Jesus is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.
Zephaniah 3:14-15
Sing aloud, O daughter Zion;shout, O Israel!Rejoice and exult with all your heart,O daughter Jerusalem! The Lord has taken away the judgments against you,he has turned away your enemies.The king of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst;you shall fear disaster no more.
Words of Grace For Today
Jesus is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and ... for the sins of the whole world.
The Lord has taken away the judgments against [us],he has turned away [our] enemies.
Therefore we can sing aloud … rejoice and we can trust that God is with us.
Enemies are plentiful. A judge is still trying to kill me, the consummation of many judges’ false judgments and corrupt decisions. What can one expect? Well, one can expect that those with authority behave with the honour that is due their offices, can’t one? And one can expect that they are all alike perverse;there is no one who does good,no, not one.
Of course the natural progression would seem to be that the corrupt would be exposed. That never seems to be what happens.
In the end (penultimately), while the corrupt may get off scott-free (for now), we can place our trust in God’s Grace, for Jesus is atoning still for our sins, and for all the sins of the world. Now that’s quite the thing to have completed, for us and for all the world! Is it completed for all the corrupt enemies who still try to kill us and others just for fun?
God’s grace is something … something we can trust for ourselves. God’s grace is something else, something extraordinary, for it can convert corrupt authorities into God’s children.
Rejoice? Yes! For Jesus has paid the price for all our sins.
We are free! Free of condemnation, free of guilt, and free for life!
Rejoice with Jerusalem, and be glad for her, all you who love her; rejoice with her in joy.
Luke 2:38
At that moment Anna came, and began to praise God and to speak about the child to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.
Words of Grace For Today
Once we realize what God has done for us, for all of us children of God, Israel and all, there is great cause for celebration.
Some people among us have the ability to see what God is doing, while others remain blind and work against all that God calls us to be and do.
Those who see like a child, like Anna, see God at work in the simplest things. Like seeing children who are the future. Like children who can be treated like the important people, the intelligent people, like the loving people they are and will be.
It is a wonder to behold, to see an adult finally realize that all the pretense and pomp they have tried in vain to hide behind is worthless, and the only saving thing about life at all, at all, is the Grace of God … for them and for all people.
Then we get to celebrate with God that one more person has seen the Light of Christ, and that God wins hearts and minds from the Devil even among the worst people we meet.
I know more than one pastor who is a clear sign that God’s Grace is stronger than evil, for they are pure evil, liars to the bottom of their lives as they make their way to power in the church, to power over people, to power over … well actually over nothing, for it is power that is a pretense, the Devil’s work. They only pretend to live and speak as if God were real, to be feared and loved. In reality they make themselves to be their own godlets, or they make power, wealth, or privilege and comfort their godlets. Yet God makes wondrous things come of their work, in spite of the rotten stench that is their lives.
Pastors are not the only ones. Those who make the country what it is, those with power, those who judge and arbitrate corruptly, those who patrol and say it is for peace but whom wreak havoc on others with their lies and bullying, those who hire themselves out to protect others and merely take their money to sell them out, i.e. lawyers. And there are doctors who treat their patients to shorten and end their lives and falsely accuse the patients of being improper, when they are they ones who seek to destroy life. Really there is no one who is not included. They are all alike perverse;there is no one who does good,no, not one.
So when God saves one more, we have every reason to celebrate.
They have all gone astray, they are all alike perverse;there is no one who does good,no, not one.
Romans 3:22-24
The righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.
Words of Grace For Today
They have all gone astray …
We would like to think that these are other people of whom it is spoken, because the truth is frightening indeed. While many gaslight others (as they have me), and falsely accuse and convict them of terrible things (which are simply not true at all, not at all) before God we are all the ones who have gone astray.
Before God, only through the justification of Christ given to us as a pure gift are we redeemed, and made worthy of anything before God. We are not just made something. God makes us pure and righteous, though we deserve nothing but extreme condemnation. We are made holy saints, God’s own children.
