Category: Fall

Come Home, Come to the Feast!

Friday, October 1, 2021

This is the Feast

(for the eyes)

of Paradise

Many Times Each Week

Jeremiah 31:8

See, I am going to bring them from the land of the north, and gather them from the farthest parts of the earth, among them the blind and the lame, those with child and those in labour, together; a great company, they shall return here.

Luke 14:16-17

Then Jesus said to him, ‘Someone gave a great dinner and invited many. At the time for the dinner he sent his slave to say to those who had been invited, “Come; for everything is ready now.”

Words of Grace For Today

God gathers the people together to come back home after being in exile. The blind, lame, the pregnant, those giving birth, all are invited to come together. All are invited home.

Jesus tells of the wealthy person who invited a great number to a feast, and called them when it was ready. Those who were invited had all sorts of excuses why they would not come. So Jesus tells how the gracious host sends his servants out to invite in people from the streets, the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame. When that does not fill the seats at the table the host sends the servants back out to compel anyone and everyone to come and feast with him; except those who are invited are excluded!

How are we in exile today? We (in North America where I live) live in countries that we call home, where health care is provided for everyone (if you can get in to see a doctor, a doctor who is not too exhausted to provide care, an honest doctor who will not lie to be rid of you if you have serious health concerns), where housing is available to protect us from the cold of winter and the heat and beasts of the hot summers (if you have enough money to buy or rent such a home, the rest of us remain in substandard houses or in no houses at all), and where our voices are heard in elections (if we buy into the most popular version of fake news and vote for the corrupt people who create fear in order to convince us to give up our protected freedoms in favour of their ‘dictator like control’ over us.

Are we not in exile in our own countries, where truth was long ago sacrificed, and where the wealthy gain their advantage with lies and deceptions so terrible they cannot admit their own sins?

Where is the feast that we are invited to, as Jesus’ listeners were at the meal hosted by the leader of the Pharisees where Jesus heals on the sabbath, where Jesus teaches them about claiming false honour, and where Jesus warns them about refusing God’s invitation to the great feast?

Some say the feast is the Eucharist hosted by your local church. Others say it is the feast of luxuries and comforts (enjoyed while others are hungry, thirsty, and dying for lack of life’s essentials.) Others say it is the food kitchens and food banks provided for those who are hungry.

What do you bring to the feast, to share, to enjoy, with those from the streets, who are invited and compelled to come and feast? Are we truly the saints who bring God’s Grace to be for all other people?

Law, Fog, Grace

Thursday, September 30, 2021

God’s Law Is Not Compromised By Our Fog

(our wish to hide in the fog of sin)

Nor is God’s Grace For Us Compromised by Our Fog!

Psalm 130:3

If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, Lord, who could stand?

2 Corinthians 5:19

In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.

Words of Grace For Today

God’s Law is not bendable, not amendable, not sort of obeyable. It is strict, more strict than we imagine … and it is impossible to obey it perfectly. Anything less and we condemn ourselves out of God’s approval, out of heaven on earth, and out of eternal life with Christ.

Our failure to uphold God’s commands does not belong to just some of ‘them’ or ‘to us in the past’. It belongs to each and every one of us each day of our lives, without exception.

So who can stand before God on our own merits? None of us.

And that is the definition of a life of hell each and every day.

Thank God, God works to forgive us, not because we deserve it, but because God wishes to be Gracious to us.

It is God’s choice, God’s will, God’s answer and solution to our inescapable bondage to sin.

As God exercises Grace for us, we get to respond, with the Holy Spirit working in us, to share that same grace with others.

Quite the life we get to live, as God’s adopted children, relying on God’s Grace alone, and enabled to be that Grace for others. Quite the life, indeed, word and in thought.

The Lord Has Anointed Us …

Wednesday, September 29, 2021

Sent into the Darkness

To Reflect

Christ’ Light

…

(as a star-planet reflects the sun)

Isaiah 61:1-2

The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn.

Luke 1:30

The angel said to her, ‘Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favour with God.’

Words of Grace For Today

To be sent.

To be sent to bring good news.

