Fall – Page 13

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – Sept 17

Thursday, September 17, 2020

Visitor Running

Isaiah 41:13

For I, the Lord your God, hold your right hand; it is I who say to you, ‘Do not fear, I will help you.’

Matthew 14:30-31

But when [Peter] noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, ‘Lord, save me!’ Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, ‘You of little faith, why did you doubt?’

Words of Grace For Today

There are great challenges, enough to scare any sensible person out of their skin. God walks with us, holding our right hand, reassuring us that we are not alone. We need not fear anything, not nature, nor humans, nor monsters, nor evil itself … and not even a teensie weensie virus that can kill us.

In the course of many ordinary days, Jesus calls us to be courageous, faithful, and trusting, as we venture where others fear to go … in order that we can give life abundant to others, even our enemies. Walking on water is rather simple as the miracles go that Jesus calls us to trust the Holy Spirit enacts for us. Come visit in the winter and I can show you how easy walking on water can be.

Forgiving, especially one’s enemies, is no small thing. At times it is so difficult it is beyond us. There are real monsters in human form that walk among us. It is hard to forgive the evil that incarnates itself in people, bent on destroying that person and all people around them.

Today a visitor came up to the window, and stopped just a few feet away as I pounded on the window to scare her off. It’s not that I do not like visitors. I just prefer not to be a juicy meal for a visitor, or a punching bag, or a bloody pile of bones to be batted about.

I should have grabbed the camera sitting right there near the window instead of pounding, but I was afraid. It bears considering the power in the paws, instead of the possibility of recording one’s last moments. Thankfully she ran. The question is who taught this yearling to explore near human habitat for food or fun? Dangerous.

Fear not, for God walks with us, even when big dangerous show up, or when small dangerous float about. This is God’s creation, and we are God’s people, the people God walks with through life.

So the little bear finally ran off, or rather lopped off and then carefully stepped over a few logs in it’s path.

One day, that bear will end up on someone’s table.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – Aug 30

Sunday, August 30, 2020

Cold Winter Winds Will Blow

Cold Hearts Will Set

The Holy Spirit Will Keep Our Hearts Thawing

Trust God’s Promises

Isaiah 32:17

The effect of righteousness will be peace, and the result of righteousness, quietness and trust for ever.

Romans 14:17

For the kingdom of God is not food and drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.

Words of Grace For Today

Of what is life?

Food and drink?

Peace, quietness and trust, righteousness and joy?

The basic requirements for minimum and full human life are:

clean air to breath
clean water to drink
nourishing food to eat
adequate clothing to wear
adequate shelter to protect one from the elements
meaningful labour so that one contributes and receives sufficient reward for one’s labour
love: most significantly that one is loved unconditionally, and that one can love others unconditionally.

Food and Drink are requirements, as we all know. One can last 3 or so days without water, and up to a few weeks without food. Not well, and not many times over. One should have water and food multiple times each day to stay healthy.

Yet we can too easily get our priorities all wrong.

We can loose balance, perspective, focus, and gratitude. There are many ways to say this, and it happens to us in as many ways. When we live with food and drink as the focus of our lives, to the detriment of labour and love, then we live off balance, out of kilter, or, as it’s said in so many ways, ‘messed up.’

It is exceedingly difficult to achieve peace, quietness and trust, righteousness or joy. Truthfully one cannot achieve them at all. We receive them as gifts from God.

It is hard to imagine that we would over focus, live out of kilter, living for peace, quietness and trust, righteousness and/or joy. Yet this also is possible. We humans have great ingenuity when it comes to ‘messing up’ life.

These gifts from God are not for us to achieve. Rather they are for us to share, and in sharing God fills us to overflowing with them.

While Covid-19 restrictions, and even the lifting of restrictions and a return to more ‘normal’ can tax us, at times beyond our limits, the stress of these times do not change who we are. The stress just makes very clear to ourselves and to others what kind of people we really are.

We are children of God and wretched sinners, simultaneously. We need to be loved, unconditionally. And to love unconditionally. Yet we ‘mess it all up’ terribly.

Thank God, we are forgiven, and given re-newed life each day, each hour, as the Holy Spirit works in and through us, despite our wretchedness.

It is beginning to feel much like fall as I write this. Cool air blows, tree tops sway, leaves rustle and fly, rain spits and drips. Everything inside is set to retain warmth and let in what light there is. In this day whatever it is like where you are may God’s blessings be obvious and not forgotten by our living off balance.

May we be caught tipped by the weight of blessing raining down on us, refreshing us, giving us the most precious things to experience and share.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – Aug 28

Friday, August 28, 2020

Leaves Strewn on the Path

God’s Glory is as obvious as these golden leaves

Jesus’ voice is as prevalent as the wind in the trees.