Gift has a new meaning for us after we realize once again how costly a gift this is that God gives us: both how much it cost God to give it to us, and how precious it is for us.
We should never live, and yet we live abundantly.
Now what are we going to do with this gift? Will we pretend we have earned our place in life, the air we breathe, the water we drink and the food we eat to survive yet another day? Or will we pretend that we have made it this far without God? Or will we pretend that we are powerful enough to beat God in a game of life, when all we’ve done is sell our souls to the Devil thinking we can get away with doing evil to others in order to ‘get ahead’? No, thinking we can live without God’s grace is trying to live without a head. A chicken can appear to live without a head for a short while, but we vanish into the folds of time never to emerge again …
Doch God’s children life in peace and prosperity of spirit, until the day God gathers us in and gives us an everlasting home.
Meanwhile we children have the work of God on earth to be about, sharing Grace with all, and being the bearers of Good News.
Breathe, for God loves you! God loves us, poor wretched sinners, all of us who have gone astray…. Only Christ makes anything good come of us, for Christ shows us how to see and share the beauty of creation, astounding as it is as it is to be loved, unconditionally.
Breathe. Rest. Live courageously, share the Good News, and trust that God walks with us.
The day done, a deserted place, and the prayer is always the same:
Thank you for all that you bless me with,
and sustain me, when others would take my life from me.
Psalm 59:17
O my strength, I will sing praises to you, for you, O God, are my fortress, the God who shows me steadfast love.
Mark 1:35
In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed.
Words of Grace For Today
In the morning, while it is still very dark … this describes everything in the morning here for months. The sun rises at 8:00 ish, later, it’ll rise at 10:00.
he got up and went to a deserted place … this describes every morning, for thankfully this place is deserted. No one is around to threaten me. I’ve had my fill of lies about me and people trying to Gaslight me to think I did something wrong when I have done very honourable and courageous things.
there he prayed … and each morning I pray, with thanks for what I still have available to sustain my life and make it even blessed, fresh air, water, fire for heat and sometimes even hot water, food, clothing, a bit of shelter, work and love.
I have every reason to sing God praises, for God is my strength. In the face of all this gaslighting, of late some very transparent and intentional, God shows me all the steadfast love that holds the world together. Indeed God is my fortress.
Those who lie about me, and Gaslight me … these people I know could not survive with the little that I have. I can with God’s blessings survive many many years. They would give up, capitulate or simply die of an accident of their own making, dying by fire or by ice.
They have fancy houses, houses of privilege, houses made with deceit and fraud, yet their houses crumble even now, for the comfort they enjoy, the conveniences, the relative safety, … all that is won by dishonesty of whatever kind will crumble not from others or from mice and ants, but from within themselves, from their own corruption.
And you, have you provided life abundant for anyone lately, OR
or have you taken life’s essentials for yourself and left others without?
Who is our God, if not the God that is knowable in how we behave when the stress is turned up high, as it has in Covid 19, especially now with the 2nd wave, which as predicted is worse than the first?
In the early morning, in a deserted place, what are doing each day?
You must neither add anything to what I command you nor take away anything from it, but keep the commandments of the Lord your God with which I am charging you.
1 John 2:7
Beloved, I am writing you no new commandment, but an old commandment that you have had from the beginning; the old commandment is the word that you have heard.
Words of Grace For Today
God created a wonderful universe, and us in it. We also can be as God created us, wonderful.
As scientists explore, research, and experiment, they come up with formulations of theories, which if they prove to be reliable become known as laws. These are serious, accurate descriptions of how the universe works. Until they are not … not reliable, not serious, not accurate descriptions of how the universe works. Or sort of.
We still call Newtons Laws, laws, even though they fail on so many levels.
Still scientists plug on to describe how what happens around us … and as a result they or others are able to develop amazing technologies.
