Truly the hills are a delusion, the orgies on the mountains. Truly in the Lord our God is the salvation of Israel.
Matthew 15:35-36
Then ordering the crowd to sit down on the ground, he took the seven loaves and the fish; and after giving thanks he broke them and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds.
Words of Grace For Today
There are always tempting-terrible ways for humans to try to make sense of the world so perverted by our attempts to live without God. In the hills the people gather to fill their senses to overfilling. It is their attempt to try to fill the void in their lives that living separate from God leaves. There is nothing that can be filled by the void of living a lie, telling lies to get ahead, and destroying others with lies.
Where did we go so wrong with the gift of life that God gives us? Wherever it is, it is an oft trod path. So people do stupid things, like gathering for ‘orgies in the mountains’! Mountains are a great place to retreat to celebrate life, but orgies! Sacrificing one’s soul to pleasure in order to fill a void that cannot be filled with anything other than God’s Grace, makes a very bad ending to life! Celebrating God’s Grace on the mountains makes for a blessed life and a blessed end to life, when Jesus gathers us in to a home with many rooms, and room for all. Mountains are for celebrating life. The plains are where life is lived with all its challenges and dangers.
The crowds have followed Jesus to the plain to listen to him, to be healed by him. When it is time to eat, they are afraid, afraid to bring out the little food they have brought with them. The fear is real and reasonable. There are a lot of poor people, hungry people gathered in that crowd.
In the face of this rightful anxiety (for food is required for life to continue) Jesus exercises boundless generosity with a mere seven loaves and a few pieces of fish. Jesus’ little demonstration overcomes the crowd’s collective fears (now that is a miracle!) and as the seven loaves and fish pass from one person to the next each person brings out their little supper to eat and to pass the extras along for the others to take from or contribute to … and everyone eats their fill.
This is the meal that fills the void in our souls. The food fills the crowd’s stomachs, and their sharing transforms the meal into a great blessed celebration. This is the feast of eternity that God provides for us whenever we are souls are hungry. This is the feast that results when we share the great blessings God has given us with each other.
What will we, what will you choose this day and each day you breath: ‘Orgies in the hills’ [our own ways of trying to fill our hungry souls], OR feasting with Jesus [humbly accepting the Grace and life that Jesus offers us]: there are many choices we make each day and they lead us to a greater void in our lives, or to thanking God for all the blessings of life
…
by sharing it with those who have less than we have.
They will collapse and fall, but we shall rise and stand upright.
Hebrews 12:1-2
Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.
Words of Grace For Today
When we think we stand on our own, we are doomed to collapse and fall.
When we know we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, so great a gathering of God-made saints, then …
well then we are reminded how Jesus endured the cross, it’s shame, and was resurrected and ascended to sit at the right hand of God …
and we are inspired to set aside every weight and sin that clings so closely to us from our past, our present and our future
so that we can run with perseverance the race that is set before us.
That race is not at all trying to achieve perfection or earning God’s favour or saving our souls.
None of that is even remotely possible for any human.
No our race is against the Evil One who would keep us mired in our sin.
Our race is against time itself, to strive to share so much of what God has given us, in order that there is none left when we are taken home,
home to that house that has many rooms, and plenty of room for us all.
When we know that we are surrounded by such a cloud of God-made saints, witnesses to Jesus’ Grace and Love, then we know we live as God created us to live, in God’s own image, following Jesus’ example of serving others and giving all we have so that others may live.
Even if the first light of the day is the sun already set, and reflecting in the popcorn clouds, we know we live in the light of Christ.
When we know that we are surrounded by such a cloud of God-made saints, witnesses to Jesus’ Grace and Love, then we shall rise and live upright, honest and kind, gracious and generous, and filled with hope for each new day.
Even now your enemies are in tumult; those who hate you have raised their heads. They lay crafty plans against your people; they consult together against those you protect.
Matthew 6:13
Do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one.
Words of Grace For Today
A murder mystery, fiction, true fiction, begins:
Everybody lies.
Cops lie. Lawyers lie. Witnesses lie. The victims lie.
A trial is a contest of lies. And everybody in the courtroom knows this. The judge knows this. ….