To be sent to proclaim liberty and release, and the year of the Lord’s favour.

[To be sent to proclaim the day of vengeance of our God. Set this one aside for now.]

To be sent to bind up, and comfort.

…

The first part seems easy enough, just go out and speak loudly. Today that is easy enough with all the social media available to anyone who wishes to pontificate.

There may be some blow back, but that’s social media for you.

The tough part starts to be clear when it’s not just words, it’s actions. Actions that take every ounce of life we have to give to them, actions like binding up the broken-hearted, comforting those who mourn.

If you’ve ever endeavoured to bind up the broken-hearted, you will know it is an impossible task, and one only makes headway through day after day persistently being with the broken-hearted with all sorts of grace, unconditional love, forgiveness and hope.

If you’ve ever endeavoured to comfort those who mourn, you will know it is an impossible task and one never makes headway. At best one can be with the person mourning, and sometimes leaving the mourning person alone to grieve in their own way. Grief is what we experience when the foundation of our lives are ripped out from underneath us so that our lives make no sense at all anymore. There is no foundation, no connection with the present since the past is ripped from us, and the future is a hopeless jumble of chaos that threatens to consume us and all we are, or so some say. Grief is actually not definable nor curable. At best one can exercise all sorts of grace, unconditional love, forgiveness and hope as a model for how life can be organized into something of meaning for the past, for today, and for the future.

This is what the Saviour is called and sent to do … for the whole universe, and as Christ’s disciples (followers) we are called and sent to do this today for all people, and for creation itself!

Mary is called and sent to bear the Saviour of the universe as her own son. This is more than most get sent to be and do. There is only one way for her not be consumed by fear. There is only one way for us who are sent to be the instruments of Christ in today’s world. This one way is to know and trust that God has chosen us, called us, and sent us as God’s favoured ones. Only protected by God’s favour can we think of doing, yet alone actually do, what God calls and sends us out to do with our lives.

Then there is that last thing: to proclaim the day of vengeance of our God.

If we somehow let ourselves be blind to the blow back that will be and is aimed at us, (which is so more than words on social media, it is words and actions meant to destroy us and all we stand for, since what we proclaim and do certainly upsets the status quo of power, privilege, and control exercised in today’s world), then this proclamation ought to make it clear: we stand to proclaim that God will act against also those of power, privilege, and control made possible by the Great Deceiver’s lies.

We bring good news …

Doch the good news will disassemble the status quo of injustice and evil, of everything based on lies and deceptions (which is a huge portion of what humans do to each other!)

The good news is good for the blessed things of God, and terribly bad for the evil things that stand against God.

And that is how we will be dealt with, as the full force of lies and destruction will be aimed at us (as they have been aimed at us) to disrupt the Good News. Only the foolish or stupid would brave such evil at the hands of so many people … or those who know they are sent by God as God’s favoured ones.

So we are called and sent … to be ‘little Christs’ to all people.

Simple

Tuesday, September 28, 2021

Simple Tree

Simple Sunset

…

Simple Truth:

God’s Love is Life.

Genesis 3:19

By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

2 Timothy 1:8b-10

Join with me in suffering for the gospel, relying on the power of God, who saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works but according to his own purpose and grace. This grace 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

There is always work to do, to survive, or to prepare to survive … unless of course one has gained privilege and comforts known previously only by kings, pharaohs, and rulers, that is the privilege of having survival needs long since met and one can luxuriate in life. As the dust we are from and to which we will return, when such comforts and privileges are ours, we inevitably consume our hearts and minds with un-graceful things, schemes to gain more at others’ cost, and concerns that have next to nothing to do with being God’s people.

In such positions of privilege we look on the work of the Gospel, the work of being the unconditional love for all others, as if it were such a great sacrifice for us to take on. Reality is that this is nothing more nor less than what we were created to be and do.

Our obsessions with survival, and all it’s replacement-substitutional (ersatz) concerns, is not at all the life we were created to live.

We always find our way into some perversion of the life God intends for us, as we struggle to escape death. We cannot escape it.

That is not our death toll, though. For Jesus has come to defeat death, and offer us life eternal.