Psalm 63:2

So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, beholding your power and glory.

John 7:37

On the last day of the festival, the great day, while Jesus was standing there, he cried out, ‘Let anyone who is thirsty come to me.’

Words of Grace For Today

Everyday life is filled with many mundane things. We can busy ourselves seemingly endlessly in things that have little significance in God’s Kingdom, and we know nothing other than we keep ourselves busy, so busy.

Then when we are not paying attention, we see God in all God’s glory. When we are so busy celebrating, even giving God thanks, we hear Jesus offer us thirsty people a refuge, the living water that is the only water that will quench our thirst.

Our thirst is what drives us to keep so busy, trying to fill ourselves with things that really mean nothing. The challenge is that we get rewarded so apparently well for busying ourselves as we do. What is really meaningless appears by the heavy rewards we gain to be actually full of significance for life.

Wealth, power, and status come our way as if rewarding us with everything we could dream of, just for such devotion to our pursuits.

How can anything take us away from these pursuits?

Then we see God’s glory right in front of us. Then we hear Jesus call to all who thirst.

Are we ready to see? Are we ready to hear?

The Holy Spirit enables us to see and hear, and then we can respond. Will we respond as we can?

…

When we see, hear, and respond, then we have something to celebrate. Then we have everything to celebrate.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – Aug 23

Sunday, August 23, 2020

God’s Glory in Light

To Think One Controls This is Delusion

Psalm 62:9

Those of low estate are but a breath, those of high estate are a delusion; in the balances they go up; they are together lighter than a breath.

1 John 5:14

This is the boldness we have in him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.

Words of Grace For Today

The thin veneer of civilization provides some, the privileged few, the illusion that they deserve and have earned a better life than the majority of other humans.

This is a delusion. A very powerfully destructive and persistent delusion.

Most humans alive today, and most who have ever lived, have lived in conditions we in Canada would define as abject poverty. In them God has invested the breath, the wind, the fire of the Holy Spirit. This holy Ruach gives each of us life. Without it we remain dust.

Those of us who have not, through delusions and veneer, forgotten who God is and who we are in God’s creation, can live with a boldness, extending ourselves every hour even beyond our apparent limits to empathize with, love unconditionally, and care for all other humans around us.

We can also boldly face all the uncertainties of each hour and every future day, knowing that we can ask for what we need from Jesus, who gave his life that we might be rescued from our sins. We can boldly trust that Jesus listens to our pleas, and provides all we need to continue to empathize with, love unconditionally, and care for all other humans around this whole earth.

What a life God has breathed into us!

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – Aug 21

Friday, August 21, 2020

A Secure Tomorrow

as Impossible for Us

as for Grass and Trees

Isaiah 47:13

You are wearied with your many consultations; let those who study the heavens stand up and save you, those who gaze at the stars and at each new moon predict what shall befall you.

Matthew 18:1-3

At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, ‘Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?’ He called a child, whom he put among them, and said, ‘Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.‘

Words of Grace For Today

We humans tend to get agitated by the trouble that may befall us tomorrow.

We go to all sorts of lengths to try to secure our tomorrows. All that is in vain. There really is nothing that can secure our tomorrows, not wealth, nor power, nor status, nor anything under the sun, not even education or integrity.

In Isaiah’s day, and still today, people look to the stars and moon to predict their tomorrows. This also is a futile effort.

Jesus points to the way of his followers. We are to become like children. We trust like children the Word of God. We hope like children for our tomorrows.

We are able to celebrate today and tomorrow, as children, in the moment.

For God promises we have everything we need to live abundantly and blessedly.

Hallelujah!

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – Aug 12

Wednesday, August 12, 2020

Reeds, Weeds, Bushes and Trees

Does anyone hear?

1 Kings 8:52

Let your eyes be open to the plea of your servant, and to the plea of your people Israel, listening to them whenever they call to you.

John 14:14

If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.

Words of Grace For Today

Praying to be heard, and a promise to be heard carte blanch.

Being Gaslit taught me much, much that I would hope no one else would have to learn: what it is like to have one’s children and one’s beloved turn on you, telling lies that are beyond abominations; what it is like to be condemned in the church, community and courts for things you’ve never done; what it is like to be silenced so that no one will listen to you, no matter what you do there is no one, and talking to one’s self goes nowhere. It is to be ghosted by everyone.

And then I was made to sit and listen to the unending lies about me with no way to interrupt and prove they were lies. And when I was given opportunity to speak I was bullied, harangued and Gaslit even more.

So much to say. So many lies told that others use to define me.

My prayer was desperate: to be heard. God listen as you know the truth. Let me speak and make these people listen. Give me your ear, Your heart, and at least a sliver of hope that this nightmare, this twilight zone will end.