[Everyone] take their seats … and agree to be lied to.
Michael Connelly’s The Brass Verdict
I’m not sure if I had known this truth that it would have mattered one iota. I certainly did not know that everyone expected everyone else to lie.
I certainly did not lie, not at all, not at all.
That put me at a huge disadvantage, and that is the way this sad world works, the way people work with each other. It is part of what I have never understood about people, who speak lies, and expect others to lie, and are just fine with all that comes of it. I certainly cannot understand cops, lawyers, witnesses, and judges who choose to lie. I cannot understand how they can so lie as to put innocent people like myself in jail for crimes they certainly did not commit, while other crimes are committed against them by their lying accusers.
As for me, I certainly did not lie, not at all, not at all.
That puts me at a huge advantage, for I know what is and is not. I live in the reality of this world. This in the end is not sad at all, not at all, not at all.
If the price of being honest and kind is that I must be homeless, then I would always choose to be kind, though the choice is not mine to be honest, and I will live well as a homeless person.
So my enemies do not care if they lie. I certainly would care if I lied.
I know that by not lying I do not make myself better than others, the others who lie. I do know that I really have no choice … and those that lie do have a choice. I do not understand how they can make that choice, and that is their burden and what a burden it is.
That is not the greatest burden we can bear, the burden that we cannot survive, not on our own.
The trial that we pray God will save us from, is the trail where the Devil plays freely with us, and only God can save us from the Devil’s clutches.
Seems to me though, if one lives in lies always, then one is got one foot on the greased slide into the Devil’s clutches and the other foot is somewhere, but you cannot ever be sure where it is since it’s been so long since you lived in the truth.
All the other enemies we face are nothing compared to the Devil, and none of them, the Devil included, is anything compared to God.
God walks with me. As for them, I cannot be sure. As for you, you should know that yourself, or pray hard and long so that God will show you. Living homeless is common among all humans of all times, but life is no place to find oneself alone.
No matter what comes, enemy, lies, trials of all kinds, I know God walks with me.
Take courage, all you people of the land, says the Lord; work, for I am with you, says the Lord of hosts, according to the promise that I made you when you came out of Egypt. My spirit abides among you; do not fear.
Romans 15:13
May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Words of Grace For Today
It’s a good thing our lives are not dependent upon what other people do to us and around us.
Since what makes or breaks us
sometimes is the least expected
someone else messing with our lives with their irreality or their attempt to ‘climb to the top’, right?
In the book titled Sound Pictures: The Life of Beatles Producer George Martin, written by Kenneth Womack, the author reveals a strategy behind Beatles records.
Martin and the band decided to have Ringo sing one song on every Beatles album. And it wasn’t just to be nice to Ringo. In the first wave of Beatlemania, Ringo was the most popular Beatle.
Years ago, comedian Mitzi McCall and her husband Charlie Brill were a comedy team called McCall & Brill. They were a nightclub act that finally got a big break to be on the Ed Sullivan Show. But that big break happened on February 9th, 1964 – the historic night the Beatles also appeared.
The comedy team came on right before the Fab Four’s second set that night, but they couldn’t hear each other while performing their sketch because the 14-year-old fans were screaming for the Beatles.
Seventy-three million people watched that night. It was their big opportunity – and no one remembered McCall & Brill. Their agent didn’t call them again for six months after that. They say they never watch the video of that night.
Later, McCall would share one funny moment.
She was standing with John Lennon before the show, looking out the window at the screaming crowd outside the theatre. She turned to Lennon and said, “Can you believe this is all for you?”
Lennon shrugged and said, “It’s not for me. It’s for Ringo, actually.”
And that’s why the Beatles always put a Ringo vocal on every album. As George Martin said, it was just good marketing.
As for us, what makes or breaks us is God’s Grace, and God’s promises are what give us hope for each day:
Take courage, all you people of the land! … Work, for I am with you, says the Lord of hosts, according to the promise that I made to you when you came out of Egypt. My spirit abides among you; do not fear.
No matter the challenges that we face this day we pray may the God of hope fill us with all joy and peace in believing, so that we may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
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.
The Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail.
Philippians 4:19
My God will fully satisfy every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.
Words of Grace For Today
Jane moved her old, really old, 5th wheel 40’ camper into the random camping area after Thanksgiving. It would be cold and the old camper was well equipped with a wood stove, at least until it froze hard and stayed there, well below freezing even during the day. That would make the water system to risky to use, which in turn would make life that much more complicated.
By then her ‘job’ for Arnold would be done, keeping a camera on the entrance to monitor ever coming and going, especially Tina’s. It was not really that difficult a job and Jane’s cover story was simple. She claimed she was homeless. (Tina actually was so she would relate to that.) Jane said she would stay just two weeks, since that was the legal limit, but it’d be easy to stay longer if Arnold wanted her to. Jane’s story was that she had lost everything in the oil bust and needed a place to stay.
Tina was not taken in. First because Jane claimed to lose everything in the oil bust of 2016, and the oil bust was in 2014. Second because if Jane really were homeless since 2016 that was 5 years living somewhere else just fine. So why appear right after the summer crowd stopped camping? Third Jane parked her camper where everyone coming in would see it, and where she’d be able (with the security cameras Arnold gave her) to see everyone coming in and going out. There were way better places to camp for so many reasons. The only reason to camp where Jane did was if someone wanted to camp with lots of other people in multiple units. But Jane was all alone.
Sometimes Arnold’s plans to make Tina’s life difficult were too transparent, and not all that effective. The real challenge was all the lies Arnold came up with. There was no way to prepare for those. Still Tina knew that goodness flowed in so many ways in her life and through her to other people. God had provided, through other people mostly, all that Tina needed (though Tina worked as hard as she could to provide security for herself through each challenging season. For the upcoming winter that meant gathering, cutting and splitting enough wood to ensure she stayed warm. That was hard work, and yet it was work that could be done. The other season’s challenges could not be met with more hard work. They were, thus, much more difficult to prepare for and to get through safely.)
More than once Tina had felt that even so close to a lake, and with rain pouring down on her, she lived in a parched place. God’s provisions helped those feelings pass quickly. Instead Tina watched as the blessing from God continued to pour over her and surprise her in new ways. She knew that God had made her bones, her heart, and her faith strong, strong enough to meet all that challenges that living homeless placed on her.
She gave God thanks, and prayed that God would help Arnold face his own demons instead of falsely blaming others for his own sin.
As the sun rose on the fifth morning since Jane’s arrival, Tina saw another blessing pour into the woods where she stayed. Out gathering wood she came across two huge wasp nests, and both were empty. She had made the correct decision to stay out of the woods while the wasps were so bothersome and so many. Where she found them gave her plans on how to minimize the wasps in the area next spring and summer if they became such a problem again. The forecasted cold La Nina winter promised to eliminate pests like pine beetles and wasps … and require more wood to stay warm.
The balmy days of autumn made for perfect weather for gathering wood. A blessing on top of a blessing from God who never failed to provide, as a good spring continues to provide water more than sufficient in quantity and purity.
When the Lord smelt the pleasing odour, the Lord said in his heart, ‘I will never again curse the ground because of humankind, for the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth; nor will I ever again destroy every living creature as I have done.
Titus 2:11-12
For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all, training us to renounce impiety and worldly passions, and in the present age to live lives that are self-controlled, upright, and godly.
Words of Grace For Today
The inclination of our hearts is evil from our youth.
What happens next is … well … our history of destroying one another in the most creative and repetitive ways.
Kind of a mess.
So God decides to fix it all and start over. Come waters all and flood the evil people to death. God plans to start over … so Noah, the righteous man and his family, along with two of every kind of animal on earth are loaded into an ark, that will float out the flood. Noah and company find dry land when the waters recede and they give a wonderful aroma wafting offering as thanks to God.
God is pleased, and promises never to flood away the evil inclinations of all the human hearts, ever again. (Thank God for that, and for Noah for reminding God that we might be worth the bother.)
Bother is what God does, and God sends Jesus to demonstrate clearly the inclination of God’s heart is to be gracious and provide salvation to us all.