The story is simple: provide care for all people, heal all people, love all people unconditionally, and allow (without fear of losing anything) those who would attack and maim you, who ruin your reputation with lies and schemes and scapegoating, and who would kill you to do as they must.

God is with us, always, all ways, and there is not enemy that can take God’s love from us. More we need not expect of life. For our God has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works but according to his own purpose and grace.

To Die, To Live … To Live Free

Monday, September 20, 2021

After the Autumn of Our Lives

(at whatever age this occurs for us)

When We No Longer Live for Ourselves,

We are Free to Live and Love for Christ!

Psalm 118:17

I shall not die, but I shall live, and recount the deeds of the Lord.

Galatians 2:20

It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

Words of Grace For Today

Audrey had always had to fight to get anything. At home it was her two older brothers who made sure she had as little as they could arrange, including by stealing things from her and plain taking from her what they wanted, which was anything she showed that she treasured. She looked out for number one, and only number one. By the time high school came around she’d perfected her methods of manipulating, lying, and cheating for whatever she wanted. She had excellent grades, some of them she had even sort of earned. Most of them where given to her by teachers who were afraid of what she would report them for. She’d already laid waste to one teacher’s career and personal life with rumours of sexually abusing her.

When it came to dating she made sure she dated the boys she wanted to, and most of them were hardly aware of the trouble she’d gone to. University was a fools game for her, passing with grades she hardly earned, ruining any instructor who gave her anything less than a B+. Then she met Jacques, and for a few minutes one might have thought her ways would change. She even went to seminary to fit in with his family of pastors, a powerhouse in the church for generations. Jacques finished his degrees a year before she was done, and she could not be bothered to stay in seminary another year. Every one was too kind, naive to how the world worked. The most she got from any of them was fear or out right condemnation for her way of making it through at everyone else’s cost.

Through all her middle age adulthood she continued, as a respected (and feared) member of Jacques’s powerful family. Jacques’s kindness helped to cover up her rather crude and cruel ways of getting what she wanted. Anyone who knew her well, knew she would readily say she was ‘going to hell’ for this or that latest caper she’d pulled off at someone else’s expense. No one disagreed with her; that would be to put oneself in her sights and she never missed. The thing she never seemed to understand was that people were also sure that God had no room for Audrey, at least there was no evidence of it in her life.

In her late adult years she came down with cancer. She fought hard to survive. Most people thought she’d finally gotten what she deserved and could not cheat her way out of. When she lived a few wise, kind and gracious people said that God had given her another chance at life. They meant that God had given her a chance to see how to life life with grace, kindness and unconditional love. Most people who did not know of Audrey’s dark side sympathized with her; here was a cancer survivor after all. Audrey had, it seemed a new lease on life. The kind, gracious and faithful people saw she really did have a chance of learning something new for her: how to be honest and kind.

When a posting came vacant and the congregation could not get a pastor (since they ran through them like horsemen with swords), she volunteered. The bishop, having no other options to offer the troubled and destructive congregation, appointed her as lay pastor. People marvelled at the mysterious ways that God works, Audrey serving as a pastor in a congregation. There could hardly be someone with a life time more antithetical to Christ’s work. Still it was impossible to say anything about Audrey’s past; sympathy ran too wide for her. The congregation fell in love with Audrey, she knew exactly how to win their loyalty. It was the dirty work of destroying men that she jumped into with gusto, and soon the matriarch had what she’d thought she’d wanted for decades: a congregation run by women.

Those that looked on from the outside marvelled at how successful Audrey was as a pastor. Those who knew how she operated, those who knew her before and people that just met her, saw that her ways had a new face, but her heart was all about destroying other people in order to get her way.

Then Jacques came down if a terrible, painful, and incurable disease. Kind, gracious, faithful people saw that God offered Audrey great hardship, and also yet another chance to rest in God’s grace.

This surrender, of one’s own enjoyment of life, in order to give other’s life (the opposite of how Audrey had lived) is what Paul describes in today’s verse: It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

There is no other more poignant manner to describe this than to realize one faces death, head on. And one survives, but one’s life is not one’s own anymore. One’s own life, in large strokes and in the finest details, has become God’s life given to one to live as Christ calls us to live:

filled with truth, kindness, grace and unconditional, self-sacrificing love.