Computers are one example. Not just the one on many people’s desk or hauled with them in a pack pack. – I remember when the computer at the University of Minnesota which one could book time to run one’s punch cards through and receive answers on punch cards and reels of magnetic tape filled more than one floor of a building that occupied a long, very long block. I got to visit with my dad, a post grad student, in the input room and walk the hall, looking in the windows at the air conditioned rooms that held monstrous rows of tubes and wires and what ever not! I was impressed, sort of as a kid. This was bigger and more powerful than the computer that sent the first men to the moon.
That computer had the power of one of today’s hand held calculators, a simple one.
The computer carried in a back pack today is what? millions and millions times more powerful than that computer at the UofM?
The laws of physics allow technologies that make computers possible. And they are everywhere, in vehicles, in almost everything with a combustible engine or electric engine or even an electric anything.
We know more, and we seem to know less about the universe, than we know and do not know about God and God’s Will for us humans.
God sends us signs, and laws, and prophets, and rituals grow out of all the extra-ordinary experience of God.
Evil people have since the beginning of time used religion, changed it, bent it and perverted it to serve their own purposes of control over others.
So God spoke to Moses and commanded that not one iota could be removed from the law, and not one iota could be added to it. That really did not stop people from trying and seemingly doing just that.
Jesus, God’s Son, came and lived as one of us. God’s Will for us ‘spoke’ to us in his life, death, and resurrection. Jesus is God’s Word.
Many thought that made different laws from God the by word of the day. It’s been done so many times that religion of every kind is full of the results.
Jesus, the Word of God, John wrote to teach us, was at the beginning. This Word created the universe.
There is no ‘new’ Word.
For many there is a new hearing, a new comprehension, a new life for sure.
God’s Word remains the same.
Adding to it, or taking from it does no one any good.
The mystery is grand enough that if we love God with all our heart, mind and strength, and our neighbours (including our enemies) as ourselves (as Jesus loves us – unconditionally) we are in for a life of discovery, research and experimentation, of happiness, grief, despair and profound joy, and of faith, love, and hope.
We do not add or subtract from God’s Will or God’s Word, but there is always more to comprehend, and more sins (ours and others) to forgive, and more life (ours and others) to redeem and set anew.
From the beginning of life to it’s end we have only Grace, which is the old, old story of Jesus and his love.
It’s old, and if you engage with it, it will always surprise you as if it were new … in it’s demands on you and in it’s rewards for you and yours.
Indeed I know that this is so; but how can a mortal be just before God? If one wished to contend with him, one could not answer him once in a thousand.
Mark 12:32-34
Then the scribe said to him, ‘You are right, Teacher; you have truly said that “he is one, and besides him there is no other”; and “to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength”, and “to love one’s neighbour as oneself”,—this is much more important than all whole burnt-offerings and sacrifices.’ When Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, ‘You are not far from the kingdom of God.’ After that no one dared to ask him any question.
Words of Grace For Today
Jesus brings wisdom, wisdom that the intelligent, the powerful, the wealthy, and the privileged rarely comprehend yet honour and embrace.
Jesus calls the simplest part of each of us, the kindness string of our DNA, and commands us to love God with all our heart, and with all our mind, and with all our strength”, and to love our neighbours (all of them) as oneself.
It is not complicated. It is not really difficult.
It just goes against the selfishness that drives most people to success with wealth, power, privilege, and intelligence. Love is not built on one’s own accomplishments.
This selfless, unconditional, complete love for God, one’s neighbour (including one’s enemies) and oneself can only grow out of one’s acknowledging that God provides as free gifts all that one needs for life.
Many fools with power, privilege, intelligence, and wealth have attempted to argue with God that it is the way they have lived that is God’s will. It is a futile argument. No one can contend with God, nor without God’s Grace survive.
Thanks be to God. We live, breathe, and laugh. Kindness and real honour win the day, for all eternity.
