If our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the furnace of blazing fire and out of your hand, O king, let him deliver us. But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods and we will not worship the golden statue that you have set up.
Acts 4:20
For we cannot keep from speaking about what we have seen and heard.
Words of Grace For Today
When God speaks, there is no one who ….
Well, that cannot be true, because people react on the full spectrum from loving worship to full our rejection that God exists, yet alone speaks clearly to people … for people to hear.
God is not a puppeteer, pulling the strings of control over humans, or any part of creation. Yet when some people hear God speaking, clearly, lovingly, they and we cannot keep from speaking about what we have seen and heard. That is the life of a sacramental mystic, who encounters God talking at every turn in creation, even in and among those most dangerous of animals, the two-legged kind that speak every kind of word on the spectrum from life-giving truth to life-robbing, evil lies.
What kind of word do you speak this day?
Amidst a pandemic, do you speak truth that supports, enhances, and inspired people to life healthily and abundantly, blessed by God.
Or are you off worshipping another kind of godlet, one who demands strict adherence to reality denying lies, controlled thoughts and expressions, and (like the king who is ready to throw Daniel and his companions into the furnace), the painful death of anyone who will not ‘fall into line’ worshipping your life-sucking godlet.
The powerful king who demanded Daniel worship his godlet, had not encountered God, Daniel’s God, who may or may not deliver Daniel (and us) from the fiery furnace of destruction (the actual fires of burning or the fire of lies that destroy our reputations.) Whether God chooses to deliver us does not deter us from remaining faithful. For we will not begin to worship a godlet who takes life from so many people, promising the greatest life, and delivering it’s followers into a long life more painfully greedy and selfish than death in a fiery furnace ever could be.
We have seen. We have heard. We have known. God is gracious, unconditionally loving, and prodigiously generous. We need nothing more than God’s blessings and opportunities to worship and serve God … with every word and breath … even if it be our last.
On the spectrum from life-giving, self-sacrificial, unconditionally loving (reflecting God’s Grace for us all) to the Devil’s empty promised, self-made life at the expense of others’ lives:
What kind of word do you speak this day?
From the outcast homeless poverty captured person to the most powerful ruler or judge of the day, God allows a simple question to sit before us each day:
The time is surely coming, says the Lord God, when I will send a famine on the land; not a famine of bread, or a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord. They shall wander from sea to sea, and from north to east; they shall run to and fro, seeking the word of the Lord, but they shall not find it.
Luke 11:28
But Jesus said, ‘Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it!’
Words of Grace For Today
A great many religious efforts through history and on-going today are well described by Amos’ Words from God: They shall wander from sea to sea, and from north to east; they shall run to and fro, seeking the word of the Lord, but they shall not find it.
To make up for the futility of our great and desperate searchings, we humans make up all sorts of things, religious things, rituals, ‘truths’ which are certainly nothing of the sort, ways of speaking, judgments against other people, wars, and great empires and ideas.
It is as if we have ourselves convinced that if we are seeking the Other, the divine, then what we do must be other than … well other than everything sane, practical, real, truthful, reasonable, understandable, and even reverent.
Yes, God is OTHER than we are, so other, infinite, immortal and on goes the list of how great God is compared to how miserably un-great we are.
All our efforts to bridge the gap between us and God are doomed to fail. That is the kind of gap that it is between Divine and us humans. Ah, you say, then with a long tradition behind you, ‘Why bother with God at all! Most likely God does not even exist!’ There certainly is no irrefutable proof of God’s existence, for sure!
The origin of our very idea of God is not knowable.
And for the faithful it does not matter.
We do not bridge the gap.
God created us and has gone to great lengths (in human terms of reference) to demonstrate to us that God already has bridged the gap between the Divine and us humans.
In a word we refer to it as God’s Word.
Jesus, the Word of God, God’s self, become human, so that we could encounter God as one of us, points us to how we can respond.
First off, we stop trying to reach God, or win God’s approval, or become one with God. God has reached us, given us God’s approval (freely, that’s Grace), and has become one with us.
We do not and cannot ‘have God’ in anyway, not in our hearts, minds, souls, or special religious rites of any kind.
God has us.
