record. We set people against people with weapons capable of destroying whole populations and de-storying masses (genocide.) We construct highways and airplanes and rocket-ships that invite people to increase their carbon footprint – because ‘it’s there.’ We build cities that will flood as the planet warms and the oceans rise, a result of our carbon mega-footprints and billions of smaller footprints that add up to more than than our host planet can accommodate without changing even that which we rely on for life. And our ‘marvellous’ accomplishments fill a listing that seems endless … and always has an end that reads ‘which leads to the extinction of humans on planet earth, and before that the cessation of human and animal life as we know it.’

Is there any hope for us?

Is there any hope for planet earth?

Is there any hope?

Thank God, God responds to our destructive, sinful ways of working by promising: I, the Lord, will have rebuilt the ruined places, and replanted that which was desolate!

God works … and it is always good.

We work … and it is almost always destructive … unless God directs and we cooperate as the Holy Spirit moves in and through us.

Is there any hope?

Only because of God’s promises to be Gracious with us … again and again and again. And when God works it happens, sometimes from the most surprising corners of the earth as foreigners come to share the Good News with us, we who hunger and thirst to hear and know the old, old story is for us, too.

Self-help OR God’s Help

Sunday, November 14, 2021

God’s Help

Comes

Already

Each Morning, Noon, and Night

Announced by the Son’s Light.

Isaiah 58:1

Shout out, do not hold back! Lift up your voice like a trumpet! Announce to my people their rebellion, to the house of Jacob their sins.

Galatians 4:9

Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, for ever and ever. Amen.

Words of Grace For Today

Self help gurus and advice abound. Almost all include some kind of self affirmation to promote the ‘best one can be’ to emerge from one’s thoughts, words and deeds.

And it is all futile. Sometimes it produces great results in people who produce great things, BUT it’s all built on a lie and like a house of cards it is always one little whiff of reality, one puff of truth, away from collapsing under it’s own weight of falsehoods.

Some people say that building a life, a ‘successful’ life, is always about overcoming the underlying sense of being a fraud, of ‘learning to fill the shoes’ of those who have done your profession or ‘life’ before you. Some people actually do feel inadequate, or fraudulent, in their work even though they are actually well qualified. That’s a different challenge to overcome. When one builds one’s life on an ever increasing set of lies, one does not meet the qualifications at numerous steps, exams, and milestones towards qualification. Instead one cheats at each step, on many if not all exams, and is a complete fraud at the milestones, presenting oneself to be someone one has never qualified to start being. There are lost of people who do this. My ex never trained as more than a low level nurses’ aide, immigrated to Canada, applied, took the test and qualified (without further training) as a registered nurse. She continues to falsify her yearly continuing ed requirements. So many people know this and allow her to continue because there is a shortage of registered nurses and she works hard. It’s not that she’s not intelligent enough, its that she’s not capable of doing some of the things a registered nurse must be able to do.

How do so many people come to live such fraudulent lives? How do people learn that cheating pays off, that lies work better than real and hard work? How do so many people get away with it? They get away with it and learn this ‘shortcut’ to life from all those who have gone before them, also frauds. Like the STASI in East Germany, who kept files on almost everyone, filled with reports from so many sources, mostly from ordinary citizens, many who used reports to tell lies about their enemies and competitors … and anyone they were angry at. The STASI knew most of it were lies. They created their own false reports aplenty and ruined many, many good, honest people … just because they could.

Which is what Canada’s own RCMP and Justice system does because they can: from the false citizen reports solicited by the RCMP, to false reports created by RCMP, to lawyers who knowingly provide lies to the courts, and on to the many judges who make unsupported decisions and remove exonerating evidence from transcripts and knowingly allow people, even experts, to perjury themselves with impunity. All because ‘they can’.

But they cannot … they cannot just get away with it. Someone always knows, someone always speaks up, and someone always blows a puff of truth on their fraudulent ‘house of cards’ and it all comes tumbling down. Trouble is when it tumbles it takes out a lot of innocent people, even whole societies when the fraudulent systems is allowed to continue so long one cannot remember when or how it did not function fuelled by lies.