Then Amos answered Amaziah, ‘I am no prophet, nor a prophet’s son; but I am a herdsman, and a dresser of sycamore trees, and the Lord took me from following the flock, and the Lord said to me, “Go, prophesy to my people Israel.”
Mark 1:16-17
As Jesus passed along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the lake—for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, ‘Follow me and I will make you fish for people.’
Words of Grace For Today
There are so many excuses not to serve the Lord our God; excuses not to fear and love the Lord with all our hearts, minds and strength.
It is a narrow path by which we find ourselves, completely turned around in our lives, doing the last thing we expected to be doing, all in service to our Lord Jesus.
That narrow path is not ours to find on our own. God finds us and pushes us on to it, like Amos. A herdsman and dresser of sycamore trees who God seconded to be … a prophet.
A quiet, hard labouring life, at the bottom of the human food chain, being a shepherd was not an elevated station in life, not even an inch or millimetre elevated.
A prophet, an official prophet, could be very lucrative. But a prophet of the Lord, that was not so. That meant speaking the truth, not what the wielders of power wished to hear. As a consequence prophets of God were most often terribly abused and eventually killed … because they followed God’s instructions and challenged evil corruption in all ways it disrupted and corrupted God’s people.
Simon Peter and Andrew were fishermen, hard working men who ventured most days out on to the surface of the lake, the bubbling, boiling, roiling surface of anti-creation that swallowed more than a few fishermen with the sudden storms of winds and waves that sent boats, men, and their catch to the bottom.
Jesus walks along and calls them and for some reason they follow this glutton, itinerant preacher, teacher, and healer who has no home and nothing to pay them. They leave honest labour to become dependent on the donations and care of others. They become servants of a man they do not know, of whom they perhaps have heard much, or maybe nothing. They are uneducated, working near the bottom of the human ‘food chain’ subject to little respect, but upon whom many are dependent for some of their food. Following Jesus does not elevate their status. They, like the prophets, are eventually killed for following Jesus.
God calls and leads us down paths that demand everything of us, and eventually we will (as history proves) be killed for following Jesus.
The world just does not like good, honest, gracious, and holy people. We show up the corruption that the world tries to hide as normal or necessary for life.
But what a life God calls us to!
We live fully, participating in all of creation as God created us to be able to. Sharing Grace with all we meet. We are, like Patch Adams, bullied and gaslit for being excessively happy, excessively honest, excessively kind and gracious.
It is the life that is a well lived life, more than any other. We cannot find it on our own. Only God’s Holy Spirit can guide us to this life, in our own particular way, where Grace and Truth mean more then money or privilege or comfort … or even survival.
On this path of life, called by God to be here, we see God each and every day, visible in the the beauty and pain of even the mundane of life.
Incline your ear, and come to me; listen, so that you may live. I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David.
Hebrews 13:20-21
Now may the God of peace, who brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, make you complete in everything good so that you may do his will, working among us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory for ever and ever. Amen.
Words of Grace For Today
May God make us complete in everything good so that we may do God’s will.
Incline our ear, come, listen so that we may live.
This sounds like we must take the initiative to turn to God and listen and obey, and therewith somehow earn our right to live.
But those that proceed this verse put it in a different context:
Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.
Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labour for that which does not satisfy? Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food.
Incline your ear, and come to me; listen ….
God has set a banquet of food and drink: it is free to buy without money or price. Yes, that’s kind of a contradiction. God does not just dump it on us, so that we must eat and drink.
God invites us, and offers to sell to us for nothing. We get to engage, but the price is free. We do not loose our integrity, but God establishes that God gives freely to us all that we need.
And it is not spam or food beyond it’s best buy date, or canned food, or just water or flavoured sugar water called fruit drinks. God offers rich food, milk, and wine!
This is a feast that we get to take home.
This is the nourishment that will sustain us for 40 days and 40 nights in the wilderness of life.
So we are fed, and our thirst slaked. We do not just live when we receive God’s generosity. We live well.