Second Jesus points us to obedience: Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it! We’ve made great traditions of obeying in order to be good enough for God. It’s all and always futile and destructive to us and those around us. Hearing God’s Word and obeying it is to trust that God has provided the Word for us to hear. It is trusting that we can hear it, without some special rigmarole or religious effort. It is trusting that we can obey it, not to earn God’s favour, but in response to knowing God has already granted us God’s favour, unconditionally and overwhelmingly abundant, so that we have enough to share with everyone else.
So we all know where that leaves us. We humans fight with each other who has God’s ‘real’ Word, and who ‘really’ hears it and obeys it.
Ahh Quatsch. Get over ourselves. God’s Word is not something we can claim over other people’s claims. It’s there. Written by our ancestors as they encountered God, mind you quite imperfectly so. God has put God’s Word all around us, in nature, in the materials we build houses and cities with. God’s Word is the stuff that makes a city a community, and a house a home.
Obedience is simple. Listen. Hear the ten commandments. They set limits. Hear Jesus’ Commandment: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and strength, and your neighbour as yourself and love even your enemy.
Limits and goal. Life is pretty simple. Listen and give it all you’ve got. You cannot take anything to the grave with you, so ‘spend’ it sharing God’s Word here and now.
If not now, when are you going to do what God created you to do?!
By God’s Grace Mystic Communion With God is Possible For Anyone
Saturday, March 13, 2021
Meister Eckhart
Philosopher, Theologian, Mystic
Dominicon Monk
born near Gotha 1260
Proverbs 16:33
The lot is cast into the lap, but the decision is the Lord’s alone.
James 4:15
Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wishes, we will live and do this or that.’
Words of Grace For Today
Many see that Martin Luther was pivotly influenced by Theologia Germanica, thought by many to be written by Meister Eckhart, while he was in hiding. Luther provided the title as he assembled editions of it from not commonly available manuscripts that came to his attention.
Luther is said to have written:
[N]ext to the Bible and St. Augustine, no book has ever come into my hands, from which I have learned … more of God, and Christ, and man and all things that are….Wikipedia.
While traditionally mystics are seen as having ‘ecstatic experiences’ of the divine, uniting themselves with the divine, unlike other humans, Luther’s theology provides much more profound understanding of the divine presence in creation: it is sacramental. That is God makes Godself known to any who wish to notice in the most mundane and common things.
This does not detract from the complete otherness of the divine, nor our being made in God’s image, nor our great distance from being anything perfect. Rather it affirms that God bridges the great gap between the infinite and finite. Traditionally Christians have affirmed that God is present in the Bread and Wine of the Eucharist, and in the Water of Baptism, and in the Word preached, sung and prayed, and in the gathering of two or three faithful.
Sacramental mystics do not strive to attain unity with God. We affirm the long tradition since Adam and Eve, Abraham and Sarah, and Paul, Augustine, and Luther: We humans are sinful and cannot save ourselves. God comes to live among us to demonstrate to us so clearly that God is with us, God’s Kingdom is at hand, and that God delights in being present with us and in creation for all to experience.
Creation gives witness: God is here with us. God has made us saints, though simultaneously we remain sinners. We are able by God’s Grace alone to reflect God’s unconditional love for all, to all.
What a life!
Our enemies ought to cower at the power of God, who knows each and every thing they do.
Our enemies ought to run toward God’s love, for only there can they be safe.
For God will eradicate all Evil in God’s own time.
God delights in being present with us and in creation for all to experience.
So we pray:
The lot is cast into our laps, but the decision is the Lord’s alone. If the Lord wishes, we will live and do this or that, for the decision is the Lord’s alone.
We trust that no matter what comes our way, God delights in being present with us and in creation for all to experience.
It was no messenger or angel but his presence that saved them; in his love and in his pity he redeemed them; he lifted them up and carried them all the days of old.
Luke 15:5
When he has found [the lost sheep], he lays [the reckless, cantankerous, wandering-into-danger sheep] on his shoulders and rejoices.
Words of Grace For Today
Today so many people make up their religion from what they find available around them, as if it were all on a smorgasbord, all-you-can-eat for one small price.
They pick a little of this, and little of that, pile into their lives and try to make it through the day. Their smorgasbord is not certified or health inspected, nor governed by any safety measures. It contains delicious looking poisons, some that work fast, some that work slow, some that only work as death approaches from some other cause.