This life then is not our story, it is not that we live to be our own story. Instead we live to tell (with everything in our lives – thoughts, words, and deeds) of God’s great deeds, to tell Jesus’ story, and to tell the stories of the saints who have gone before us … so that the next generations will learn the stories, and learn to live them, and live them well.

There is in this new life lived as not one’s own, the greatest freedom and peace … as God intended us to live.

Shine, Baby Shine!

Saturday, September 18, 2021

Sunrise

Promises

…

Numbers 6:25

The Lord make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you.

John 20:21

Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’

Words of Grace For Today

Waking to -2⁰, the first freeze of the autumn, was anticipated eagerly … until it followed a day of chilly, blustery wind and rain that tore at everything with a dogged vengeance soaking even the best protections against such moisture.

It’s great to freeze. Part of the great of it is, is that wet disappears as water freezes into snow and ice and frost, all which can be removed with either effort or with preparation to avoid their accumulation where they are not wanted, like covers at night keeping frost off the solar panels.

This morning, the Aaronic blessing that: God will make God’s face shine on me, is more than welcome. It is desperately needed. Bring on the sun. Give me a few more days to get the insulated tarps in place, the ropes to hold them, the tape to seal them, so that (after the yearly repairs are completed) that monster in the insulated tarp shelter can be fed once again all the wood it wants, just as long as it produces HEAT, DRY HEAT!

In the chill of this morning, I am reminded, as seems needed so nearly every morning, that the challenges and pains of each morning are signs of being alive in the world that requires labour of me in order that I survive – all part of engaging as a creature in God’s good creation – and …

that the challenges and pains of each morning are not to be given too much due, for the reality is that this IS God’s good creation, that God walks with me, and that this is a holy hermitage, made so by God’s choice to put me here to see it as the place of beauty, wonder, and majesty that it is (all clear indications that God is here in each moment and through each change of season)

and thus

that the challenges and pains of each morning, in the context of God’s many blessings, are also signs of God’s peace, and Christ’s call; that Christ has sent me also here, circuitous and curious as the weaving way has been to arrive, and knowing this is only another (one of many) blessed waypoint on the path home.

May the Lord bless us and keep us; the Lord make God’s face to shine upon us, and be gracious to us; the Lord lift up God’s countenance upon us, and give us peace.

May the shine of the Son and the sun reach our hearts this day, that we may be saints through whom the light of Christ reaches many, many people, bringing God’s unconditional love, amazing grace and unparalleled peace.

It’s All for the Birds (and Us)

Thursday, September 16, 2021

Creation and All In It

Is God’s Gifts

For Us All!

Psalm 36:7

How precious is your steadfast love, O God! All people may take refuge in the shadow of your wings.

Matthew 6:26

Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?

Words of Grace For Today

Take refuge in the shadow of God’s wings, in the safety of God’s steadfast love. All other ‘security’ is an illusion, a deception, and a departure from God’s kingdom into the Devil’s realms. Under God’s wings, like that of a great bird of the sky soaring at will, God brings us to adventures we would not imagine, to places and understandings where life is abundant, and to challenges and work that fulfill all our yearning to participate in creation.

As autumn sets firmly in on the land, giving great respite from the bugs, the heat, and the huge influx of 2-legged animals in the wilderness (only some who are dangerous or greatly destructive to the land, scarring it with tire ruts, garbage strewn about, feces and toilet paper in the woods, and all sorts of materials half burned in the fire circles that sterilize the soil beneath and pollute the air above) …

As autumn sets firmly in on the land, we breathe easier.

As autumn sets firmly in on the land, great flocks of geese of 100s and 1000s, make a distant chorus, moving in V’s for days to traverse 1000s of miles from the waters of the north to the temperate winters in the south.

As autumn sets firmly in on the land, birds of prey, great hawks, owls, and bald eagles screech high as they circle for hours seeking their prey. Song birds like my neighbours the robins spend all hours out in the meadow hunting worms and bugs for food.