When we have feasted and feasted again at Jesus’ table then we are ready. God has work for us. On our own we have no way of knowing what God’s will is or doing it. But after we have feasted and drunk our fill, then God makes us complete in everything good and equips us to do God’s good work on this earth.
This is the work that God created us to do, to love one another and ourselves, and to love even our enemies. This is the work that is pleasing to Jesus the Christ.
What a life!
No one need thirst or hunger again …
…
We, God’s people, are the one’s called to ensure that this is so, working to provide food and drink and invitations, so that all are invited to God’s feast, where the food is rich, the milk and wine does not run out, and blessings abound.
We are not only in this together, God brings us together, to do God’s will more effectively, to provide for every neighbour, with love.
Surely everyone goes about like a shadow. Surely they are in turmoil for nothing; they heap up, and do not know who will gather.
2 Timothy 1:10
This grace [which saves us and gives us a holy calling] was given to us in Christ Jesus before the ages began, but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Saviour Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.
Words of Grace For Today
The world’s way of living is to try to make something from nothing, to have more for oneself. It is a turmoil like no other, yet no one can know who will get to gather in the rewards for all our striving to make something for nothing. Few of us reap the rewards of our efforts. Some reap the rewards of many others, and claim it is their right. It is not. Most of us give up great effort and see no reward at all.
Only those who labour for Christ are rewarded for their efforts, not with the heaps gathered in by others or by themselves. Rather we who labour for Christ receive first the reward for Jesus’ sacrifice, and then we live dedicated to following Christ’s will for us and others.
This is a holy calling. We no longer lives as a shadow, as part human, part darkness, outlined only by a brighter light. We live as the beings God created us to be, full, embodied, clearly seen in the light, solid even in the darkness of any kind, especially that of evil.
When one toils in order to have enough to provide the basics of life to oneself and one’s family, one can see no end of toil. For there is never enough for oneself and one’s own. When one toils in order to have the basics of life for oneself and one’s own … and for all those around in need, then there is always enough … enough for life that is worth living.
Yesterday I stopped at Walmart to pick up the four grocery items I need to deal with GERDS, for which I hope I have enough money since the gift card I was given had less than a dollar on it.
Done the first isle following the assigned directions to maintain physical distancing, I came face to face with two grocery carts. I stopped and waited for the people behind the carts to place in the rather full carts what they were looking for on the shelves. Then the proceeded to come further down the isle the wrong way towards me. I asked them to turn around, that they were going the wrong way. The first of the two carts instead turned to the side of the isle to try to force his way past me. I turned my cart to the side two inches to close the gap and he rammed my cart. I asked again.
With cursing the two cart drivers turned around, and a third man with them, starting verbally abusing me, threatening me to find me in the parking lot. As I continued with my shopping he continued to yell abuse at me from the next isle, from 20 and 50 feet away. I looked for staff. There were none to be found.
I headed for the checkouts, and while I was trying to deal with the 0 value gift card, the verbal abuse and threats started up again as the group joined the que to the checkouts. I yelled for security, afraid for my life, that this guy might actually follow me out into the parking lot!
Security came, or was it the manager. He was questioned. My credit card transaction was held up as they pulled my id. Finally I was allowed to exit the entrance doors to distance me from this guy.
If I could toil for this guy and the guy in a vehicle going 110kph passed me on my bicycle on the right, on the shoulder of highway 55, … If I could toil for these guys to not be idiots, not put my life at risk with their frustration that things are not going their way, how would that look?
I’m at a loss what to do for idiots, and many more others of so many kinds, who breach the social contract we have, which holds the barbaric nature of humanity at bay with such a thin veneer of civility. That thin veneer suffers attacks everyday, and its amazing that it still holds. If we are not careful, if we are not all careful, it will dissolve all too soon.
Then toiling for the basics of life will be an impossibility for us all, idiots, liars, deceivers, even for former holders of great authority, and also for us saints with a holy calling.