But it never ends.

At least now I can speak, though no one listens. People still ghost me. I know the lies do not define me. The lies define those who told them, and those who, knowing truth still used the lies as if they were true, and those who do not stop to think that the lies are not truth.

How terrible it is to be defined by the lies one has told, lies that destroyed other people, and hurt oneself as well. How ghastly it must be to be such a person, where no direction is down or up, or right or wrong. Everything is winning and surviving and having more money … no matter who you destroy in the process.

When I speak the truth, people run and then ghost me.

God when will it end!!

Then Jesus’ words give this hope: If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.

God, I ask, as all people have since the beginning of time, hear me and give me meaning and love and hope …

hope that truth will prevail,

hope that the children will be safe from abuse and gaslighting and from being brought to sacrifice truth for money, and life for money, and love for money.

hope that God will hear what is in our hearts

and give us what God knows we need.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – Aug 7

Friday, August 7, 2020

No Matter How Dark the Road

God comes to rescue us

again.

Zechariah 1:17

Proclaim further: Thus says the Lord of hosts: My cities shall again overflow with prosperity; the Lord will again comfort Zion and again choose Jerusalem.

2 Corinthians 1:10

He who rescued us from so deadly a peril will continue to rescue us; on him we have set our hope that he will rescue us again.

Words of Grace For Today

We all would like to know that we have dealt with a challenge in our lives, settled it, and made it possible to move on … to move on to better things.

It would be good to know that the bear that came snooping around last spring, at whom I yelled at the top of my lungs and who ran off, would not be a problem. It would be good to know that the bear who ran from a woman out on a walk, not once but twice, as she yelled at it, would no longer be a problem. It would be good to know that the bear who came snooping around the tent the other night, not just once but twice, is now gone and will not be a problem again. But it’s the same bear, and it will be back. Someone has left food out and it has learned that people mean food. It will be back, and again until someone is hurt badly or killed and the bear is moved away, or it is killed. Humans and bears don’t mix well, but humans make good bear meals, and bear meat makes good supper. And there will be other bears and other stupid humans to teach them that humans mean food.

Weeds grow madly with rain and sunny heat. All efforts at picking them, cutting them, digging them up, or tilling the ground to be rid of them at best produces short terms results. Weeds are plants that have developed better survival methods than other plants. Weeds will come back … again and again even if you salt the earth, some weeds will return.

So it is with destructive habits of each and every one of us humans. Our destructive habits become habits because we learn they provide us a short-term benefit (the cost to others we learn to ignore) and we learn to ignore the long-term cost to us and others, until the long-term cost starts to disrupt our ability to carry on with our destructive habits.

It is good to know and trust that God will save us from ourselves, and from each other.

He who rescued us from so deadly a peril will continue to rescue us; on him we have set our hope that he will rescue us again.

When we live, enabled by the Holy Spirit to trust God’s deliverance, to trust that God will provide more than we need, to trust that God’s favour rests on us, then we may be able to break some of our destructive habits.

We will never be able to be rid of all our destructive habits (our sins), and God will again and again come to rescue us from ourselves and from each other.

Thanks be to God that others’ lies about us do not define reality; God’s Grace does.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – July 27

Monday, July 27, 2020

Moon

See all that is,

God given.

Proverbs 2:6

For the Lord gives wisdom; from his mouth come knowledge and understanding;

James 1:5

If any of you is lacking in wisdom, ask God, who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly, and it will be given you.

Words of Grace For Today

Wisdom.

Wisdom is that mix of knowledge, comprehension, insight and vision. It is to see the past clearly, the present starkly, and the future vaguely … and to know one’s limits as well as possibilities, probabilities, and outcomes.

And to have a good heart, one that accepts the sinful condition of each human, trusts God’s transforming grace for each great sinner, and hopes fervently for the Holy Spirit’s work in us and in the world around us.

There is no wisdom that does not come from God. There are all sorts of knock-offs, devil rooted, beguiling and destructive, and costly to acquire. True wisdom begins with the fear of God (Psalm 1). True wisdom begins with us fearing and loving God in all things (Martin Luther).

We each, every day, desperately need wisdom. The world needs us to think, speak and act with great wisdom. This is no dependent on intelligence, genes, upbringing or circumstances. It is gift, pure gift, wondrously pure and free gift from God.

Wisdom is available just for the asking. All we can do is surrender any idea that we can figure it out on our own, and this wisdom will guide us to an abundant life for ourselves and those around us.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – July 14

Tuesday, July 14, 2020

The Light

Is to Celebrate by

Jeremiah 33:10-11

Thus says the Lord: … In the towns of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem that are desolate, without inhabitants, human or animal, there shall once more be heard the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, the voices of those who sing, as they bring thank-offerings to the house of the Lord: ‘Give thanks to the Lord of hosts, for the Lord is good, for his steadfast love endures for ever!’ For I will restore the fortunes of the land as at first, says the Lord.