Whether autumn sets firmly in on the land or not, in all seasons and times, one has to wonder about these words of Jesus. For as God provides for the birds without their sowing or reaping into barns, first: their lives seem to be wholly directed toward finding food and avoiding being food; second: there are and were also in Jesus day so many people who neither sow nor reap and they worry most about what they will eat and what they will wear, for their choices are so many it is only as ignorant shame that they indulge such luxury as most of the world suffers without enough food, clothing, shelter … and now fresh water and clean air, yet alone meaningful work and people to love and be loved by.

The point is clear from Jesus’ words: our attention and concern should be less on all the required labour needed to survive (or luxuriate in over abundance.) Our attention and concern is better spent on understanding the mystery, freedom and peace that is available to us when we, our lives long, learn to seek refuge, meaning, and purpose in God’s steadfast love. For there, comforted, protected, and challenged, we can see life with clarity.

What we see with clarity is that our lives were designed by God and given to each of us by God in order that we can extend God’s steadfast love to others.

We simply cannot do that if our primary concern is providing for ourselves, for then we turn inward and bend reality from God’s great creation to our own insatiable appetites. We become instead of caretakers of creation, destroyers of creation. We become incapable of seeing others as Christ sees them: broken people in need of God’s love.

God help us when we make that turn away from God’s steadfast love as our only sure refuge.

Thank God, God always calls us, welcomes us, and renews us so that we can return to God (… home in God’s kingdom to be the ones who exercise God’s unconditional, steadfast love for all people) so that we can take refuge in the shadow of God’s wings, in the safety of God’s steadfast love. All other ‘security’ is an illusion, a deception, and a departure from God’s kingdom into the Devil’s realms. Under God’s wings, like that of a great bird of the sky soaring at will, God brings us to adventures we would not imagine, to places and understandings where life is abundant, and to challenges and work that fulfill all our yearning to participate in creation. … home in God’s kingdom we are the saints who exercise God’s unconditional, steadfast love for all people.

Hot Party! or Keep Your Cool!

Saturday, June 26, 2021

No Matter What Fogs Up Our View of the World

God Will Bring Blessings Each Day

and the Cool Blessed Days Will Return

Isaiah 12:6

Shout aloud and sing for joy, O royal Zion, for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel.

Luke 19:37-38

As he was now approaching the path down from the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen, saying, ‘Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!’

Words of Grace For Today

July 1, 2021 approaches and the end of all (almost all) health orders providing restrictions because of Covid 19 will come with it, in Alberta. Unless or until the Delta or some other variant changes everything, again.

Still people are hungry for release, for freedom, for the lack of order that can be filled with their chaos, for ‘life like it used to be’ but really never was – which is always a stupid person’s excuse to want things so simple that dictators can easily take over. There will be a party of all parties, with instances duplicated all over the province, in kitchens, around dining room tables, in halls and in door conference spaces, in tourist destinations and next to the lakes, and in the bush … well that party has already started here, down the way, with fireworks and drinking, smoking and loud music and screaming into all hours of the night. Why not!?! It’s freedom, Right!?

Everyone loves a good excuse to have a party, well almost everyone, or truth be told everyone does except for the introverts (which is estimated to be somewhere between 15% and 50% of everyone).

Jesus enters Jerusalem. He is known to speak with authority and that the authorities are threatened by him. He is the common people’s hope for change. Even though he rides on a foal of a donkey, people shout and throw palms and lay down their garments for his path into the city. Which is a great excuse for a party … and for the authorities it is a great excuse to be rid of him once and for all.

God enters our days, usually quite quietly, walking with us, inspiring us to be the saints forgiven by God that God has made us to be. We make no fanfare.

Jesus is heralded as King with great fanfare, noise, and pomp. Yet he is not the people’s king to free them from foreign dictators. He is King of the universe, and King of our hearts, minds and breath … and of out lives if we continually accept that we need forgiveness, Christ forgives us, and we can live free from sin and the free from the power of the Evil One.