Again and again, scriptures calls God’s people to Shout out, do not hold back! Lift up your voice like a trumpet! Announce to my people their rebellion, to the house of Jacob their sins.

So lift your voice, tell the truth, expose the lies, blow the one card out that you know is a complete fraud, and let the ‘house’ fall before it takes out the whole country.

It is not that anyone of us does not participate in at least some small way to this ‘house of cards’ and for that every single one of us needs to start each day with confession of our sins. Only having confessed our own sin to God, and breathing each moment only because God is gracious to us forgiving us and renewing life in us, are we then able to ‘announce to our people their rebellion and sin against God.

All will not be lost, no matter the challenges our enemies may work against us for telling the truth, for the power [of Christ] at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine … both saving us from our enemies and saving our enemies from their own lies and fraudulent lives.

Soon and very soon, come Lord Jesus and accomplish the work of bringing ordinary citizens, RCMP, lawyers and even judges to speak the truth in the face of so many lies.

Soon and very soon, come Lord Jesus and accomplish this work, so that our whole society does not collapse because of one puff of truth.

Soon and very soon, come Lord Jesus!

Knowing Love … Being Love

Wednesday, November 10, 2021

One Last Canoe Ride

Before the Snow Blows In.

A Long Autumn,

Climate Change Again.

Jeremiah 18:14-15

Does the snow of Lebanon leave the crags of Sirion? Do the mountain waters run dry, the cold flowing streams? But my people have forgotten me, they burn offerings to a delusion; they have stumbled in their ways, in the ancient roads, and have gone into bypaths, not the highway.

John 15:9

As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love.

Words of Grace For Today

The snow today, which has collected as glaciers for hundreds of years, now does melt away, faster and faster. We, with our carbon footprint so huge, have discombobulated nature’s way. The mountain waters do run dry where they have not in memory done so before.

Just as we have messed with nature’s balances, so we have imbalanced our own lives, living as slaves of delusions, voluntarily enslaving ourselves to wealth, power, status, and the illusion that we are better than others whom we ruin on our way through life.

There is another way to live.

As God loves Jesus, so Jesus loves us. When we humbly accept that there is nothing else so important in life as being loved by God, and returning that love (by sharing God’s love with all other people) then we live as we are created to live and we contribute to the balance of nature. We do not just lower our carbon footprint. We drastically change how we live and what we expect from life in order to drastically lower our carbon footprint, and we reach as many people as we can to inspire them to do the same.

Maybe some people think that all those who enslave themselves to wealth, power, status and delusions will respond to messages of the impending doom we are creating for ourselves. It rarely works, for their closed looped thought processes cannot calculate how to serve their chosen masters and respond to the impending doom for us all. Instead they ramp up their delusions to accumulate more wealth, power, status, and their favourite delusion in order to convince themselves that the impending doom will not impact them. It will, but deluded they believe it will not, just as Covidiots and Covid deniers and antivaxxers who lay dying of Covid still refuse to believe they have Covid or that they can be dying. They die a painful death, and an avoidable death, leaving so many Covidiots and Covid deniers and antivaxxers ready to carry on in their footsteps.

This is not a good life, and certainly not a good death.

Knowing God loves us, knowing that God knows us completely and blesses us by walking with us, and knowing the Holy Spirit makes us able to love others and walk with them through life’s challenges, rewards, and losses … knowing God’s love gives us hope. And hope gives us life renewed each morning.

For this we can give God endless thanks and praise … and we can be filled with joy, no matter what our enemies do to us. It does not get better.

Arrogant Bullies Meet God’s Word!

Sunday, October 31, 2021

God’s Word Exposes

All Bullies’

Weaknesses

Like Smoke in the Trees

And Gives Us Life

Ezekiel 12:25

But I the Lord will speak the word that I speak, and it will be fulfilled. It will no longer be delayed; but in your days, O rebellious house, I will speak the word and fulfill it, says the Lord God.

1 Corinthians 4:20

For the kingdom of God depends not on talk but on power.