Mark 2:19

Jesus said to them, ‘The wedding-guests cannot fast while the bridegroom is with them, can they? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast.

Words of Grace For Today

A paraphrase of Michelle Obama is going around about Covid 19. She said at the DNC 2012, “Being president doesn’t change who you are, it reveals who you are.”

The paraphrase goes variously like this:

The stress and challenge of a pandemic, like Covid 19, does not change you, it reveals who you are.

When we live (though in cities and country-sides with houses everywhere and people once again scurrying about, the people nevertheless are or seem devoid of soul, heart and hope) in desolate uninhabitable places, sure that our lives have become a wasteland, devoid of mirth, gladness, singing, and thanks ….

When we live so afraid of the future that we dare not live in this moment as the people God created us to be: (only by Grace) good, generous with all God has entrusted to us, blessed to be a blessing to all others, bearing our crosses in order that others may know God’s Grace is for them ….

When we live so sure that there is nothing to celebrate, and we must ‘fast’, putting on the ‘sackcloth’ of our days, and grind ourselves into the work routine to make barely enough to pay the bills, smile (or really grimace) at the destruction of the vulnerable around us incapable of stopping the evil of power and privilege ….

When we live, caught by our own sins, and oppressed by others’ sins without any reason to expect it will ever change, not in our lifetimes, and not in all the generations to come ….

Then God comes,

sets the table in our midst for a feast and marvellous celebration,

invites all the downtrodden, the poor, those without hope,

and

pours out his steadfast love that endures for ever on to and into the guests, so that it spills over and out of the feast and envelops the whole earth (connecting with God’s love that holds the whole universe together).

Then we will celebrate like never before, as love which gives life overfills our hearts, minds, souls and strength.

This is not the return to a shadow of glory days long past. This is moving towards God’s will for all life. This is everything good that life can be, as God made creation to be, as God created us to be.

Though we may not experience this feast today, or yesterday, or tomorrow, our hope is renewed that this feast is ours. So we celebrate in small ways the in-breaking of the infinite into our finite vision; the table is set with bread and wine which God makes into Jesus body and blood given for us.

With our hope renewed we face the challenges of Covid 19.

The challenges do not change us, having seen and tasted God’s feast for all people, the challenges reveal who we are:

We are followers of Jesus, who celebrate his presence in and with us all. We bear our crosses, sacrificing what is entrusted to us as God’s stewards, so that others can experience God’s feast of Grace, forgiveness, and enduring, steadfast love.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – July 8

Wednesday, July 8, 2020

Leaves fall

Our wisdom falters,

God is everywhere, with us.

Isaiah 29:14

I will again do amazing things with this people, shocking and amazing. The wisdom of their wise shall perish, and the discernment of the discerning shall be hidden.

Mark 6:2

On the sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astounded. They said, ‘Where did this man get all this? What is this wisdom that has been given to him? What deeds of power are being done by his hands!

Words of Grace For Today

A few nights ago a man came telling me that the surveyors would becoming, that he had made an offer on this land. (This is crown land, never will it be for sale.) He said that this land had been in his family many years ago. It was coming back into his family. The fences would go up, he would bring his truck in and plow the road. (The road is impassible and would need numerous culverts, lots and lots of clay roadbed compacted into place and layers of gravel over that to make is something that could be plowed.) He was going to develop the shoreline. (Twenty metres in from the edge of the lake is always Crown land and it cannot be developed without a special permit, which are few and far between.) He said he was going to divide up the land into 5 acre plots for various members of his family. (It would take millions of square miles of land divided into five acre plots to accommodate his whole family, the family of all Canadians.)

Jesus comes doing amazing things that shock people. They ask where he came from? Where did he get this wisdom that he teaches?

The surveyors cannot find the borders of the Kingdom of God. They cannot determine how to divide it up into little plots for each family. They do not have the instruments to determine how big anything is according to God’s measure.

Any wisdom we put together is no more than this man’s puffed up claims to be able to buy crown land for his own, when it is used already by so many for random camping. Watch carefully, and we may see God at work.

Who in your life makes false claims, haughty claims of ownership of things that cannot be owned? Are you the one? Does God’s wisdom show you up to be foolish in God’s Kingdom?

Only God’s Grace can show us a path forward wherein we can imitate Jesus’ way of the cross, bringing Grace to all people. Only by God’s Grace can we avoid making foolish claims of how we are buying up God’s Kingdom for ourselves.

Only by God’s Grace, today we allow the Holy Spirit to guide us forward into an abundant life. Thanks be to God.