I met an older man when I was on 4 different medications and a regular injections just to make it through the day. He told me his story when he saw me take one pill. Years before he had a small health problem, went to the doctor and was prescribed a powerful medicine to deal with the issue. Then after months he developed a more serious issue, went to the same doctor and again received a script for medication to deal with that issue. In a few months he had three other rather debilitating issues including that he could not sleep through the night. More medications and a referral to a sleep clinic and thousands of dollars later he went to sleep with a breathing machine on his face. The first mask had eaten into his nose creating a sore that just would not heal, so he had to pay hundreds of dollars to get a different larger mask that covered most of his face. The sore took months to heal and left a noticeable scar.
One day, four years after his first minor issue, he got up and went out to repair a fence. It was rather simple manual work. Before this all started he did this kind of thing easily. Now he could barely gather the tools and supplies together. He made two slow trips to get the tools and supplies to the fence where it needed repairing. He spent hours to get the simple repair done that should have taken less than a half hour. Finally toward supper he came back into the yard, completely exhausted. He left his things for the next day to be put away and shed his jacket and boots as he came in and barely made it to his bed to lay down.
The next morning he woke up famished. His last meal was the morning the day before. He had not used his sleeping machine, he’d forgotten to take his medications. He felt better. He realized that while taking his medications and using the sleeping machine he felt ten times worse then he had with the first minor issue he went to the doctor to have dealt with years earlier. He stopped taking all the medications and using the sleeping machine.
Each day he felt noticeably better. A week later he went out to repair another area of the fence and it took him a half hour. Then he went online to the Mayo Clinic website and read about his first symptom, the medications he added each few months and their side effects. He realized that the first symptom could be dealt with by a change in diet and more exercise on a very regular basis. All the other symptoms were known side effects for the medications, each as they were added, at least for the first 4 drugs. Then it became clear to him he’d been on such a soup of drugs his body was completely incapable of dealing with all the powerful effects and side effects and it had started to slowly shut down.
His last comment finally caught my attention: he’d talked to a number of men who’d suffered the same thing. It was as if doctors were trying to incapacitate men with medications.
It took me a few months to realize the same thing had been done to me. I stopped taking all but the one medication I’d been on for decades that I needed for my GERDS. Life returned to normal and I started to realize I was also being abused and gaslit by my now ex.
As in the days of old, God gathered in this wandering sheep, carried me back to the flock, and saved my life, literally and figuratively. For this I give God thanks each day, and pray for those that tried to do me in, and still try to this day. May God gather them into the flock, as in the days of old.
Faith and one’s faith community is not a smorgasbord, any more than medications are a smorgasbord to pick and choose from. Traditions develop and continue because they provide a healthy manner of living. Humans continually mess up the traditions, and the traditions, at least my Lutheran Christian tradition, is well prepared to face such challenges and call us back to rely on …
to rely on God alone, and God’s Grace for us as the only thing that saves us. We need one thing, something like I needed only one medication. We require God’s Grace. Everything else only appears to provide us life abundant. In fact the ‘side effects’ of most religious self-made conglomerations is that one finds oneself out in the wilderness, defenceless as the wolves come closer and closer.
Thanks be to God, for God’s Grace, made known to us through Jesus’s old, old story.
As of old, God walks with us, and rejoices when we return to the flock after we inevitably stray into danger that could do us in. Our enemies, and God’s enemies, may want us dead and work hard to accomplish that, doch God works wonders to save us, and there is joy for us, because of God’s Grace, all the days of our lives.
‘So perish all your enemies, O Lord! But may your friends be like the sun as it rises in its might.’ And the land had rest for forty years.
John 17:22
The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one.
Words of Grace For Today
God creates.
God creates order for all of creation … and for us.
Peace and rest come only when God’s order prevails.
From a very limited human perspective it may seem that when one’s enemies perish and one’s friends rise like the sun with might, then God’s good order prevails. Thus the passage that when one’s enemies have perished and when the sun rises on one’s friends the land can rest for as long as it takes … for forty years.
Reality is different: God’s will does not eliminate enemies by making them perish. God’s will eliminates enemies by converting them to friends. And that is the key to celebrating God’s love for us, to know that God does not wish us ill. God does everything to offer us the greatest thing, God adopts us as children even when we are yet still God’s enemies.