Words of Grace For Today

Paul writes to the congregation at Corinth, a very divided and problematic congregation, filled with strife and people seeking to gain power. Paul speaks to the issues through the letter, and here addresses the arrogant ones who are full of divisive talk. Paul speaks to the bullies.

While Paul has preached (spoken) about the grace of Jesus, forgiveness of sins for sinners as we all are, and renewal of life given as a free gift (grace) so that we can share the gifts God gives us each day with others who need what we have, here Paul uses his written words to move people to recognize that these promises given to us in Jesus’ story are not mere words. These promises carry the reality of the universe’s maker and all of God’s unlimited power in them.

Words carry God’s promises. The Word, Jesus the Christ, as John teaches, existed before the beginning with God, and God spoke to create all that is. Words are very powerful.

Words are also empty vessels of deceit and deception, of irreality, of things that are not, though corrupt people and the Devil wish they were, and with their wishing they give them a semblance of reality … but only a reality that dissolves like a holo program on a spaceship in a fictional story of the Star Trek series.

God’s power is in words that are fulfilled, even for a rebellious house, like Israel and like us all as we seek our own way through life. God’s power is in healing that relieves diseases of body, mind, heart and soul. God’s power is greater than anything else we could imagine and infinitely more! God’s Word creates all that is, all reality that does not dissolve but stands in time … and in hearts and minds … for bodies and for souls.

The arrogant bullies in the Corinthian congregation and all the bullies of all times and all places are no match for the power of God, the Word of God. So unsure of themselves, bullies present a false front of self-assurance and self-made power. Their so called ‘power’ and deceiving words dissolve in the face of truth, in the face of God’s Word, in the face of Grace, in the face of real power, in the face of sacrificial love, and in the face of hope that cannot be extinguished by evil.

Bullies everywhere: listen up! Bullies everywhere: stand down! Bullies everywhere: God will deal with you, will heal you, will send you out to be messengers of God’s Word that gives life (instead of the words you now use to destroy others’ lives.

Bullies everywhere meet God. God’s been with you through all time.

Bullies everywhere quake in fear, for God has spoken and your bulling days are coming to an end.

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?

Dear To Christ, Always

Saturday, October 23, 2021

Dear Me Dear,

It’s Deer

Meat

Before Breakfast

Walking in the Meadow!

Deuteronomy 8:10

You shall eat your fill and bless the Lord your God for the good land that he has given you.

1 Corinthians 10:31

So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God.

Words of Grace For Today

I had guests for breakfast today, well actually before breakfast and … well they would have made a good lunch or 20 as venison, not so sure about breakfast.

They came, four of them did, a yearling playfully jumping about it’s doe, another doe, and a two prong buck. They came the did, to graze, to eat, and to enjoy the grass on the meadow. The grass used to be a barnyard so the ground is soft and spongy with old hay and manure deep below. The grass grows different, which means it must be a favourite for the deer come visiting quite often, and to visit now at this time of year, during hunting season when the wood smoke fills the air and there is every sign that a human is about, must mean the prefer this grass over other.

This is the land that the Lord has guided me to, as a refuge. I eat well enough here, and many animals do as well. A rabbit is often seen hopping about. Coyotes visit in the night. Bear come snooping around too often. Mice run in the grass and a bald eagle, a brown eagle, and an owl hunt here. The other day a moose and calf came tumbling through the underbrush as they are wont to do, making a great racket. I won’t mention the ants and wasps and flies and mosquitoes in such great numbers but there are dragon flies that hunt them, the robins that eat the worms, and the bats that come feasting on the plenty.

Then there are the Hornets and F-18s, and helicopters and troop transports, that fill the sky with their presents, which is more a deafening sound barrier broken (on departure) or afterburner (burning off and wasting fuel on approach) and thought stopping punch to the brain through the ears.

Canada really does need to upgrade to stealth fighter, stealth in sound, and maybe in the meantime (25 years or so it seems) conserve fuel by not burning it off on approach … for practice and climate change friendly habits, eh?