Each morning we have more reason to celebrate, to shout for joy, to bring on a party, than even when Jesus enters Jerusalem.

Yet it is quiet. The sun shines bright and hot on the cool of the morning, so warm already even the song birds are done until evening. The shadows are long from the northeast, the shade provides a momentary cool. God has been here even before it became light and we are quiet, the meadows and woods and lake are quiet. The partiers from last night are now quieted.

There is no need to make loud noises, for this is common, everyday, every place: God is long since been with us.

We pray that God will be with us on 1 July and for months beyond, for Covid 19 is here to stay with us so we pray that the vaccines will stay effective, that the whole world will be vaccination soon, and that we will learn to be the opposite of covidiots – covid-smarts, and all-life-smarts, knowing and trusting God’s Grace as our sole breath and life.

‘Bring in The Poor, The Crippled, The Blind, And The Lame’

Saturday, May 1, 2021

Nothing Is As We Think We Can Expect.

God Has Plans

For Us

And

For Our Enemies,

Plans of Grace for All.

Psalm 9:19

Rise up, O Lord! Do not let mortals prevail; let the nations be judged before you.

Luke 14:21

So the slave returned and reported this to his master. Then the owner of the house became angry and said to his slave, “Go out at once into the streets and lanes of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame.”

Words of Grace For Today

The travails of life are great, and there are plenty who contribute unjustly to ours and others’ travails. As we suffer and wonder where the next morning will take us, and what greater suffering will fall upon us.

How can it be that we would other than pray with all our heart, Rise up, O Lord! Do not let mortals prevail; let the nations be judged before you.

It is not that God does not hear our pleas. God answers with something we may have forgotten to expect. God calls the most unfit to feast at the table with us … including our enemies.

We may wish those who cause us, many other people, and the children great suffering God’s judgment, so that the injustice will stop.

Doch God is not so to be distracted from reaching out to the most needy, our enemies among them, who need time … time to recognize Grace through people’s response to them … time to realize God has forgiven them, and offered them renewed life … and time for the amendment of life.

Chosen ‘Few’ OR Chosen ‘All’?

Tuesday, April 27, 2021

No Matter the Road Ahead of Us

God Chose Us

To Go and Bless All People

As God Has Blessed Us.

Isaiah 41:9

I took you from the ends of the earth and called you from its farthest corners, saying to you, ‘You are my servant, I have chosen you and not cast you off.’

Romans 11:1

I ask, then, has God rejected his people? By no means! I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin.

Words of Grace For Today

The history is that God chose the Israelites, only the Israelites. Everyone else was unchosen and unclean. This we humans do to make ourselves special: we claim that we are chosen and all others are not. This does not make us special. It makes us typically self-centric, arrogant, and judgmental.

When Paul was converted after Saul went blind on the road to Damascus, he studied for years, held himself in retreat from activity. He underwent a profound change, from an effective, eager, persistent pursuer and persecutor of Christians, to a leading proponent of Jesus’ Way of living, i.e. by Grace.

Paul did not restrict sharing the Good News, which he encountered as Jesus’ Way of being God’s people, with just the traditionally ‘chosen’, the Israelites. Paul went out to share the Good News with anyone and everyone who would listen and wanted to be baptized in this Way of living.

That brought the obvious question: were the Jews wrong to claim God had chosen them, or had God changed God’s mind and rejected those God had earlier ‘chosen’?

Paul’s answer is simple: No. God’ choosing people is expanded, not ended. The Jews are still chosen, as are all other people who Christ calls to follow his Way.

History repeats itself. Many times God’s people have declared that only they are God’s chosen. As many times God’s message comes to bear on the mess this exclusive claim creates: God’s chosen are chosen, DOCH God does not choose only some people. God chooses all people.

Our human way of living does not make sense of this very well, if at all.

It does not need to. God still chooses all people and offers them abundant life. Not life in abundance (of wealth, things, etc.), but life filled to overflowing with blessings and the ability to share those blessings with others, all others.

God gathers us from the ends of the earth, from all corners of creation, claims us as God’s servants, does not cast us off, and sends us out to share the Good News. (Like Paul.)

What a life!