Pray that the Light of Christ will shine soon into the darkness that has descended on these lands and on these people,s here and across the globe, so notable as it is just south of the border.
The Light will expose the evil done, burning it up like chaff, as it finally abolishes death and brings life and immortality to light through the gospel.
Soon and Very Soon, we pray; Come and Deliver us, all. We are ALL in this together.
Then Elijah lay down under the broom tree and fell asleep. Suddenly an angel touched him and said to him, ‘Get up and eat.’ He looked, and there at his head was a cake baked on hot stones, and a jar of water. He ate and drank, and lay down again. The angel of the Lord came a second time, touched him, and said, ‘Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you.’ He got up, and ate and drank; then he went in the strength of that food for forty days and forty nights to Horeb the mount of God.
2 Corinthians 4:7
We have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us.
Words of Grace For Today
Elijah is on the run, for his life. He has killed the prophets of Baal. In response Jezebel is out for revenge. So Elijah is on the run for his life.
Elijah is distraught and prays that God will let him die, for he has become no better than his ancestors who killed to try to make the world a better place … which never works. In the wilderness he lays down under a solitary broom tree.
An angel visits him while he is sleeping, and feeds him, twice, so that when Elijah wakes he has strength for the days ahead. For God has many things for Elijah to do before Elijah’s days on earth are completed.
There are days in most people’s lives where one has to think that exterminating that person or those people will somehow help the world be a better place. God save us from ever allowing those reactions to evil to be more than fleeting. God has other plans for evil people. God chooses to save them by forgiving them, redeeming them, and making them holy, agents of God’s will on earth. This is the double victory that Martin Luther King Jr. preached about attaining through non-violent protests.
Sweet such victory is, indeed.
It is nothing less than we could wish for all evil people. We would, especially I would, want God’s timetable to be moved up a bit, all the way to NOW, so that these evil people, doing these evil things, do not end up ruining us (too late for that for me) and eventually killing us (that’s sitting not too far on the horizon for me, just past a few -30 days after the medicine runs out and I cannot afford to get it refilled, the pain from GERDS disrupts every day functioning and cancer follows soon thereafter, if the reckless, angry drivers do not run me over on my bike as I peddle 25 km to town to get food, if my ex’s lawyer or the RCMP or even the Courts do not come up with yet another way to try to get me killed – never to do it directly, but to set it up so that someone else does the dirty work for them.)
Maybe my time on earth is up and God does not have any more work for this saint to accomplish. I rather think and hope not. Sweet rest it will be, when that day comes, but I think and hope it is not for many years yet … even though circumstances and enemies seem to want it otherwise … and soon.
Ah, that the human was not so susceptible to doing evil to others, and I could count on goodness, kindness and protection from the woman who pursued me, said she loved me, wanted me to provide for the children and for her, and promised to marry me; or from those who work to ‘protect and serve’ whose job it is to protect people from others’ crimes and lies; or at least from the Courts who are tasked with protecting the thin veneer of civilization from attack by criminals, deceivers, and liars. But no, not these or many, many others.
Only God’s miracles can save me from the evil from them directed at me … determined as they are to bear false witness against me to create a false story that I were a criminal, that I have not honoured the Courts, that I were not a good parent, that I were not an honest and kind person. Only God can save me, so come God, take your double victory soon, before it is too late.
What fragile vessels God created us to be. We humans think we are so important, so capable, so righteously rulers of our own destiny. In the universe God created we are but small, so limited, so incapable of ruling or creating destinies at all. We are so capable of wreaking havoc on others and the universe, but when it comes to good we wish well and do little to nothing.
Only God through Grace can bring us to do anything significant and good in the universe.
Thankfully God does just that: God saves us and them by forgiving us and them, redeeming us and them, and making us and them holy, agents of God’s will on earth.
When we think we have nothing more good to give, God sends angels of many kinds, in human form, or as other holy people, to feed us the bread of life, to give us the living water to drink. So strengthened we are able to continue God’s work in the days we have on this earth.