While the world busily turns about around me, with oil workers roaring their Ram diesels out of the stop sign, or the trucks pound the pavement steadily for hours each morning and evening as the workers in the oil installations around the corner northward progress like army ants to their allotted jobs, and the quiet neighbourhood cross-overs and SUVs head out to work in town, the drunks show up to drink, the addicts to buy and take a hit, and the randy show up for a shag in the bush, and the partiers show up in droves to break Covid restrictions and have a good old fashion bush drinking, drugs, loud noise they call music, and sex party (and then fill the ICUs in two weeks time) …

my work is all blessed by God’s walking with me. The relative quiet of the chainsaw, the gathering, cutting, splitting, and stacking of wood, the maintenance of the stove and chimney, the building in preparation for the cold of winter, the cooking of meals, the canoeing on the quiet lake, the walks in the woods fill my days after they start with celebrating the Eucharist, remembering how Jesus was betrayed, falsely accused, killed, and buried … and how God resurrected Jesus to give us Jesus’ story of how God forgives and loves and gives life abundant to us all … so that we can share it with others!

With this beginning every day is a blessing, a gift to enjoy.

Hard work or pleasant walks or quiet canoeing or writing or taking photos … all my time is blessed and a witness to all of God’s great glory, known to us all in God’s Grace … that gives us all we need starting with each breath.

Atem tief. Gottes Barmherzigkeit durchdringt tief in und aus allem.

Judgment Day’s A’coming!

Saturday, October 16, 2021

Fog Starts to Roll In

As God’s Mercy

Continues to Fill Our Days

With Thanks, Love and Hope

Isaiah 26:8

In the path of your judgments, O Lord, we wait for you; your name and your renown are the soul’s desire.

2 Corinthians 5:10

For all of us must appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may receive recompense for what has been done in the body, whether good or evil.

Words of Grace For Today

The morning wakening after long hours of sleep, enough to repair and rejuvenate the body, blossom into pure joy, simple joy. The fire is still warm, stoked to last again for hours. The door opens to frosty grass (suppressing the last of any bugs or wasps which would have been ready to buzz about), and fog has settled over the lake, making for great photos (or so, anyway). The smoke from the beast well-fed, meanders over the meadow into the trees. The fresh pressed coffee wafts clean inside with plenty of blueberries to top the morning cereal. Prayers include thanks for precious people, a large number of my families, now and of origin.

Then as breakfast satisfies the hunger and thirst of the night (cutting back to lose weight for better health outcomes) the fog descends over the meadow encasing it in a white glow that ends visibility just at the tree lines.

All this on a day that promises progress to prepare for winter. Old logs are ready to cut up and stack for firewood. A few new pieces of lumber wait a bit of construction before the tarp goes up to provide shelter from the rains and snow, and a few simple sewing jobs will improve the comfort on cold nights.

What more could a person want?

Well, I have a long list. Anyone who dreams of making life better has a list of things that would help the small and large improvements to one’s life, to the lives of others close and even for strangers.

So what are we to make of this life? Is it just the daily grind, the daily joys, the obtuse strangers and the warmth of friendships, the lies of enemies and the powerful trying to protect their privileges, and the small kindnesses one shares and receives with so many people?

God walks with us.

That is a double edge sword, cutting for us against all evil and fabrications by enemies … and it is the edge that cuts the sin and evil of us as well. It is promise to save and promise to put to an end: good is saved and evil is sent back to primordial void, right?!

Yes! Justice will prevail, and our enemies will be exposed, our sin will be cut from us, and we will be left pure and unmolested by our enemies baseless attacks …

except …

except read Jesus’ story! There one discovers anew that God’s judgment is not bent on destroying us but on saving us, forgiving us, setting Jesus’ record in place of our own at our judgment day, renewing life in us (a spirited, passionate life of commitment to being God’s unconditional love for others), and sending us out to live a life abundantly full of and spreading God’s Grace everywhere.