A huge bother, costing Jesus his life, though it does actually provide the greatest salvation for us that we could ever imagine.
Worldly passions and all kinds of all impiety do not hold a candle in comparison to God’s gracious gift of salvation for us.
A little gratitude can fill our lives and spill over to many people around us. It’s not the trickle down theory, leaving those under the trickle with less than those on top. It is the overfull blessing that is equally generous to all.
God provides everything we need: promises we can count on, and generosity we can share with everyone.
Therefore the Lord waits to be gracious to you; therefore he will rise up to show mercy to you. For the Lord is a God of justice; blessed are all those who wait for him.
Luke 15:20
So he set off and went to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him.
Words of Grace For Today
The prodigal son claims his inheritance from his living father and his father gives it to him. The poor son uses his great wealth, well squanders his inheritance, and ends up broke … broker than broke and does not even have food enough to survive and so eats the food of the pigs … until he realizes that his father’s servants eat and survive better than he does in his terrible state of being the wasteful idiot that he has been.
The final scene says it all, the prodigal son approaches his father’s home. Actually prodigal means extravagantly generous, which the father is, and the son is certainly not. The son is extraordinarily wasteful, selfish, and … and … well the son is so much like all of us.
The father is the one who is prodigal.
So the final scene of the story says it all. The idiot son approaches his father and the prodigal father comes rushing out to greet his wayward son and …
The rest we all know: the father not only receives the son into his home, he reinstates him as his son.
Jesus tells us this story (and it is recorded for us to know so many generations later) so that we can understand and anticipate that this is how God is towards us, all of us who are so wastefully wayward children (blowing our inheritance again and again on selfish living). God not only will welcome us home when we ask to serve in order to survive, God reinstates us as God’s own children.
Then God sends us out into our lives to be the agents of God’s prodigal welcome for all the other sorry, idiot, wasteful and wayward children of God (people just like us.)
It’s not about money or a comfortable life. It’s about love, gracious mercy, and blessed justice determined by God to give us all life abundant.
Call on me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.
1 Peter 5:7
Cast all your anxiety on him, because he cares for you.
Words of Grace For Today
DO NOT WORRY!
Which makes one focus all the more on one’s worries.
Cast all your you anxiety on Jesus!
Now that’s a great collection of words that can foundationally change one’s life for the better. For we know that anxiety drives one into a survival, pre-rational thought option pattern of responding to the world (or at least to one’s imagined threats in the world.)
Those choices are not that helpful in most situations, and the likelihood that we imagine a threat that is not real at all or at least not as threatening as we perceive it is … well … it is so likely we can say it is the standard for most of life. This fear based reactions to life makes us vulnerable to those many evil people who use fear in others to control them, to move them to make decisions not at all in their best interests, but to the advantage of the one controlling them! It’s sop for despotic political leaders taking and maintaining power; after all democracy (or any form thereof that responds to the public needs and best interests) is not very efficient, or preferential to those who have or want to have position, power, and privilege.
So to be able to cast away our anxieties, not declaring them unreal (even if most are) sets us free from being controlled by fear. Then we are able to proceed through our days, using our God-given brains to think clearly and make choices that will benefit those around us.
The latest examples are all those people who read the fake reports about vaccine dangers and decided to not get vaccinated, or to wait. So they did not get vaccinated. Now they populate the ICU’s and hospitals and after that drain on our too-limited health resources, they live the rest of their lives with health compromises no one would choose, unless the other choice is death by Covid suffocation.
After we’ve cast all our anxiety on Jesus, then we are able to give God praise and thanks.
What a life God offers us, a life that responds to reality, instead of fabricated fears used to control us, destabilize our lives and the community life around us, and eventually the national security of our country and many other countries in the world.
He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.
1 Peter 2:23
When he was abused, he did not return abuse; when he suffered, he did not threaten; but he entrusted himself to the one who judges justly.
Words of Grace For Today
The urge for all humans is to respond to attacks with attacks of ones own, but with a greater intensity.
This leads to wars on a personal scale in marriages, among family and friends, within communities, countries and between countries. It leads us into the worst that humans can bring to bear on one another, so horrible much of it is unspeakable.