It is everything that God wishes us well. God breathes the essence and the best of life into us, and through us to the rest of all people and all creation.
It is God’s unconditional love for us that drives us to answer God’s call to follow Jesus. Just as in this pandemic we really do not know what will come next, so we know not where Jesus will ask us to follow. We do know from his ministry that Jesus does not overthrow governments, neither does Jesus take us into retreat from the world. Jesus takes us out into the world to meet people with diseases to heal them, with demons to free them, and with doubts to reassure them of God’s good will to all of creation.
It is for us no more a tried and true path that Jesus (also during this pandemic) calls us to follow him on than it was for the fishermen near Capernaum. The path we tread, though full of challenges, is an exciting life. It is life as we were created and redeemed to live.
Is not my word like fire, says the Lord, and like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces?
Luke 12:49
I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!
Words of Grace For Today
In the dead-cold of winter (so mild before this week, but no longer at all mild at -36⁰C) a bit of fire is a welcome thing. Vented, directed, contained with plenty of snow at shovel length to put out anything that approaches too much fire, the heat of fire meets the bleeping cold air and provides a livable space.
Most people in homes enjoy the balance of fire against cold as a product of natural gas ignited in a furnace with the heat distributed to the rest of the home by electricity (either an air fan or a water pump.)
There are cautionary tales to be told or rather seen: the house that one day is an example of a grand house on a hill in the woods, and the next a scarred roof line behind an untouched facade, which on closer viewing displays the chimney standing on it’s own with the building around it on the side and back of what used to be a house, missing and what is visible is jagged and charred. A chimney fire it seems consumed a home, hopefully without loss of life. The 5th wheel RV appears setup along side the remains of the house for the remainder of the winter, spring and summer, with the dogs running outside as they usually had.
Fire.
Or
One sees on the news videos of thick smoke and vehicles making their collective and slow exit out of Fort McMurray as wildfires wipe out huge areas of the city.
Or
One sees the photos of a railroad accident fire that has burst and melted rail cars and rails themselves.
It could be that the purpose of your life is only to serve as a warning to others. Not every life can be a success, just like not every vessel can be seaworthy. But there’s no shame in being one spectacular shipwreck.
God’s Word is like all that, taking what is evil in the world, what is evil and sinful in us, and burning it up like chaff ….
Ah, what a fire that will be!
God’s Word always is a two edged sword, cutting away evil, also from us, among us, and from within each of us!
The Word of God cleanses with fire, and what a fire it is already in us!
The Word of God cuts away and burns away our sin and evil, and cleanses us, pure and righteous! By Grace we live through the cleansing fire.
God provides more than an RV replacement for a home. God provides us a home in the New Jerusalem, the City of God, the New Creation.
For some of us so connected to nature in our existence God provides that we need not move into a city; God provides a home in the wilds of nature’s wonders and beauty.
God’s cleansing fire that Jesus brings is destructive, powerful and wonderfully just. We pray it will be kindled soon among us. We pray the hammer of God will break apart Evil from within us and from among us, so that all will have homes, all will have food, all will have a good life, an abundant life!
So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate.
Luke 6:39
He also told them a parable: ‘Can a blind person guide a blind person? Will not both fall into a pit?”
Words of Grace For Today
Who do we follow?
Can we follow others …
into the ways of the Devil?
on the way of Jesus?
So much is made, to great detriment, of ‘the woman’ seeing the forbidden tree was good for food, eating first, then offering her husband the same.
Truth is, as every honest person knows, men and women alike are as easily and as likely to see forbidden fruit as something they desire, must have, and for which they do great evil things to acquire.
Every day, each of us, needs a Word, whether from our memories or renewed, currently spoken to us, … a Word that creates faith in us such that we can resist temptation to pursue life for ourselves (to the great detriment of many others).
That Word does not come from anyone, anywhere, at any time, other than from God. And God’s Word must be spoken, written or communicated (through events, dance, music or something similar) by other humans. It is a paradox: only God’s Word can save us; only another human can provide that Word for us.
Thank God, God’s Kingdom is at hand, and God’s Word is given freely for anyone who is inspired by the Spirit to provide it to others.