Like the fog that settles in, God’s mercy and wholehearted love for us and all people, covers us. Then God’s forgiveness provides our ‘daily bread’ like heat, breakfast, and opportunity to give God thanks for our family (some who love us good and always, and some who find hate and lies and fabricating blame for others as their way through life). Before the day is too far spent, God then blesses us with the golden sunlight dancing on the fog, dispersing it into the trees and beyond, as God’s promises give us hope … hope that today all will be well, and tomorrow all will be even better!

Truth, Light, Grace

Thursday, October 7, 2021

The Truth is Beautiful.

The Truth is Beautiful No Matter

How We Colour It.

The Truth is Beautiful,

For No Matter What Happens,

Christ’s Light Shines

Psalm 86:11

Teach me your way, O Lord, that I may walk in your truth; give me an undivided heart to revere your name.

Hebrews 13:9

Do not be carried away by all kinds of strange teachings; for it is well for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by regulations about food, which have not benefited those who observe them.

Words of Grace For Today

The heart as centre of consciousness, choice, intention, deliberation, and emotion (not quite as we would assign cognitive functions to the brain or ‘head’), the Psalmist prays may be undivided and the writer of Hebrews asks that it be strengthened not by might or power but by Grace.

Ah, the ways of living connected with creation are as extraordinary and seemingly out of sync with the way the people of the world proceed through life.

There are always ‘all kinds of strange teachings’, even today as fake news is manufactured as fast as people swarm to it on the internet, sharing it like viruses and diseases that infect one’s thinking and one’s being until one is so afraid and disconnected from God’s good creation and all God’s blessings that anything can be the truth. Lies are manufactured to deal with all kinds of situations, and against good people who threaten to expose these poor lost souls to reality.

It makes for proceeding through life a minefield of uncontrollable psychopathic variants of humanity that would rather spin a lie than participate at all in any truth. For truth has a way of expanding across all sorts of lies, webs of lies, and networks of liars, exposing with clear simple light the evil that is there, so obviously there. Only by constant denial and fabrication of more and more lies do the lies cover themselves in more shtako, as if that could ever hide them from the truth, the light, the Grace of God.

The truth cuts open the darkness. The light burns out the rot. And God’s Grace heals the wounds so that life can continue for all. Yet so many refuse to live in the light and dive back into the darkness of lies as quickly as they can, again and again as Truth, Christ’s Light, and God’s Grace continually work through the saints to bring life, abundant life, to all people and all creation.

So we pray each day, save us from being carried away by all kinds of strange teachings that benefit no one, and teach us your way, O Lord, that we may walk in your truth

Our Too Simple Fix & God’s Solution

Tuesday, October 5, 2021

By Fire …

And By Ice …

God Cleanses Creation

and Us

(with the Law to Expose Our Sins

and the Gospel of Our Sins Forgiven)

Jeremiah 31:34

No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, ‘Know the Lord’, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.

Acts 10:43

All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.

Words of Grace For Today

That day when all will know God, and no one will need to teach about God or learn about God will be the day

we hope

when all sin will disappear, when humans will no longer sin.

God has a different plan.

If sin disappears we will have lost our freedom to choose and with that our ability to love,

for love entails the commitment of self to another person, a commitment made as a free choice. Otherwise it is not love.

As our ability to choose to love persists, then we must (a priori) have the choice not to love, which is to sin.

As long as love exists, sin exists.

God does not end sin … and therefore love.

God allows us to love and to sin … and

God deals with our sins by forgiving them, exactly when we do not deserve that forgiveness.

This is Jesus’ story: that God so loved the world that God gave his only son that all who believe in him should be saved. This believing is not something we accomplish other than by the work of the Holy Spirit in us. Jesus saves us by grace alone.

Each day we breathe we have choices, and when we choose to love we, they people we love, and all of creation benefits. This is how God created us to live.

If we choose to not love, then God offers us forgiveness, free forgiveness and renewed life, renewed so that we can again choose to love … or not.

God’s love for us and mercy is unending. God continues to offer us forgiveness as long as we breathe.

…

And for now we need to use that breathe to learn and teach one another of God’s Grace, for it is a lesson we never quite retain.