What am I to do about the RCMP Jones who fabricated evidence and coordinated others to bring false reports, who did this just because she could, even though I was innocent and bewildered at why or how anyone would do such a thing?
What am I to do about my ex who created so many lies about our life together that life became unbearable, and no matter what I tried or sacrificed or gave her she only created more worse lies about me and our life together, and then created more and more lies for the courts, lies that I could not even imagine where they came from? Or the children who came to court to lie as well, trying to get me falsely convicted? Or the prosecutors who gleefully took the cases, presented the lies to teh courts and created more and more lies on their own for the courts to hear? Or the lawyers who were supposed to be my lawyers or work to inform me of the court processes, and simply did none of that, instead tried to make my testimony totally useless in court?
What am I to do with the judges themselves, who received these lies eagerly, and made ruling after ruling to enable a false conviction, and when all the evidence was in they still had to lie about the evidence in order to falsely convict me, and especially those who did it so cruelly, naming my kindness as something that had created fear, as if my kindness could at all create fear!? Or the judges who removed sections of testimony and then played games and made up more lies to ensure I spent $1ks with no hope of hearing the audio of the section that was removed from the transcripts?! And on and on go the inexplicably dishonest and cruel things that people with authority did in order to convict me and send me to jail for crimes that I did not commit, which left the children suffering cruel borderline personality disordered ‘parenting’!
What am I to do with the pastor, bishop, doctors, office managers, church council people, community leaders and many others who joined in the creating of lies about me, so that I am cut off from my church, cannot receive medical care even as my health requires more and more medical intervention, am not safe in the community as on many occasions people put my life at risk, some violently, some with reckless breaching of Health Orders, and some with threats to my person, well being, and survival?
My list is not complete even at that, and there is more and more that time reveals to me that I did not know of, and so much more that I will never know about, yet billions of people today and through history have stories that are so much worse!
What are we to do with such terrible evil directed at us, often (as is my case) with no rationale reason that it the evil be directed at us?! There is plenty of random, senseless destruction of life, but this is focused and directed evil against us, though there is no reason for us being chosen, except some insane perversion of reality. What are we, the victims of this destruction and evil to do? What are the rest of you people, who are not the victims of such senseless, useless, and avoidable evil, supposed to do?
What are we to do when it is impossible to judge 100% correctly who is doing what to bring about such atrocities against innocent people?
Jesus says forgive as we are forgiven. This brings us freedom from being victims to being blessed by God!
What if the sins are not even acknowledged by more than a handful of people, and otherwise the evil is continued by the same people, choosing new victims as the violence and destruction mounts and becomes systemic?
I have forgiven those who suffer mental illness, my ex, and the children effected by her.
I cannot forgive the others, especially those with authority and position, who are responsible to ensure this kind of injustice does not happen. I also cannot respond with increased vengeance or violence and destruction. I will not allow myself to become like them.
I have bound their sins, and made it known so that they have opportunity to amend their lives, and God can celebrate a victory first that their destructive evil is acknowledged and stopped, and God can celebrate a second victory, that they have received freedom from the Great Deceiver’s grip and begun to life a life of service to Jesus the Christ.
Binding sins is not to be judge over others. Binding sins is not to condemn others. Binding sins leaves the judging and the punishments or mercies to be in God’s hands. It makes known what has been done, even when it cannot always be known completely who has contributed knowingly or unwittingly participated.
Binding sins does bring the victim freedom from being a victim, and allows one to stand blessed each day.
The Suffering Servant of Isaiah, and Jesus (reported also in 1 Peter), do not even respond with a declaration of the evil done and the binding of sins. They suffer in silence the violence done to them. This may seem to some to be the better response. I cannot agree. One needs identify evil and hope that the perpetrators will amend their lives, or at least, as a ‘civilized’ society we will collectively recognize the evils done against so many innocent people.
One cannot live well and seek revenge, though.
Lies are lies forever, always without end.
Truth is truth, always and forever.
God’s Grace gives us boldness to be those who forgive and who bind sins. Without it we would be left breathless. With it we are given breath each day by the Holy Spirit.