In this time of pandemic, now in it’s tenth month of restrictions for us, we need this Word … to inspire us not to listen to the words of discouragement, of resignation, and especially of lies … as if ignoring the danger with reckless behaviour can save any of us.
Yet covidiots spring up everywhere, sometimes even in us.
The Word…
Only the Word that gives us breath and life, joy and meaning, love and hope can save us from the Devil’s temptations if not to participate in covidiot behaviours, then to ridicule and complain about those who do.
Thankfully we are not led by blind men or blind women. We are led by Jesus, who has vision to see God as we are unable.
We can approach each day with confidence that God feeds us all we require for abundant life … there is no need to go searching for fruit from the forbidden tree, or even the forbidden tree. Thankfully God provides those who can provide God’s Word to us, and even use us to provide God’s Word to others. Covid 19 has given us even greater opportunities to shared God’s Word.
Be of good courage. There’s much good to be done each day.
I am yours; save me, for I have sought your precepts.
John 15:7
If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.
Words of Grace For Today
Ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you!
At first glance it looks like we get carte blanch requests; our every wish will be fulfilled!
That result flows from an equation that starts from life only as we might presume to know it, that everything about us is chosen and determined by ourselves or others working against us. In this setting God (supposedly) promises that our every wish can bring us fulfillment and life abundant.
That is not the start of the equation for God’s promise that all our wishes will be fulfilled.
The promise flows from blessed life as God created us to be alive: the ‘equation starts’ with a life of seeking to understand God’s Word, God’s precepts.
The ‘equation starts’ start with us abiding in Jesus, God’s Word of life.
That of course sounds like we need to earn our way into God’s favour and blessings.
Yet, we know very well that we cannot earn God’s favour and blessings, God promises us them first, as free gift.
Given God’s favour and blessings, we then can choose to respond with gratitude, and that is us abiding in God’s Word.
Full of gratitude, abiding in God’s Word, our wishes are not the same as when life is lived as if we or others determined everything about our lives.
Instead our wishes flow in line with God’s good will for us …
and then of course, all our wishes, being God’s wishes for us, will be done for us!
trees across the meadow Januarytrees across the meadow Apriltrees across the meadow Junetrees across the meadow October
Ritual,
Taking the same shot, nearly everyday.
Until the poor, bright light
seems refreshingly clear.
Boring or revealing
of nature,
of self!?
or of God’s Grace?
1 Samuel 15:22
Samuel said, ‘Has the Lord as great delight in burnt-offerings and sacrifices, as in obedience to the voice of the Lord? Surely, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed than the fat of rams.
Romans 16:19
For while your obedience is known to all, so that I rejoice over you, I want you to be wise in what is good, and guileless in what is evil.
Words of Grace For Today
It is common, too common, that we humans point to meaningless ritual that we keep, so as to divert attention from the truth of our sins as we try to ‘prove,’ or at least make the appearance to others, that we are ‘good’ people.
From powerful politicians fear mongering or even starting senseless wars to divert attention to their terrible politicking, to the abusive and neglectful mother who easily created lies about her husband to divert blame from herself to him, to even the youngest of children who point to their siblings or pets to lay blame for something bad anywhere. Just not on themselves.
Sacrifices on the altars started out as a meaningful observance of God’s right to all one had, and they became ways to keep up appearances for the rich, powerful and corrupt while they wreaked havoc on God’s good people, all in order to maintain their undeserved wealth, power, and fame.
Obedience to God’s Law was never taken seriously by such appearance keepers. So Samuel calls the people to be obedient to God’s Law.
Then playing out one’s obedience while breaking the spirit of it became the game the corrupt played with themselves, each other, and they thought with God.
God was not fooled, nor amused. God wept.
Paul encourages new Christians to not only be obedient to God’s Law, even it’s spirit, but to go much further. Paul calls them to become wise, to know beyond the letter and spirit of the Law. Paul calls them to know the Spirit of God (revealed to them by the Holy Spirit, and by Jesus’ example).
And not only to know, but to live accordingly, since the Spirit of God is not about anything if it is not about everything, including how one lives each moment, starting when one rises, and ending … well never ending!
What a life! To live according to God’s Spirit. Not that we can do it on our own at all, not at all. Instead the Holy Spirit transforms us and our thoughts, words and actions so that we live as God intended when God created us, forgave us, redeemed us, and made us holy people.
